The Guinness Book of World Records estimates that more than 5 billion copies of the Bible have been printed. Christians find great help and encouragement from reading the Bible regularly as God speaks to them through it. In Psalm 139 King David reflects on the Lord whom he loves and who knows everything about him; “O Lord, you have searched me, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely O Lord. You hem me in behind and before, and you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”
David goes on to remember that God is always with him; “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
David knew that God had given him life and had known him before he was born: “For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful; I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.”
David concludes the psalm with a prayer expressing his joyful openness to God and his trust in him as he looks to the future; “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”