“Do you think you’re a burden to Jesus?”

My breath caught at the gentle question. I hadn’t verbalized it, even to myself. But my heart had begun to understand the root of the struggles I confessed to my dear friends Kyle and Mary as I sat on their living room floor.

Fears of unduly burdening and troubling friends loomed large in my mind. As I articulated my dread that my weaknesses would become “too much” for others, I recognized my subtle suspicion that God’s love wasn’t that lavish, at least not toward me. I’ve believed in God’s free, lavish love since childhood. Yet surely the Lord would eventually deem my neediness “too much” for him.

In Known and Loved: Experiencing the Affection of God in Psalm 139, Glenna Marshall, an author and pastor’s wife, shows that our fears of overburdening God are unfounded. Speaking from her battles with doubt and chronic illness, Marshall encourages us to marvel afresh at God’s love. The hope and confidence she’s found in this beloved psalm strengthened my faith in an hour of need.

Faithful Love

Marshall’s careful mining of Psalm 139 speaks to seasoned Christians who, in one way or another, feel fainthearted or weary in their faith. She offers both a thorough theological analysis and relevant personal application. The psalm is widely treasured and well known because of its poetic emphasis on God’s omniscience. Yet many will benefit from the deep dive in this book.

I’ve usually thought of the psalm as an ode only to God’s superior, set-apart knowledge and power beyond my comprehension. Marshall does highlight God’s otherness: “He does not need sleep. His thought processes and ways are higher and better than ours” (101).

While God’s otherness is essential to our theology, Psalm 139 also reveals this doctrine’s deeply, gloriously personal textures. Though God is so great that he knows and controls everything, Marshall reminds us, “If He has set his faithful love on you, your life will always matter to Him. And that’s enough for any tombstone” (106).

God’s knowledge isn’t only high but intimate. Sweeping, yet acquainted with every detail about me. And with his knowledge, he actively, perfectly loves me and you, Christian, through doubts, sins, and weaknesses.

Delighted Love

I frequently feel I should have something to offer to ensure people get a return on any investment in me. I don’t like to feel needy, and I’m afraid people won’t like me if I am. Marshall shows how that attitude makes relating to God a struggle: “We might have no trouble believing that God generally loves His people, but when we consider just how well He knows us, we struggle to believe that God loves us individually. . . . Does He even like us?” (24).

God’s knowledge isn’t only high, but intimate. Sweeping, yet acquainted with every detail about me.

He does. We see this because God’s ultimate expression of love—the cross of Christ—wasn’t his final expression. His intimate knowledge, praised in Psalm 139, testifies to his ongoing love.

King David meditates on God’s deep knowledge of his actions, thoughts, words, body, and mind (vv. 1–4, 13–18). The same is true for us now. Our inmost thoughts aren’t a mystery to God. He sees our affections, fears, and most humiliating sins. And for the Christian, this is good news.

Marshall invites readers to take rich comfort in God’s knowledge of even the darkest corners of our hearts and in his love that has saved us and continues to sanctify us. She writes, “God did not happily save you to then reluctantly sanctify you. That lavish love in saving you is still present in your sanctification” (31). This reassurance strengthened me.

Compassionate Love

In verses 11–12, David speaks of feeling as though darkness might hide him from God. In her reflections on these verses, Marshall considers the dark places of life that tempt us to think God has forgotten us or that our pain somehow makes us less pleasing to him. She recounts in detail some of the “crucible of pain” she’s faced through years of an illness that presented more severely at night (69).

In that potent darkness, the Lord’s compassionate presence became her only hope for persevering. I haven’t experienced that particular pain, but I’ve known dark nights—nights that made me wonder if grief or loneliness would crush me, or if my pain somehow meant my faith wasn’t real. Now, as I remember those nights, Marshall’s words bring comfort. She emphasizes that God isn’t only present in the darkness but actively caring for us in it: “The Lord may seem like a silent presence in the dark, but He is not idle” (73).

Our inmost thoughts aren’t a mystery to God. He sees our affections, fears, and most humiliating sins. And for the Christian, this is good news.

C. S. Lewis imaginatively portrays God’s care for us in The Horse and His Boy. Shasta loses his way in nighttime fog, separated from friends and protectors while an enemy army plots at his back. Despairing, he declares himself the most unfortunate boy who ever lived. But in this valley of fear, Aslan, the great Lion and King of Narnia, appears to Shasta to reveal that even in his loneliest moments, Aslan has always cared for him.

In the same way, darkness and doubt don’t diminish God’s love toward us, for day and night make no difference to his knowledge or sight (v. 12). Marshall reminds us, “When you’re unsure of God’s love in the night, He is not threatened by those doubts. . . . His presence in the shadowed valley is not diminished by your doubts, nor is it weakened by your fear” (72).

To my endless gratitude, my friends didn’t retreat when I confessed my anxieties. They drew near in my weakness. So, too, does our heavenly Father draw near to all who call on him. No beloved child of his could ever be a burden to him. Christians struggling with feelings that they’re burdening God will benefit from Marshall’s careful study of Psalm 139 in Known and Loved.