In The Spotlight

In the Spotlight

Are you a Mac or a PC?

Some people love working on Apple Macintosh computers. Others like PCs, personal computers. The choice really comes down to preference. Macs look cool but usually cost more. PCs may have more functions and memory. But there’s one thing Mac users love: the Spotlight feature that looks like a little magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the screen. By clicking on the Spotlight icon, you can find nearly anything on your computer.

But it wasn’t always that way. In the early 2000s, finding a specific file on your computer felt a lot like searching for a needle in a 100-gigabyte haystack. Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs said, “It is easier to find something from among a billion web pages with Google than it is to find something on your hard disk.” Jobs solved this problem by introducing a system-wide search capability called Spotlight on Macintosh operating systems in 2005. Let’s say you wanted to find that paper you wrote for school about how videos of kittens are way cuter than videos of puppies. You could type in “surprised kitty,” and automatically Spotlight would search for those words in every file and e-mail on your computer!

As impressive as the Spotlight search may be, it’s nothing compared to God’s ability to see into the innermost parts of our hearts. The Lord knows our every thought. King David said, “The LORD searches every heart and understands the intention of every thought” (1 Chronicles 28:9, HCSB). That’s just as true in today’s technical age as it was when David first said it to his son Solomon thousands of years ago. We can’t tuck away any mean thought that God doesn’t know about. We can’t hide prideful desires from our Creator.

God’s ultimate spotlight brings everything to the surface. Because we can’t hide anything from him, we need to make the decision to give over our entire hearts to him—even the deepest, most secret parts.

Daddy-Daughter Time

If you have a Mac, use the Spotlight function to search for different things. See how it can find the smallest detail of information anywhere on your computer. (If you have a PC with a similar function, do that instead.) Talk about what it feels like to know that God searches our hearts even more intimately.

Are you trying to hide anything from God? It’s impossible to do. Pray and ask God to forgive you for anything you’ve tried to keep from him. Then commit to not hiding anything in the future.

What’s The Word?

The LORD searches every heart and understands the intention of every thought.   1 Chronicles 28:9 (HCSB)