Psalm 139:23
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.
Within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a long tradition of interviews. We are regularly invited to go before our leaders (and they to go before theirs) to see if we are worthy for this assignment or that privilege. In our childhood, this might involve preparation for baptism or confirmation. As teenagers, this experience might come with an Aaronic Priesthood ordination or a Young Women achievement program. This moment of self-examination gets more serious as the years go by and the complexities of gospel living unfold. As temptations become greater, interviews get more rigorous—in preparation for missions, for temple experiences, and for other sacred moments in life. By the time we have lived a full measure in the Church, we will have had many chances to be interviewed regarding our standing before the Lord.
But far more important and far more personal than the interviews we have with Church leaders is the interview—daily, hourly, moment by moment—that we should have before the Lord. We know from the scriptures that He sees all, that “all things are present before [His] eyes,” and that He is always in our midst.195 How crucial, then, that in every waking hour of our lives and every moment of our discipleship we say with honesty, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.” That is an interview the Lord is constantly giving us (whether we agree to it or not). He is searching our hearts, and He surely knows our thoughts. We would do well to be worthy of such examination “at all times and in all things, and in all places.”196
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