Search me, 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.

Psalms 139:23‭-‬24 NIVUK

This is such a lovely psalm, describing as it does, the depth and intimacy of how much God knows us and loves us.
However, these verses should come with a health warning!

I struck me that my prayer “God I don’t want to go through this and not be changed” has similaries to the verses above.  Both invite God to bring up things in our lives that will change us.

However, If we genuinely pray these prayers, then brace yourselves! That’s what God will do.  He’ll go deep into our hearts and highlights things that may be uncomfortable to be confronted about.

In all likelihood we will resist, after all we’re inviting him to highlight things about us that have become part of who we are.  We’re not going to give these things up without a fight. 

But here’s the thing, God meets us just as we are, with all our hang-ups, all our hurts and all our mistakes.  When we give our lives to him He begins a work of transformation that He will see through to fruition: “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus“.  Philippians 1:6 NIVUK. 

This means it’s good for us to be challenged, even about those deep dark areas of our hearts that we keep hidden from everyone else.  But we do so in the knowledge that God has our best interests at heart.  He knows the things about us that do us no good and he want us to change.  Not because he thinks of us as bad people, but because he loves us.

Don’t get me wrong, I think God likes us to wrestle with him on these issues, because we engage with him on a really deep level. 

But, be prepared to lose. 
Losing this fight to God could be your greatest victory.