Psalm 144:3 LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! Or the son of man, that thou makest account of him!
The Way to Know Yourself is to Know God
There’s nothing wrong with asking God to bless you or your life. But in Psalm 144, King David blesses or praises God. He praises God for who God made him to be. Psalm 144:1-2 says, “Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight; my goodness, and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust; who subdueth my people under me.” This is a king who is blessing God for all that God is in his life, and for all that he is because of God’s working through his life. God was his strength and goodness. God was his high tower and shield. That’s why David trusted in Him. The fact of the matter is God is a God who can be all these things to you today as well. So that’s what God is to you.
But what is man to God. That’s the same question David asks in the next verse. Verse 3 says, “Lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man that thou makest account of him!” What is man? What is man like? Verse 4 says that man is vanity, a breath, emptiness, a shadow that passes away. Now verse 10 says that God is He that giveth. So when you have God you have all that you need, and until you come to a point where you realize your emptiness, you will not seek the God who fills needy people to the full.
David ends the psalm by talking about the prosperity of the kingdom-healthy children, full crops, strong livestock-and wraps up by saying, “Happy is that people, whose God is the Lord.” What made these people happy and blessed was not so much the things they had or attributes they shared, but the God they served who was the provider of all these things. You will never know what God made you to be until you know the God who made you. So many times people are seeking to find themselves, and when they do, they find emptiness. What we need to do is to find God who is the author of all that we need and all that we are not.