Psalm 139:18 NKJV
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.
Winding up the Heart
My Notes
“If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You.” — Psalm 139:18, NKJV
David has just described God’s thoughts as precious and innumerable. Now he goes further—even if he tried to count them, they would exceed the grains of sand. Imagine scooping even a handful of sand at the seashore. Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? And that’s only what you can hold. God’s loving thoughts toward you are more than all the sand on every shore on earth combined.
That isn’t poetic exaggeration; it’s divine reality. God’s thoughts about you are continuous, infinite, and intentional—flowing from His heart as Creator, Redeemer, Father, and Friend. Every moment of your life, He thinks thoughts of mercy, guidance, protection, sanctification, provision, forgiveness, and eternal hope.
There is a deep, comforting mystery in the phrase, “When I awake, I am still with You.” Think about human relationships. You might fall asleep thinking of a friend, or even dream you are hanging out with them, but when your eyes snap open in the morning, you realize they are miles away. With God, it’s entirely different. When we drift off to sleep, we lose consciousness. We forget about God, ourselves, and our troubles. But while we are completely helpless and lost in slumber, God never blinks. He stands over us like a parent watching a sleeping child.
Then David adds something profoundly comforting: “When I awake, I am still with You.” When your eyes open to the morning light, you don’t have to look for God or try to call Him back from a distance. David doesn’t say, “When I awake, I return to You.” He says, “I am still with You.” The communion was never broken. He was there when you closed your eyes, He guarded your unconscious hours, and He is the very first reality waiting for you when you wake.
One old Puritan commentator, Joseph Caryl, compared this to a watch. If you wind your watch at night, it is still ticking and running when you wake up the next morning. In the same way, when a Christian learns to “wind up their heart” at night—leaving their last thoughts, burdens, and praises in the lap of God—they find their soul in that very same holy disposition when they rise.
Whether we are waking up to a normal Tuesday morning, waking up from a dark season of sorrow, or ultimately waking up on the morning of the resurrection to the sound of the archangel’s trumpet, we will find the exact same beautiful reality: We are still with Him.
Prayer
Abba, Your love for me is greater than the starry skies and more numerous than the grains of sand on the shore. Thank You that Your eyes never close. Thank You that when I am completely unconscious and helpless in sleep, You are actively guarding my life and thinking of me. Lord, teach me to wind up my heart at night in Your presence. May my very first thoughts in the morning fly straight to You, resting in the certainty that I am never alone. I thank You for this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Key Takeaways
- Love Without Limits: There is a boundary to creation, but there is no limit to the infinite volume of God’s loving thoughts toward you.
- The Unbroken Connection: Sleep forces us to forget God for a few hours, but He never forgets us. He doesn’t leave our side while we rest.
- First Thoughts Matter: Setting the Lord before our eyes the moment we wake anchors our soul and keeps us in reverent awe all day long.
- The Eternal Morning: This verse is a beautiful whisper of the resurrection. When we wake up from the sleep of death, our first conscious experience will be realizing we are still with Him.
Cross References (NKJV)
- Psalm 3:5: “I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustained me.”
- Psalm 63:6: “When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches.”
- Isaiah 26:9: “With my soul I have desired You in the night, Yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early; For when Your judgments are in the earth, The inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”
- 1 Thessalonians 5:10: “who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.”
Things to Think About
- Think about the phrase “winding up your heart.” What practical habit can you start tonight to ensure your last thoughts of the evening are anchored in God?
- How does it make you feel to realize that while you are completely unconscious in sleep, the Creator of the universe is actively watching over you and thinking about you?
- When you first wake up, what normally floods your mind? (Anxiety, social media, your to-do list?) How can you intentionally replace that first thought with: “Lord, I am still with You”?
- What would it look like to begin each day consciously aware that God is with you when you wake?
Proverb for Today
He who heeds the word wisely will find good, And whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he. The wise in heart will be called prudent, And sweetness of the lips increases learning. Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it. But the correction of fools is folly. The heart of the wise teaches his mouth, And adds learning to his lips. Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, Sweetness to the soul and health to the bones. Proverbs 16:20-24 NKJV
Daily Scripture
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Ezekiel 36:25-27 NKJV
Closing
“The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” ’ Numbers 6:24-26 NKJV
Grace be with you. Amen.
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Summary of Commentaries:
Psalm 139:18 teaches that God’s loving thoughts toward His people are innumerable—more than the grains of sand. Spurgeon, Barnes, Henry, and others emphasize that God’s care is continuous, both day and night. Even in sleep, God never leaves; when the believer awakes, God’s presence remains unchanged. His thoughts flow constantly—guiding, guarding, renewing, providing, and forgiving. This unbroken communion fills the believer with comfort, gratitude, and awe, reminding us to begin each day with God’s presence in mind.
Commentaries:
Charles Spurgeon
“If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand.” This figure shows the thoughts of God to be altogether innumerable; for nothing can surpass in number the grains of sand which belt the main ocean and all the minor seas. The task of counting God’s thoughts of love would be a never-ending one. If we should attempt the reckoning, we must necessarily fail, for the infinite falls not within the line of our feeble intellect. Even could we count the sands on the seashore, we should not then be able to number God’s thoughts, for they are “more in number than the sand.” This is not the hyperbole of poetry, but the solid fact of inspired statement: God thinks upon us infinitely: there is a limit to the act of creation, but not to the might of divine love.
“When I awake, I am still with thee.” Thy thoughts of love are so many that my mind never gets away from them; they surround me at all hours. I go to my bed, and God is my last thought; and when I wake, I find my mind still hovering about his palace gates; God is ever with me, and I am ever with him. This is life indeed. If during sleep my mind wanders away into dreams, yet it only wanders upon holy ground, and the moment I wake, my heart is back with its Lord. The Psalmist does not say, “When I awake, I return to thee,” but, “I am still with thee,” as if his meditations were continuous, and his communion unbroken. Soon we shall lie down to sleep for the last time: God grant that when the trumpet of the archangel shall waken us, we may find ourselves still with him.
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Enduring Word
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand: David used a powerful image to illustrate the idea of how often God thinks of us. We imagine standing on a shore and wondering just how many grains of sand fill the beach – yet God’s thoughts are more in number. (Guzik)
i. “Thoughts such as are natural to the Creator, the Preserver, the Redeemer, the Father, the Friend, are evermore flowing from the heart of the Lord. Thoughts of our pardon, renewal, upholding, supplying, educating, perfecting, and a thousand more kinds perpetually well up in the mind of the Most High.” (Spurgeon)
ii. “You know that people are very proud if a king has merely looked at them; I have heard of a man who used to boast, all his life, that King George IV. – such a beauty as he was! – once spoke to him. He only said, ‘Get out of the road,’ but it was a king who said it, so the man felt greatly gratified thereby. But you and I, beloved, can rejoice that God, before whom kings are as grasshoppers, actually thinks of us, and thinks of us often.” (Spurgeon)
When I awake, I am still with You: Day or night, David thought of God because he knew the greatness of God’s thoughts to him. At the waking of the day, the wonderful presence of God was still with him. (Guzik)
i. “He awakes from sleep, and is conscious of glad wonder to find that, like a tender mother by her slumbering child, God has been watching over him, and that all the blessed communion of past days abides as before.” (Maclaren)
ii. The thoughts about the greatness of God’s love “…are like a dream; but, unlike a dream, God’s love is real. When awake, the psalmist knows that he still enjoys God’s presence.” (VanGemeren)
iii. “When I awake may therefore have its strongest sense, a glimpse of resurrection.” (Kidner)
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Albert Barnes
When I awake, I am still with thee – When I am lost in deep and profound meditation on this subject, and am aroused again to consciousness, I find the same thing still true. The fact of “my” being forgetful, or lost in profound meditation, has made no difference with thee. Thou art still the same, and the same unceasing care, the same thoughtfulness, still exists in regard to me. Or, the meaning may be, sleeping or waking with me, it is still the same in regard to thee. Thine eyes never close. When mine are closed in sleep, thou art round about me; when I awake from that unconscious state, I find the same thing existing still. I have been lost in forgetfulness of thee in my slumbers, but thou hast not forgotten me. There has been no change – no slumbering – with thee.
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John Gill
when I wake, I am still with thee; after I have been reckoning them up all the day, and then fall asleep at night to refresh nature after such fatiguing researches; when I awake in the morning and go to it again, I am just where I was, and have got no further knowledge of God and his thoughts, and have as many to count as at first setting out, and far from coming to the end of them: or else the sense is, as I was under thine eye and care even in the womb, before I was born, so I have been ever since, and always am, whether sleeping or waking; I lay myself down and sleep in safety, and rise in the morning refreshed and healthful, and still continue the care of thy providence: it would be well if we always awaked with God in our thoughts, sensible of his favors, thankful for them, and enjoying his gracious presence; as it will be the happiness of the saints, that, when they shall awake in the resurrection morn, they shall be with God, and for ever enjoy him.
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Matthew Henry
Constant at all times: “When I awake, every morning, I am still with thee, under thy eye and care, safe and easy under thy protection.” This bespeaks also the continual devout sense David had of the eye of God upon him: When I awake I am with thee, in my thoughts; and it would help to keep us in the fear of the Lord all the day long if, when we awake in the morning, our first thoughts were of him and we did then set him before us.
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Miscellaneous Comments
“When I awake, I am still with thee.” It is no small advantage to the holy life to “begin the day with God.” The saints are wont to leave their hearts with him overnight, that they may find them with him in the morning. Before earthly things break in upon us, and we receive impressions from abroad, it is good to season the heart with thoughts of God, and to consecrate the early and virgin operations of the mind before they are prostituted to baser objects. When the world gets the start of religion in the morning, it can hardly overtake it all the day; and so the heart is habituated to vanity all the day long. But when we begin with God, we take him along with us to all the business and comforts of the day, which, being seasoned with his love and fear, are the more sweet and savoury to us.
—Thomas Case (1598-1682), in the Epistle Dedicatory to “The Morning Exercise.”
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