Am I undivided?

It's early in the morning and I am sitting in my office with a cup of coffee, needing and hoping to hear from God. I say a short "Good morning Lord" prayer then as His Word sits open on my desk and I read Psalm 86.

As I read, I come to verses 10-13:

10 For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. ¹¹ Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. ¹² I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. ¹³ For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.

That verse 11 really stood out to me: "give me an undivided heart". What is David praying for here? When scriptures speak about an undivided heart it is speaking about a heart that "knows God and knows that He is Lord" (Jeremiah 24:7) and a person who's heart is backed up by his actions (Jeremiah 32:39).

I think that is the call of the church in the United States today. I think we have learned to separate our heart from our actions. In other words, we love Jesus as a Savior, full of never ending grace and mercy. But Jesus as Lord of our life is intermittent at best.

God not only wanted Israel to return to Him with an undivided heart, but He wants His church to have undivided hearts as well.

Does our life match up with our hopeful words? When we praise Jesus as our Savior do we submit to Him as our Master?

I see a dangerous practice in America's churches today of loving the Savior but ignoring the Lord. We often seem to have a rationalization of our actions with the hopeful belief of total forgiveness when we get to the gates of heaven, in spite of the collateral damage we have managed to leave while here on earth. Paul spoke of this in Romans when he wrote in Romans 6: ¹ What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ² By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Paul wrote this to remind us that Jesus can not be just our Savior...He must also be our Lord. A heart that is undivided lives a life that is not only saved by God but also is a servant to His will and His way.

Well, I got my prayer answered...God spoke to me. Now, what am I going to do about it? How about you?

Take care,

Rod