AN UNDIVIDED HEART

Ps 86:11-12
11 Teach me your way, O LORD,
and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
12 I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever.
NIV

INTRODUCTION

Sun and I only knew one another for two weeks before I asked her to marry me and after knowing one another for a little over two months we were married. Thankfully God is gracious and He has helped us through many rough times as we’ve grown to know one another better over these past twenty years. But the truth is that I joined the Air Force to run away from a failed romance. A girl in West Virginia broke my heart and I just wanted to get out of Doddridge County so I joined the military. It was about a year and half later that I met Sun, who was also in the Air Force. She had joined to run away from issues in her own life and her first night at Loring Air Force Base in Maine I stuck with her until she married me.

The truth was that we did not know one another and I had not yet dealt with my own emotional baggage from the previous relationship. As a result Sun and I had a very tumultuous first year. I remember wrestling with unresolved feelings from my previous relationship and Sun knew all about it. One day I asked Sun, “Do you think a person can be in love with two different people at the same time?”

She knew exactly what I was thinking about and she answered without hesitation, “No!” The truth was that my heart was still healing and I was emotionally unhealthy. In truth, my heart was fractured and divided. Over the next two or three years, especially after she and I gave our heart to the Lord, my emotions and my heart were healed and our relationship grew stronger. Now, of course, my heart belongs to her alone and I love her with an undivided heart.

In our text, the Psalmist is praying for an undivided heart. Only when we have made complete surrender to God and our heart belongs to Him will we be able to faithfully serve Him.

Notice the Psalmist says, “Teach me your way and I will walk in your truth.” This is the desire of the writer. He desires to walk in the way of the lord, to know and live by God’s truth. But in order to be able to do that, the Psalmist also knows that it will take more than head knowledge, it will take more than knowing God’s truth, it will take a heart the is wholly devoted to God. Only when our reverence and worship is devoted exclusively to God will we be able to live out in our life, what we know in our mind we should be doing.

Reading this text I began to consider how many ways our heart can be divided and how our prayer should be that our heart is whole and focused on loving God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. Scriptures repeatedly tell us that we must praise Him with our whole heart (Ps. 9:1), worship God with our whole heart, that we must seek the Lord with our whole heart (Ps. 119:2), and serve Him with our whole heart (Ro. 1:9).

Therefore, before we can truly serve, praise, worship or even find God, we must understand the power of the undivided heart.

I) UNDIVIDED BETWEEN GOD AND SELF

The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

It is not about my will verses God’s will, but in an undivided heart it is all about God’s will in our life. Our motto and our prayer is, “Not my will but thine be done.” In an undivided heart I am not seeking to get God to bless my will, but I am seeking with my whole heart to hear Him and to allow His will to become my will.
An undivided heart does not allow two God’s on the throne of one’s life, but the undivided heart has ripped the ego from the throne and is willing to give all the glory to the Father.

II) UNDIVIDED BETWEEN GOD AND THE WORLD

15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17, NIV)

When Moses came down from the mountain, after spending time with God and interceding for the Israelites, he found them worshipping an idol. They were dancing naked before a golden calf. Moses came into camp to separate the chaff from the wheat. He asked, “Who is on the LORD's side? Let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.” (Ex 32:26)

Make no mistake, God will not share our heart with the world. We have to make a decision. Whose side are we on? I can see Moses taking his staff and drawing it through the desert sand, and then with fire in his eyes and his face aglow with the presence of the Lord He asks, “Who is on the Lord’s side?”

Some people act like they don’t know whose side they’re on. They have with one foot in the world and one foot in the church and they’re miserable. They know too much about God to enjoy the world, but they’re too attached to the world to enjoy the blessings of God. When we pray for an undivided heart we are asking God help us cut loose the cords that hold us to the world so that we can be sold out to Jesus.

The world is constantly calling us. It calls us with the promise of unbridled pleasure. It calls us with the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. But an undivided heart checks the caller ID and refuses to take the call. The phone may still ring, but the undivided heart never answers the call of the world. We are online with Jesus and our desire is to hear His voice speaking into our life.

III) UNDIVIDED BETWEEN SACRED AND SECULAR

2 Cor 6:14-18
14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."

17 "Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you." 18 "I will be a Father to you,
and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." NIV

An undivided heart can discern between the sacred and the secular and it refuses to make a god out of the unclean. The undivided heart does not live in the gray twilight between dusk and dawn. It does not walk in the shadows but has come of the darkness and entered into His marvelous light. The undivided heart does not seek to find agreement between the sacred and secular, between righteousness and wickedness, between light and darkness. The undivided heart pursues God and God alone.

There is only room for one God on the throne of our life and He will not take second place to anything or anyone. If we have an undivided heart then we will live in the light and walk in the light, even as He is in the light. We won’t be looking for the gray areas. In fact, there won’t be any gray areas. In an undivided heart it is either right or it’s wrong, it is either acceptable unto God or it isn’t and if it isn’t then we don’t want it.

I asked Sun if I could love two women at the same time and she said “No!” To claim romantic love for two women is to deny real love for either woman. Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matt 6:24, NIV). We cannot love the holy things of God and at the same time be involved in pursuits that are contrary to God’s word and His will. We cannot live in under the umbrella of God’s blessings if we do not have an undivided heart. We cannot walk in the sunshine of His presence and live in the midnight of our secret sins at the same time. Before the priest entered into the most holy place he had to sanctify himself, he had to wash himself and make sure his heart was right before God. God did not allow for compromise and communion at the same time.

IV) UNDIVIDED BETWEEN BELIEF AND DOUBT

Finally, an undivided heart is not torn between belief and doubt. James writes in his epistle:

5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. (James 1:5-8, KJV)

An undivided heart is a heart that is convinced and sure that God is who He says He is, does what He says He does, and did what He said He did. And undivided heart does not waver in unbelief, but takes God at His word and trusts Him to be faithful to all of His promises.

People who believe one day and doubt the next, who trust God one day and question Him the next, are people whose heart is not whole, but is divided. When I understood and entered into undivided devotion with Sun, and I knew that her heart was given in undivided devotion to me, we were released to trust one another and to live without fear of betrayal or unfaithfulness.

When God has our heart in absolute faith and confidence in Him, it is His good pleasure to give us the kingdom (Lk. 12:32). When we have a heart of undivided faith and trust in God we do not have to fret and fear but we rest assured that despite what circumstances may suggest at the moment, God is still on His throne and He will make all things work together for our good because we love and serve Him. It is in the undivided heart that we find the peace that passeth all understanding.

If we waver between faith and doubt, between trust and fear, then our heart is divided and we are unstable in all our ways. Our prayers will be hindered and our relationship with God will be fickle and fragile. Our desire, like that of the Psalmist should always be to have an undivided heart.

CONCLUSION

How do we know if we have an undivided heart? The heart can be deceitful and deceptive and we can fool ourselves into thinking that our heart is undivided when in fact we have a fractured heart with divided loyalties. The Bible tells us in Proverb 23:7 that as a man “thinks in his heart, so is he.” An undivided heart thinks things like:

• Not my will, but thine be done.
• As for me and my house we will serve the lord.
• Though he slay me, yet will I serve Him.
• Forgetting those things which are behind, I press toward the mark.
• I’ll enter the straight gate and walk the narrow path.
• I’ll fight a good fight of faith.
• I’ll keep the faith, I’ll finish the course.

The undivided heart is not restless, but is fixed in faith on God and upon His will and word. The undivided heart is able to walk in His ways, to live by His truth, and to conform to His will. Let me ask you tonight, is your heart undivided? Do you need to pray this prayer with the Psalmist tonight, “Give me an undivided heart”? Do you need to ask God to search you and know you reveal anything or any place in your heart that has not yet been surrendered to Him? If so come and join us at the altar and if He should show you something that has not yet been surrendered, leave it at the altar before you leave.