🌾Fear God with an Undivided Heart

Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart to revere your name.
Psalm 86:11

Psalm 86 is a prayer psalm of David. Prayer is like a 24/7 hotline with unlimited bandwidth, granting us full access to God. God loves us. His eyes are open and ears attentive to every prayer flowing out from our hearts.

Facing the challenges before him, David prays out of a desire to know God’s way and to walk in God’s truth. David does not see God as Aladdin sees the genie in the lamp. To David, God does not exist to meet his demands. David chooses to act according to God’s heart and to walk in God’s path of righteousness and truth. Even in times of trouble and desperation (v. 7), when he is poor and needy (v. 1), David refrains from taking shortcuts and leans not on mortals for solutions. He denies the whims of his flesh and the approaches of his own liking.

One might ask, “What if God’s way leaves him wanting or waiting for a long time? Isn’t David worried about that?” Compelled by an intense and earnest desire, David cries out to God, “Give me an undivided heart to revere your name!” In the Hebrew text, “undivided” is actually a verb – יַחֵ֥ד(ya·ḥêḏ), and it means to unite. David asks God to unite his passion, his mind and all that is within him to revere God’s name! How great is David’s fear of the Lord!

It is this very fear of God that keeps David rising up again and again in the turmoil and failures throughout his life. It is this very fear of God that exalts him to become the renowned and beloved king in history, and to be commended as a “man after God’s heart.” Let us commit this verse to our memory, and fear the Lord with an undivided heart like David’s in our daily prayers.

Prayer:

Dear Heavenly Father, you created the heavens and the earth; nothing is beyond your control!

Help me, from this day onward, to revere you like David did.

For you alone are the Most High God, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords!

Guide me, in all that I do, to lay down my personal desires and to surrender to the principles in your truth.

Preserve me in all my decisions, that I may be counted as one after your own heart.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen!

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