An Undivided Heart

Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name. I will thank you, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and glorify your name forevermore. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the pit of death. -Psalm 86:11-14

The psalmist’s prayer at left is a powerful prayer of hope and thanksgiving, with just a touch of desperation mixed in. Whenever you need the words to pray - when your own words simply don’t seem like enough (although God doesn't need special language to hear our prayers) - the psalms are always a good place to turn. 

These few verses accomplish a lot and give us a grounding for our faith. It begins with a request. God, teach me how to follow. Help me worship you. There’s an acknowledgment in these words that we don’t know how to love or follow God without being shown what it means to do so. We can’t find our way to God, we need God to find us and teach us the way we are to go. 

The response to being shown the way is praise and thanksgiving. "With all [our] heart" we give God thanks for what has been done for us and for what God has shown to us. It seems like a simple response, but it asks much of us. It’s not easy for us to give all of our heart to anything or anyone. Think about all the ways we make other things more important than God; and I’m not just talking about coming to worship on Sunday. We have the opportunity to glorify God with every waking breath but we struggle to do that. Sometimes we struggle to find even one breath to worship and give God thanks.

And that’s when what God has done becomes so central to who we are. In the final verse, we are reminded that it is not through our own efforts that we accomplish anything that we are asked to do. It is because of God’s great love (other translations use steadfast) that we are delivered from the pit of death; from the consequences of our actions and in-actions. 

God always acts to draw us into God’s way and God’s truth. God’s constant, unchanging love is always working in our hearts to make us into what God has called us to be. That is a blessing to lives that often feel divided and difficult. God’s love is steadfast. God is faithful to us, even when we fail. For that we give God thanks.