Wholehearted Worship from Undivided Hearts

Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth;

give me an undivided heart,

that I may fear your name. I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart.

I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love toward me;

you have delivered me from the depths of the grave.

Psalm 86:11-13

I will give them an undivided heart

and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

They will be my people, and I will be their God.

Ezekiel 11:19-20

The Truth

• As Christians, God demands that we love him first, love him most, and love him fully.
• "'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?' Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'" (Matthew 22:36-37)
• It is not natural for our hearts to be in an undivided state--in fact, it violates our human nature. Due to our sinful tendencies, we are much more inclined to selfish interests and appetites. We are disposed to distraction. We gravitate towards fleeting, instantaneously-gratifying, and ultimately meaningless endeavors. However, we have been called to something infinitely greater than this.
• "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)
• I know what you're thinking: it's not as easy as I've made it out to be. And you're right. If you look at the main verses, you will see evidence that we cannot entirely unify our hearts for the purpose of completely glorifying God by our own power. David acknowledges this by asking God to give him an undivided heart for the sole purpose of glorifying him; and God tells Ezekiel that he will provide an undivided heart. Don't be discouraged :)
• "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'" (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)
• If your heart beats for one God and one God alone, it WILL change your life. In Ezekiel, we see that people with undivided hearts purposefully do as God has asked them, resulting in a God that is proud to claim them as his own.
• We are kidding ourselves if we believe that our divided hearts can successfully serve and please the Lord. The following verse does not address divided hearts, but I believe that the implication is consistent.
• "Jesus knew their hearts and said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.'" (Matthew 12:25)

Sooo... whatcha gonna do?

STEP ONE: DETERMINE YOUR PURPOSE!

If you aren't interested in glorifying God, you can stop reading now. (Actually, I'm surprised if you've made it this far.) However, if you claim to be a Christian and feel no deep-seeded desire to glorify God, then please take a good, hard look at your faith. This desire for an undivided heart in order to properly worship and glorify the God of the universe should be a natural result of knowing him.

STEP TWO: PURSUE YOUR PURPOSE!

Don't misinterpret my words; I'm not saying you'll never fail. Whenever we try something hard, failure at one point or another is practically inevitable. This doesn't justify or excuse it. It's just a fact. The greater fact, though, is that God forgives and redeems fully, without holding back. So try it. I guarantee two things. First of all, it will change your life. But Ye Be Warned: this isn't something you can remember to do occasionally. It's not something you can do when you feel like it. If you are going to do it, go all the way. (Remember Matthew 22?) The next guarantee is that loving God with an undivided heart will be the most important thing you ever do. So love him recklessly. Hold nothing back from him.

-Mic

P.S. If you're having a hard time evaluating your own heart, I encourage you to seek out God's wisdom through his word and prayer with him. I also found another blog that elucidates several tendencies of someone with a spiritually divided heart; it seems pretty sound to me. You can take a look at it here.

Also, I looked up the two main verses from this blog post in a bunch of different versions, and I found the different interpretations of an "undivided heart" to be very interesting. Here's a list of the variations... You can do with them as you please, but I figured some of them (especially the ones from Psalm 86) would be great to incorporate into prayer.

Ezekiel 11:19

"one heart" | "one purpose" | "desire to respect me completely" | "hearts that are completely committed to me" | "new heart"

Psalm 86:11

• "Make my heart focused only on honoring your name."
• "Focus my heart on fearing you."
• "Teach me to serve you with complete devotion."
• "Teach me to respect you completely."
• "Give me a heart that doesn't want anything more than to worship you."
• "Grant me purity of heart, that I may fear your name."
• "Let me wholeheartedly revere your name."
• "Put me together, one heart and one mind; then, undivided, I'll worship in joyful fear."