Keith shares his thought for the week; having an undivided heart.
Recently in church, we’ve been focusing on one of our priorities, which is worship. And worship is at the heart of so much of what we do as Christians.
In Psalm 86 verse 11, the Psalmist asked God to give him an undivided heart so that he may worship him, so he may fear him, so his default settings would be love and joy and all the good things.
Why is it that our hearts are so easily led astray? Well, in 2 Kings chapter 3, we read about somebody who had a divided heart. It gives us an idea of what it’s about. His name was Joram. Now, who’s Joram? Nobody really knows that name off the top of their heads, but he’s the son of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, so he has not come from good stock! He has come from a life of privilege, but not great examples. This is what the Bible says about him.
Joram son of Ahab became king of Israel in Samaria in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and he reigned twelve years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
2 Kings 3:1-2a
That little phrase there, “in the eyes of the Lord,” we find about a hundred times or so in Scripture. You’ll know in Judges 6 that Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord. But throughout the book of Kings, we read about kings who did right in the eyes of the Lord and kings who did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Joram’s one of those kings who doesn’t get it right.
He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not as his father and mother had done. He got rid of the sacred stone of Baal that his father had made.
2 Kings 3:2
What’s going on? He makes a great decision. He makes a heart decision. He makes a decision that says, “I’m going to worship.” And he gets rid of what had been culturally acceptable, what his father had done. And sometimes we have to break those generational ties. We have to break with the patterns of our families. Our families may have set us great examples, and we can take some of those with us in life. But some of them we have to do away with.
Then it goes on to say:
Nevertheless he clung to the sins of Jeroboam
2 Kings 3:3
Now, what is that? Jeroboam was a previous ruler who said, “It’s too hard to go all the way to Jerusalem”, so he set up two golden calves; one in Bethel and one in Dan, and he said, “Go and worship them.” – he actually says, “Here are your gods.”
A divided heart will deal with one thing, but leave other things undelt with, unrepented sin in our life. And an unrepented sin is an acceptance of that sin. It’s like we would say, “That’s okay because I’m better than everyone else.”. You see, comparison is the enemy of an undivided heart. It will make us think we’re better than we are. When actually Jesus doesn’t want to share us. He didn’t die on the cross so that he could share us with all the things that crowd into our lives.
And just like me, looking for a good coffee shop is a simple example, or the bigger things in life, sometimes it’s easier to be people of convenience rather than people of conviction.
My friends, as you worship God this week, I pray that you will have undivided hearts before him, that you’ll put him first and you’ll enter into a new realm of relationship with him.
God bless.
Every week one of our members shares a short thought aiming to inspire you for the week. You can watch previous Thought For The Week videos by clicking here.