JEREMIAH 29:13 – You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
THEME OF THE DAY: THE WHOLE-HEARTED CHRISTIAN. When God makes a person a new creature in Christ, He gives them a new heart with the intent to create a people who seek and love Him from this new heart with their whole heart (Jeremiah 32:39; 2 Corinthians 5:17). And really that is the only type of Christian; the whole-hearted Christian. Granted, true believers experience temptations by the devil, world, and flesh toward a divided heart; one attempting to be in the world while maintaining a single-minded affection for Christ. One might as well attempt to cross an ocean on foot or create a world in the power of themselves as seek to love the world and Christ. It is impossible for the Christian to have competing affections in the heart.
So, since we established the true believer is to be a whole-hearted Christian, what does that look like in such a person? In the book of Psalms, we find the largest chapter in the Bible. It is also the best exposition on the Bible – Psalm 119. Within its contents, the two words “whole heart” appear five times. We want to take three of those using them as “road maps” directing us on the paths walked by the whole-hearted Christian.
First, the whole-hearted Christian yearns for God, not to get things from Him, but to know Him – Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! (Psalm 119:2,10). The clear difference between a mature Christian and a spiritual infant is the hunger for God; to know Him. The mature Christian pulls away from the world to be in the Word and prayer for communion with the Lord. This believer is crying out for something but consumed with being with Someone.
Another mark of the whole-hearted Christian is a commitment to uncompromised or selective obedience to God’s commands – Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts (Psalm 119:34, 69). When we are “all in” with the Lord, all His commandments become delights and pursuits. We don’t “pick and choose” which ones to follow. Whole-hearted Christians seek whole-life obedience.
Finally, the whole-hearted Christian seeks the Lord in prayer with everything they have and are – affections, wills, discipline of the mind and flesh – With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O Lord! I will keep your statutes (Psalm 119:145). Listen to the prayers of a whole-hearted Christian. Nothing is held back. No formal language. No repetition. No filling the air with a lot of words. The whole-hearted Christian is a whole-person in prayer; transparent, sincere, reverent and aware of the God being addressed – holy, holy, holy.
The whole-hearted Christian. Let’s examine ourselves considering Psalm 119 and the marks of being a whole-hearted Christian. And may the Lord help us become more and more what we read of the Psalmist – a whole-hearted believer!
PRAYER: “Father, may I be a child of Yours who seeks AND lives for You with a whole heart.”
QUOTE: “God gives us a new heart so that we might live for Him with a whole heart.”
Because of Him,
Pastor Jim