Skip to main content

A Divided Heart

Ever since I was around the age of twelve or thirteen, my heart has had a mind of its own.  Where most people's hearts happily beat around sixty times per minute, I'm lucky if mine ever gets any lower than one hundred beats a minute.  While the side-effects from such a boisterous heart rate are sporadic and minimal, my doctor tells me that there is a minor heart procedure that could possibly fix my problem.  I have avoided the procedure for various reasons, but primarily because my doctor can't give me any certainty that it will work on the first attempt and she won't have to repeat the procedure multiple times.

As I think about how my physical heart needs to be monitored and potentially needs some fine tuning, my spiritual heart is just as vulnerable and needs a daily dose of attention.  I ashamedly admit that my heart's loyalties through the years have varied from one extreme to another.  From being a die hard "New Kids on the Block" fan in the eighties to appreciating designer coffee drinks over the last few years, my heart has yearned for a myriad of different things, none of which provide any lasting or eternal value to my life. 

The psalmist tells us in Psalms 86:11:

"Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name." 

The first time I read that verse, the portion that instantly jumped out at me was the phrase, "Give me an undivided heart."  Oh how my heart can be divided at times.  My priorities and 'to-do lists' can tell the story so well.  Scarily, the divisions that are there happen so naturally and so slowly over time that we don't even realize how divided our heart truly is.  The divisions of your heart are probably different than mine, but here are a few possible things that could be desiring a home in your heart:
  • Social Media
  • Television
  • Sporting Activities
  • Shopping
  • Traveling
  • Food
  • Relationships
  • Money
  • And the list could go on, and on
Our lives are so consumed with the things that this world has to offer that what ends up being left over is what we offer to God, where God wants to be God of it all.  If our heart is divided into sections where each of our loyalties lie, and God has his own individual section, then we never fully gave Him our whole heart.  As followers of Him, our desire should be for Him to fully own and take up residence in every nook and cranny of our hearts and lives.  Are any of those things listed above intrinsically bad?  Of course not.  They all add some sort of value to our lives in one way or another.  What God desires is to have access to it all.  He desires that our devotion to Him be evident in every area of our life.

So, what's the condition of your heart?  Does God reign supreme over it all, or does He have a portioned out section like every other priority in your life? 

Pray Psalm 86:11 with me today.  Pray for an undivided heart.

Comments

  1. kathyhmJanuary 10, 2013 at 6:58 PM

    So glad you started your blog! Hope I am your first subscriber!

    ReplyDelete
  2. L2LJanuary 10, 2013 at 7:05 PM

    Well written. I am so excited to see what God is going to share through your blog and learn those i never knew that about you little tid-bits :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Staci YoppJanuary 10, 2013 at 8:29 PM

    Thank you both for your encouragement! I don't really know what I'm doing, so hopefully I'll figure it out soon!

    ReplyDelete
  4. KristynJanuary 10, 2013 at 9:36 PM

    You are a blessing! I am so proud to call you friend. Our hearts are probably the most vulnerable part of our spiritually body and Satan desires nothing more than to divide it as much as possible. Thank you for this reminder that God desires ALL of my heart!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I love my kids, BUT. . . .

"Schoolhouse Rock" was one of mine and my husband's favorite educational past times.  Bob Dorough, writer for "Schoolhosue Rock," was a genius when he put educational factoids to quirky music and cute cartoons.  From the preamble to the Constitution, to parts of speech, multiplication facts, how electricity works, and much more, Mr. Dorough slyly disguised learning and actually made it fun! Like all good parents, we passed this educational relic on to our kids.  One of our favorite songs from "Schoolhouse Rock" is without a doubt " Conjunction Junction ."  Its jazzy rhythm easily gets stuck in your head for the rest of your day ( sorry in advance! ).  This song teaches how conjunctions mechanically work in a sentence and what their purpose is.  The conjunction 'BUT' is one that we use all the time to connect two sentences or a clause to a sentence. "I like pizza,  BUT  I don't like olives on it." "I want to
2 comments
Read more

Taking the Mask Off

If I’ve learned anything over the last few weeks of wearing masks when going out in public, it’s that wearing a mask makes it hard to breathe.   The trapped air recirculating in and out gets thick and burdensome. The same is true for the invisible mask I wear on the days that I’m trying to hide the reality of what’s going on below the surface.   There comes a point when the air that has gotten trapped between my invisible mask and my unfortunate reality gets so heavy that ripping it off and gasping for a dose of fresh, life-giving oxygen is the only remedy.   ( Cue the proverbial mask selfie that everyone has had to take during quarantine. ) I think many of us frequently wear a mask, intentionally or unintentionally, to hide the reality of what’s underneath. We mask up to present a façade. A watered-down version of the true us. A suffocating misrepresentation of our current existence.  We’re all guilty.  One of my favorite personalities in Scripture is
16 comments
Read more

Ponderings from Flo

As I take the last bite of a pint of Blue Bell ice cream (which by the way was the best ice cream that ever landed in my mouth - see picture below for the flavor), so many thoughts about the past week flood my mind.  The first was rather insignificant -- I realized that I have never eaten a whole pint of ice cream in one sitting before tonight!  Ice cream is always my go-to comfort food, but I didn't realize how badly my body expected that physical treat during times of distress!  You never know how much you want something until you can't have it -- and ice cream clearly doesn't last when left in a freezer for five days without power. Perhaps my other ponderings will be more reflective and less  self-serving  . . . ~ The goodness and benevolence of people’s hearts is always a refreshing breath of fresh air during natural disasters. In our typical world of self-centeredness, times like these remind me that there is good in everyone.  From neighbors sharin
3 comments
Read more