PSALM 86:11-12 | Longing for Undivided Heart

"Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And I will glorify Your name forevermore."

Teach me Your way, O LORD

No doubt in David’s heart that He knew who God is. In his understanding and by means of intimate relationship with God, He already has confidence that the only one who can teach him righteousness is no other than God.

In many years being dependent with God, He experienced how amazing God is—he protects him, guides him and took good care of him. This same majestic God, whom all nations will worship and glorify, will hear the plea from one poor and needy man (verse 1) who asks, “Teach me Your way, O LORD.”

I will walk in Your truth

“Walking, in the Scripture, takes in the whole of our conversation or conduct: and to walk in anything, intends a fullness of it. For a man to walk in pride, is something more than to be proud: it says, that pride is his way, his element; that he is wholly under the influence of it.” (Jay, cited in Spurgeon)

David is determined and serious about his plea to God to “teach him His way” --He desired to be taught so that he could live a life that is in accordance with God’s truth. David has no taught of pretensions when he make an appeal to God to teach him His way. What he wants is to walk humbly upon God all the days of his life.

Unite my heart to fear Your name

But how he can possibly humbly himself upon God when his heart is in perpetual ambivalence? The answer lies in his prayer, asking God to make his undivided. That way he can walk in God’s truth is to have a heart that is not divided. A divided heart – divided among different loyalties and different deities – could never walk in God’s truth.

“Our minds are apt to be divided between a variety of objects, like trickling streamlets which waste their force in a hundred runnels; our great desire should be to have all our life-floods poured into one channel and to have that channel directed towards the Lord alone.” (Spurgeon)

What David is actually asking for God-- is to make his heart focus only upon God, not to share it to other priorities. To make as his chief purpose is to please and glorify God in everything and in every season of his life.

My Personal Response and Reflection

To truly worship God and glorify His name, we need to ask God to make our whole hearts united in desiring Him.

“Put me together, one heart and mind;
then, undivided, I’ll worship in joyful fear.”

And my prayer is this: pray: “Put me together, Lord, because right now my life is scattered in a thousand directions.” Thanks you Lord!