Focus: All Your Heart

Text: Dt.6:5

"And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with ALL thine HEART, and with ALL thy SOUL, and with ALL thy MIGHT."

The heart is at the center of the human personality, and according to Solomon, all the issues of life flow from there.

For a Jew, the heart is the sphere of reason and reality. A man is not real who is not acting from the heart. Good and bad are rooted in, and spring forth from the heart. So one can be really good or really bad.

Loving or serving God must not be artificial, cosmetic or plastic. It should be real, not fake or sham.

God is claiming the whole heart, nothing less. What is the point of loving God if the whole heart or being is not involved?

It is said of Jehu that he "took NO HEED to walk in the law of the LORD God of Israel with ALL his heart…" (2Kgs.10:31). But of Josiah, we read, "And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the LORD with ALL his heart, and with ALL his soul, and with ALL his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him" (2Kgs.23:25). That is indeed radical and total devotion to the Lord, and simply incomparable and unprecedented.

"All your heart" means perfect (2Kgs.20:3), one heart (1Chron.12:38), not a double heart (1Chron.12:33), not a divided heart (Hos.10:2), singleness of heart (Act.2:46), true heart (Heb.10:22), and pure heart (Mt.5:8; 1Tim.1:5; 2Tim.2:22; 1Pet.1:22). Furthermore, it implies a heart that is upright, right, understanding, tender, free, humble, loyal, and indeed a heart of integrity (1Kgs.3:6,9; 9:4; 2Kgs.22:19; 2Chron.29:31; Rom.6:17).

When we talk of the heart, we are not talking of the physical, but of what Peter calls "the hidden man of the heart" (1Pet.3:4).

I pray none of us will be like Amaziah who "did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, but NOT with a PERFECT heart" - 2Chron.25:2), and I also pray for God to empower us with grace to doing his will from the heart as servants of Christ - Eph.6:6. Amen.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter