When we first became Christians, my wife Pam and I attended a non-denominational Bible study that took place in an Episcopal Church on Monday evenings. It was called, oddly enough, The Monday Night Bible Study. Pretty catchy, right? I had been exposed to Bible teaching for most of my life but I had never been to one like this! The teacher was Keith Roland, a college student our age. Everyone in the class was either in high school or college. Keith was a gifted teacher. We studied the text together and prayed together and did ministry together, praying for healing, asking God to meet the practical needs that people had. It was a wide open time with God and we were seeing Him act in exciting ways. I still look back on that time in wonder, thinking about the amazing things God did during those evening hours. We weren’t just learning Bible verses, we were learning practical ways to live out biblical truth. Today, let’s keep that in mind as we listen to a short passage from Psalm 86: 

Teach me Your way, LORD, and I will live by Your truth. Give me an undivided mind to fear Your name. I will praise You with all my heart, Lord my God, and will honor Your name forever. (Psa 86:11-12)

In this passage the psalmist tells us how we can live our lives in line with God and His word. The psalmist cries, “Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will live by your truth.” You and I cannot live God’s way unless He teaches us His way. We can’t find it on our own and no teacher, no matter how good he is, can help if God doesn’t teach us. Then the psalmist says, “Give me an undivided mind to fear Your Name.” Some translations say, “Give me an undivided heart.” Then he says, “I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart.” Notice the emphasis: “an undivided heart,” and “with all my heart.” It’s so important that we don’t have divided hearts! God wants our hearts to be totally yielded to Him. You may have heard the old saying, “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket,” but in today’s passage we’re encouraged to put all our eggs in God's basket. He’s our only option—there can be no Plan B! I’ll let you in on a mystery that I have discovered over the years: the further we go in God the fewer the options He makes available to us. The way becomes narrower and narrower until ultimately we must find our total satisfaction in Him. It’s not God plus something else; it’s God all by Himself. That’s an undivided heart. We don’t look anywhere else—we only look to God for our lives, our satisfaction, and our peace.

Today, let’s agree to ask God to teach us His way. God, please give us undivided hearts! And when our hearts are undivided…it’s very Good News!