Unite My Heart

So, I'm reading through the Psalms and I come across this interesting verse.

Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. (Psa 86:11)

Okay, perhaps just interesting to me.

I find it interesting in contrast to the popular view these days that we cannot know the truth. We can only have our opinions. David wrote this psalm and he says, "Teach me Your way, O LORD." I'm waiting for today's smarter folk who will correct David. "You can't know His way; you can only have your own hunches." David believed he could know and he could know from the LORD.

I find it interesting to contrast David's view of truth with today's cultural view. Truth is relative. It's personal. It's not objective. But David says, "I will walk in Your truth," as if God's truth is something knowable and valuable and valid, and His truth tells us how to live.

What really caught my attention, though, was that last phrase. I've thought often about the concept of "the fear of the Lord." Are we supposed to fear God or not? Lots of genuine believers say, "No!" They say it's not fear, but "reverential awe." Some translations even substitute that phrase or a similar one for "fear" in these places. But the word in the originals, both Old Testament and New, don't leave room for that. They refer to actual fear. So it wasn't that which caught my attention. It was the "unite my heart" phrase. James warns against being "double-minded" (James 1:8). David agrees. David prays that God would gather together the strands of his heart -- his thoughts and emotions, his desires and fears, his plans and propensities -- into one stream: the fear of the Lord. David asks to have one uniting consideration in life, and that's the fear of God. "Tie together all the loose ends of my heart -- the wayward parts, the ragtag pieces flapping in the breezes of life -- and give them the singular focus of fearing You." Because David likely knew, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Psa 111:10). He certainly knew, "The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever" (Psa 19:9). He definitely knew that the lack of the fear of God was a problem (Psa 36:1).

Is that your prayer? I want to make it mine. "Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name." Because sometimes it's easy to get other things in my heart distracting me from the right fear of God, cutting me off from Him. I don't need those kinds of problems.