As Christians, nothing is more important than the heart. The biblical heart refers to the intellectual part of our being, that is, the mind. It involves, not only our thinking, but our emotions and dispositions as well. It determines our level of commitment to God and how loyal we are to Him. When it comes to our hearts, God wants all of it. He wants His people to serve Him wholeheartedly.
Psalm 119:2 (ESV)
2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart.
Giving God anything less than our whole heart will eventually lead to partial obedience, which, in reality, is not obedience at all. Do you remember when Saul demonstrated partial obedience? Through Samuel, the Lord told Saul to devote the Amalekites to destruction. No one was to be spared (1 Samuel 15:1-3). Instead of doing what he was told, Saul spared Agag, the king of the Amalekites, and the best of the livestock (ver. 9).
This angered God and he told Samuel that Saul had not performed his commandments (ver. 11). Saul justified his actions by saying that the livestock was spared so that they could be sacrificed to God. This led to Samuel’s famous statement, “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams” (ver. 22).
This shows us how important complete obedience is to God. The reason He wants total obedience, rather than partial, is because of what it says about our hearts. To obey God partially is to show that we are not serving Him wholeheartedly, and God will not tolerate that. It is interesting what angered the Lord when Solomon married foreign women, allowing them to lead him into idolatry. While God was angered by the disobedience and idolatry of Solomon, notice the stated cause of His anger.
1 Kings 11:9 (ESV)
9 And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.
God knows that the sin we commit is only the outward demonstration of the real problem; that problem being a heart that is less than wholly committed to Him. If you seek God with your whole heart, you will live the way He wants you to live. The Psalmist equated seeking God with our whole heart to keeping His testimonies, and he accentuated this in the following verses:
Psalm 119:2-5 (ESV)
2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, 3 who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways! 4 You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. 5 Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
Let us give God our whole heart. He deserves nothing less than this. More importantly, He will not accept anything less than that. When God has our hearts completely, we will be loyal to Him in all things. It does not mean we will not stumble from time to time, for we all sin and fall short of His glory (Romans 3:23). However, when we sin, we will sincerely regret it (that is called repentance), and beg His forgiveness (Acts 8:22; 1 John 1:9), and then we will continue to walk in His ways because we are completely devoted to Him. That is the heart of the matter.
As you wind down for the night, think about these things.