With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.
“All’s well that ends well.” This cliché is true, and nowhere is it more important to end well than in your relationship with God. The redeemed in heaven had widely differing spiritual experiences while they lived on earth. Some were saved so young they cannot even remember being converted, while others received saving faith just moments before death. Of those who knew God over many years, some made steady soul-progress with good consistency, while others had grievous moral lapses, like David, only to recover by God’s grace. Many mere professors of faith do not finish well, as they return to their sins and ultimately to perdition. All true believers, in contrast, persevere to the end, and the apostasy they suffer is only partial and temporary. They all end well. As the 1689 LBCF puts it, in spite of all the grievous sins they may actually commit, “yet they shall renew their repentance and be preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end” (XVII.3).
This is not to denigrate the importance of a good beginning. Indeed, the church’s mere hypocrites who prove to be apostates fall short of heaven because, among other reasons, they failed to be soundly converted. They were but “almost Christians,” and not so as a matter of heart reality.
This verse of Psalm 119 calls us to examine our beginning as Christians, and to pray for our ending as Christians. If you discover in this life that the foundation of your spiritual experience is all wrong, you have the opportunity for recovery. On the other hand, true believers can relate to the psalmist’s testimony, and we learn from this verse that we may plead the beginning of God’s grace in us as a basis for asking and expecting His persevering grace also. This seems to be the way the two lines of the couplet are related to each other.
TESTIMONY OF A GOOD BEGINNING
“With my whole heart have I sought thee.” This was David’s testimony to the Lord in prayer, and a good and proper one, for it was true. This is the universal experience of all true believers, because once God regenerates a soul, that person begins to seek Him with their whole heart—that is, in sincerity. The promise of
salvation is made only to such whole-hearted seekers (Psa 119.2; Deut 4.29; Jer 29.13). Their seeking is evidence of God’s working in them already, as none seek God otherwise (Rom 3.11).
Thus we see that this testimony in prayer to the Lord is not boasting, nor a pleading of merit, because it is presented humbly with a presupposition of God’s prevenient grace in an elect sinner. “We [who now believe] love Him because He first [before we believed] loved us” (1 John 4.19), and the evidence of His special love is His gracious salvation of our souls in particular.
In language we now consider quaint, Puritan Thomas Manton observed that seeking God with your whole heart includes three things: “sincerity of aims, integrity of parts, and uniformity of endeavors,” and this is a profound and useful statement for self-examination.
Sincerity of aims. Many seem to seek God, but they are really only seeking blessings from God rather than God Himself. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, crowds followed Him so they might enjoy a free lunch, not so that they could have Him and His fellowship (John 6.26). Likewise today. Countless nominal Christians there are who like the benefits they think will accrue to them on account of their profession, but they do not savor intimacy with God and His Son Jesus. These hypocrites have been promised many blessings by false teachers if only they would make a decision to follow Jesus, including health, wealth, improved relationships, and general success in life. Recall Joel Osteen’s best-selling book: “Your Best Life Now.” The title itself is spiritually incriminating. “If there be anything sought from God more than God, or not for God, we do not seek Him with the whole heart, but only for other uses” (Manton). We also have not yet repented of idolatry, worshiping the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.
Integrity of parts. The “heart” is a biblical metaphor for a man’s soul, the invisible part, including one’s mind, affections, will. “Whole-hearted seeking” is a pursuit of knowing God that engages every part of these invisible faculties. It is not merely an intellectual activity, as if theology existed for idle speculation. Nor is it the attainment of an emotional experience devoid of rational truth.
No, but when the mind apprehends the being of God as He really is, and the heart is truly inflamed with love for Him, then the will necessarily follows in this pursuit, choosing the Lord and His will for one’s portion. Indeed, then even the physical members of the body become instruments of righteousness as we present them to God for service. Any spiritual experience that substantially leaves out any part of the man is fundamentally defective; it is not a whole-hearted seeking of God.
Uniformity of endeavors. Seeking like this has a measure of consistency and staying power to it, more hardy than the typical new year resolution. It is not an emotional “flash in the pan.” It does not exist merely in times of prosperity, but also under persecution. Because it springs from a living and deeply-rooted faith, it issues in fruit to the glory of God. This seeking associated with salvation turns out to be public, overcoming a fundamental fear of man, and it is also private, engaging the seeker in secret, where no eye sees but the Lord only.
Every true Christian can honestly testify that grace has worked in his life to produce such a whole-hearted seeking of God, and this, then, becomes a basis of appeal for further grace from God. Have you really sought the Lord with your whole heart?
PRAYER FOR A FAITHFUL ENDING
“O let me not wander from thy commandments!” While so full of the Holy Spirit that the psalmist was writing inspired Scripture, he confesses his real vulnerability to wandering from the path of obedience to God. Only those with the testimony of the first line feel acutely the genuine concern of the second, and the more mature a believer, the better attuned he is to the real possibility of his fall into all kinds of sins, even the most heinous. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10.12).
The saint knows he is not only converted by grace, but also preserved by grace. This felt dependence upon God’s grace motivates unto prayer for it.
The language suggests that our spiritual wandering is inevitable except God prevent it, and our recovery is also completely dependent upon the Savior. The address to God is in a bold imperative: [You, Lord],—do not let wander,” etc. Another translation renders it, “Do not allow me to stray.” The foolish sheep confesses his need of a faithful and strong Shepherd. Augustine said, “Lord, I can go astray by myself, but I cannot come back by myself.”
Apostasy from the person of God is also here equated with departure from the commandments of God. There is no fellowship with God except the man maintain a reverent and submissive heart to God’s will. “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3.3; cf. John 14.21; 15.9-10).
Does this not instruct us in what should be a major component of our prayers to God? Does this desperate plea or something like it ever pass your lips? This is what Jesus taught His disciples to pray, in substance, by petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, especially “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one,” even Satan who would every day frighten and seduce every Christian from doing God’s will. Thinking we can live the Christian life without the divine help which only comes through prayer is the highest presumption and precedes a terrible fall from our normal experience of grace. Thus the Lord chastens His foolish children and cures them of self-confidence, and thus He exposes mere hypocrites who start and end with a form of religion that is only the product of their own natural energy.
Let us tonight, at the beginning of 2007, be diligent to make sure we have begun well spiritually, and let us also confess our utter dependence on God’s grace to finish well, not only through the end of this year, but the end of our lives, until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil 1.6). Amen.
All Rights Reserved.