“Seeking God with a Whole Heart: a Fact, an Argument, and the Prayer”

Psalm 119:10  With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments!

[By a mistake, we skipped verse 10 (Tuesday’s verse).]

The Psalmist in this verse presents before God’s notice a fact.  He then bases an argument upon this fact, and then turns the fact and argument into a prayer.

The fact is that he has sought God with his whole heart.  What is it to seek God?  It is an earnest and diligent endeavor to find God in certain definite characters for certain definite purposes.  When we search we find that God is our sovereign, Father, and Friend who guides us by His Word and His Holy Spirit.

   How should we seek God?  We should seek Him with the whole heart personally.  Men sometimes profess to seek God, when they are but seeking their own interests (John 6:26).

As for the Argumentative value of the fact, the Psalmist does not offer it boastfully—the plea goes side by side with confessions of unworthiness.  Talking today with Ervin Romero and wife Kaitlin, we spoke of those in the public eye in the Christian world who have remained influential—they have stayed humble.  They did not think of themselves more highly than they ought to think.

The prayer is founded on our proneness to wander.  Robbie Robinson was a young man with many struggles.  He wrote "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love.  Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for they courts above."  Robinson's struggles even after writing Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing did not unfortunately end well. The saint’s sensibility of this proneness to wander is evident also.  The more we desire to seek God, and are on the way to find Him, the keener will be our sensibility of error.  The saint’s conviction of God’s ability to keep him from wandering is paramount.  I warned a young man who accepted Christ as His Lord and Savior nearly two weeks back that there would be opposition from Satan.  I told him to call when under stress and he indeed has.  The enormity of stress upon him is at times overwhelming.  Tonight at dinner I told him that all that is happening to him since receiving Christ is to me a great confirmation that he really “meant business” with the Lord when he accepted Christ.  He wants to seek God with a whole heart, and not wander from the LORD’s commandments.  May we all seek to do that.