How’s your heart today? Aching with pain? Throbbing with love? Fainting with weakness? Have you been to a spiritual cardiologist lately for a check up? Maybe you have heart problems. Perhaps the chambers of your heart are working at cross purposes. Your physical heart has four rooms/chambers: two upper chambers called the atria and two lower chambers called the ventricles with a left and a right side for both. Each chamber is like a separate room with doors that let blood in and out. As well, there is a wall called the septum that divides the right from the left. If one of those chambers is out of whack or if one of the doors/valves is malfunctioning, you’ve got problems!!

Here is a clip from one of David’s prayers:

Spiritually we think we can divvy up our interests and aspirations into rooms and chambers. We think we can walk out of one chamber and close the door behind us and enter into another chamber. Through the week we can spend a lot of time in the secular chamber of our heart – pursuing with undivided attention our education and careers. Maybe late at night someone thinks they can enter into the dark chamber for an hour or two and spend time visiting pornographic websites or engaging in hot-talk in chat rooms or on the phone. When the sessions are over, they think they can leave that chamber, close the door and enter into the God chamber of their life – where they can sing hymns, listen to sermons, pray and read their Bibles.

Famous politicians and some high flying televangelists have tried to compartmentalize their lives into separate, unconnected chambers, thinking that what they do in the dark is not connected to their life in the light or in the public eye. Trying to live a compartmentalized life catches up with people and the effects are often disastrous. A divided heart with chambers working at cross-purposes and valves that are not functioning can be a killer – physically but in a spiritual sense as well.

David had his times when his heart was divided and compartmentalized and he suffered big time. But in Psalm 86 his earnest prayer is – unite my heart to fear Thy Name! He knew he could not survive for the Lord if his heart was not united. A thriving Christian is one whose heart is united and fully synchronized to one spiritual purpose and desire – to please and honor the Lord.

If I am trying to compartmentalize my life into a financial chamber, a hobby and fun room, a career section and spiritual chamber, I will be a very weak Christian. If I want to have a strong pulse for the Lord, then there can be no sealed off chambers or closed doors in my life. The flow-through must be unobstructed and all parts of my heart must be unified in the overall purpose of my life.

Are you operating with a single heart today as a believer? Or are there obstructions and distractions in your life that are hindering you in your life of love and devotion for the Lord Jesus Christ? Can you name and identify that obstruction in the presence of the Lord today as you pray? “Lord, the division and distraction in my heart lately has been caused by _________. Unite my heart today to fear Thy Name.”