nally drove off with my packed suitcase in the car and me running
behind, shouting, “Wait! Wait! I’ve changed my mind!”
God longs for us to be steady and secure in our thought lives, in
our emotions, in our actions, and in our choices. This way of think-
ing and living comes easier and more naturally for some of us than
for others. For this reason the Lord teaches us to seek him and peti-
tion him for “an undivided heart.” This is a prayer that he desires to
answer in every life, and his answer to this petition in every life can
change it.
When David asked the Lord to grant him an undivided heart, he
knew what benefit he was requesting. He was asking for the kind of
heart and mind and personality that would reverence God’s charac-
ter and adhere to God’s way of doing things.
An undivided heart is not a heart that turns this way and that,
choosing one thing one minute and another thing the next. A per-
son with an undivided heart has a heart like God’s, a heart that is
righteous and balanced and whole and holy. One of the most steady,
balanced, and spiritually grounded people I ever knew was my
mother-in-law, Marjorie Cloninger. I knew her all of my life and had
been married to her son for well over twenty years at the time of her
death, spending much of that time in her home. Never once in all
that time did I see her faith waver or her sense of humor fail. Her
secret? Marjie had an undivided heart that grew out of a life of
prayer.
Because I long to live as Marjorie did, I often pray the words of
Psalm 86:11. It is a prayer that I need to have answered every single
day.
Oh, Father, you know how easily I am tipped off center. You know
how easily I can become distracted and unfocused. I desire to be like62 CLAIRECLONINGER