Praise the Lord for this Friday. We are getting ready for this Memorial Day weekend. Those of you who live in the area, join us on Time Warner Cable channel 4 at 7 PM this evening. Women of the church will gather for a great time of food and fellowship tomorrow at noon at the Church hall. Julia Kellaway, from the Family Life Network, will be the speaker for the event. Our men are preparing and serving a very special meal. We will gather for worship at 8:30 and 11:00 AM at Union Center and at 9:30 AM at Wesley. In America, the Beautiful, it is Memorial Day weekend. We praise the Lord our great nation, the best place on earth to live. May Jesus, the King of kings and the prince of peace, shed His grace and peace on us. May we worship and serve Him with joy and gratitude.

Sunita called from Cyprus yesterday. The Lord is blessing her family in Cyprus. I talked to Micah and Simeon yesterday in Boston. Jessica and Tom are coming home from Philadelphia today for the long weekend. Laureen will also be home for the weekend. We are blessed and grateful. We are getting ready for our Annual Conference of our church that will meet in Syracuse next week. We are blessed to have Bishop Mark Webb as our Bishop. Bishop Webb loves the Lord and loves to serve Him. We are excited about the Kingdom of Jesus, which is Eternal and unshakable.

I was looking at one verse from Psalm 86, “Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name” (Psalm 86:11). Eugene Peterson (MSG) gives us this colorful rendering: “Put me together, one heart and mind; then, undivided, I’ll worship in joyful fear.” I like this because it sounds like the way I often pray: “Put me together, Lord, because right now my life is scattered in a thousand directions.” Most days my heart doesn't seem “undivided,” and it certainly feels like it needs some kind of “uniting." So I like this phrase both ways:

    “Unite my heart to fear your name.”
    "Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”
    The first speaks of my need. The second speaks of my desire. Because my heart is so often divided, I need the Lord to unite it somehow so that I might worship him with nothing held back. That is the situation many of us face. Our hearts are fragmented because we are pulled in so many directions at once.

Sometimes we treat trinkets as if they were treasure. Often we all battle with the narcissist in all of us. A narcissistic person is unable to commit to anything outside of himself. He flits from one relationship to another, from one job to another, from one friendship to another, from one church to another, from one promise to another, never staying in one place long enough to make anything stick. He promises and then makes excuses. He says, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” and then forgets and apologizes later, or maybe he never remembers at all.

The Word of the Lord depicts some men who had undivided hearts, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and like their friend, the daring Daniel. 1 Chronicles 12 describes some warriors who had undivided loyalty. We read about some soldiers who came to David’s aid when he was in Ziklag and later in Hebron. These soldiers from various tribes in Israel realized that even though David was not king over Israel yet, God’s hand was upon him and he was bound to replace Saul sooner or later. We read the list of men from Benjamin, Gad, Manasseh, and so on. Perhaps the most famous are the men of Issachar (1 Chronicles 12:32) who “understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” They are described as "experienced soldiers prepared for battle with every type of weapon, to help David with undivided loyalty" (v. 33.. 38).

This was a great host of trained soldiers who came to David ready to fight. They showed up in full battle gear, with shields, spears, and bows, ready to go to battle at a moment’s notice. That, however, was not their finest quality. There is something even better to be said about them, that they were men of “undivided loyalty.”" Single Mindedness". They were prepared to follow David wherever he led, to join the battle at David's word, and to serve only at his command. Three thousand years after the men of Issachar came to David, we remember them not for their military prowess (which must have been great) but for their hearts.
This brings me back to the beginning, back to Psalm 86:11, “Unite my heart to fear your name” and “Put me together, Lord.” As Spurgeon contemplated this verse, he offered this succinct summary:

A man of divided heart is weak, the man of one object is the man.

That’s why David prayed, “Unite my heart, O Lord.” We, also, should, “O Lord, take the scattered fragments of my heart and unite them so that I may praise you.” Only God can do this, but God can and will do it if we will come to him in humility and sincerity.
These lines from Come, Thou Fount speak to our deepest need:
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 Thy courts above.
If the first two lines describe our need, then the last two lines describe our prayer. May God take our scattered hearts and unite them, seal them by his grace, that we might serve him with joy on earth as one day we will serve him in heaven.
Unite our hearts to fear and honour your name. Amen.

http://youtu.be/imGO5KUEZo4