OCTOBER 14

SINGLENESS OF HEART

“And they continued daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.” (Acts 2:26)

Divided affections will destroy your gladness. But there is something else to be noted here and that is the linking together of the temple and eating bread in the house, at home. This was not as two separate lives, but daily living in singleness of heart. Some would call the temple part, spiritual; and having dinner at home, secular. But such is not making a contrast, it is making confusion. When there is singleness of heart all the way, twenty-four hours a day, both the temple worship and the dinner meal at home are one continuous life before the Lord, lived in gladness. I dare say, I have seen some meals which were far more “spiritual” than some money-raising, carnal entertaining sessions in the temple. But where there is singleness of heart, with Christ pre-eminent in all we do and say, there is no division of spiritual and secular, it is all one life, HIS.

One can be just as spiritual digging ditches, mowing the lawn, washing clothes, as they are in singing His praises in the temple. It is a state of being, a condition of the heart, which is single to God at all times.

“For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation (behaviour) in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.” (2 Cor. 1:12).

What a testimony of the conscience, to know that one’s behaviour in the world is not a masquerade, not trying to appear spiritual, nor appear worldly sophisticated, but in godly sincerity and singleness of heart, living before the world, or before other Christians, the grace of God to control one’s behaviour all the way. A consistent expression of HIS LIFE, because “whatsoever ye do, ye do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.” (Col. 3:23). The message is clear, we desire only to exalt Him.

Ray Prinzing