September 27

Read: I Chronicles 28:9-10

Know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind (I Chronicles 28:9).

Serve God With A Perfect Heart

No man is ever confronted by God with higher demands than these — but no Christian is permitted to live on a lower level. This charge was given by David to his son Solomon as he ascended the throne of Israel and prepared to build the Temple. But in its widest application it is the divine charge to every human being who ascends the throne of life and is thus responsible to make himself “the temple of the living God.”

If we have been blessed with godly parents, we are to seek to know God at least as well as they knew Him. If we had no help from a Christian home, we are responsible to know the God of a spiritual father or mother. We who know the Lord stand on the shoulders of some man or woman of God who went before us.

Our text is Old Testament teaching but it is a clear insight into the nature of all true religion. Every man who knows God is charged to “serve him with a perfect heart.” Others translate it “an undivided heart,” and “a whole heart.” All are accurate and all describe the kind of life that is envisioned and made possible today by the experience of entire sanctification.

This service to God is to be the service of a willing mind. In verse 8, David charged the leaders of Israel: “Seek out all the commandments of Jehovah” (A.R.V.). It is not enough to do God’s will only as far as we now know it; we must ever be seeking for deeper insight into it.

Open my eyes, that I may see Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me; Place in my hands the wonderful key That shall unclasp, and set me free.

— Wesleyan Methodist Hymnal