"As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a loyal heart and with a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever.
(1Ch 28:9)
A Father speaking to a son can be a wonderful thing to eavesdrop on… and here we get a little dose of divine eavesdropping! David’s exhortation to his son Solomon is simple; know the Lord, and serve the Lord. It is the details of HOW David tells Solomon to serve the Lord that caught my attention today, and so that is what we will focus on.
2 things: David says serve the Lord with a LOYAL HEART and a WILLING MIND. I really like that. The heart and the mind, the emotion and the intellect are involved in our service to the Lord, and the demands on each are different.
Let’s start with the heart. David tells Solomon that as far as his heart is concerned, the most important thing is service to the Lord is LOYALTY. The word translated Loyalty here literally means a complete or undivided heart. Our emotions can pull our hearts all over the place; we can love the Lord one minute and be pulled in another direction altogether the next. David tells us that it is the completely undivided heart, the LOYAL heart that will produce real service to the Lord. The loyal heart results in service that is unaffected by our present circumstances; in good and in bad, for richer or pourer… It's ABSOLUTE COMMITMENT. In our world today, loyalty is a rare thing; some people even say that “everyone has a price”. With the Lord, loyalty is everything. He is always loyal, forever faithful… He deserves the same from us.
The mind... David says that the characteristic most important to service concerning the mind is WILLINGNESS. The word translated WILLING literally means “to take pleasure in”. David says the most important thing concerning our thoughts about serving Him is that we would TAKE PLEASURE IN IT. That we would DELIGHT in doing the work of the Lord, not seeing it as a burden, but as a JOY. We may love some types of service, but recoil at the thought of others… they are just too much, or going too far! When our focus is on the wonderful Lord we are serving, and not the potential difficulties of the work, then that service can be a joy rather than a drag. What we need is a willingness to work, because we LOVE THE LORD.
So, with LOYAL HEARTS and WILLING MIND let’s joyfully serve our king today!
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