Purity of heart is to will one thing

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

May I charge you foremost to remember that we were made for God?

Enter into prayer with me, please: 

Father in heaven, what is man without you! 

What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be,

but a chipped fragment if he does not know you? 

What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world,

but a half-finished work if he does not know you:

you the One, who is one thing and who is all!1

Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, and that one thing must be to know God!  Keeping our hearts pure is bound up in seeking to know God—I shall be so bold as to say they are inextricably linked.  I am drawn again and again back to Jesus’ words to his beloved disciples,

              ”Abide in Me, and I in you.”

How do we abide in Jesus?  We draw near to God, because then he draws near to us.² We choose to go to him, and let him come to us.

We desire not just to intimately know him, but also to be known by him, earnestly seeking him.  We treasure his words—our blessed sacred Scriptures, with the sentiment of a wartime widow holding to her heart the last letter written by her fallen husband.  We spend time learning to pray.

Ah, abiding in him.  Being filled with his Spirit is the highest attainment of the life of full abiding, and it produces power for living a godly life. May it be so with us.  As Jesus looked at his men and then gestured toward the vines, heavy with clinging bunches of grapes, he said to them, he said to you and to me-

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”4 As the union of the branch with the vine is one of growth, never-ceasing growth and increase, so our abiding in Christ is a life process in which the Divine life takes ever fuller and more complete possession of us.3 

Teach us to pray, dear Lord. 

The position of my body often cues my heart to take its right position before God, and so I take to my knees.

“Father in Heaven, enable our hearts to will one thing—to know you.

So may you give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing;

To the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding;

To the will, purity that wills only one thing.

In prosperity may you grant perseverance to will one thing;

amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing;

in suffering, patience to will one thing.

O, you who give both the beginning and the completion,

May you early, at the dawn of day,

Give to the young person the resolution to will one thing.

As the day wanes, may you give to the old person a renewed remembrance of their first resolution,

that the first may be like the last,

the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing.”1

I wish to abide in you.  I long to have purity in heart. 

“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

      Cleanse your hands, you sinners;

            and purify your hearts you double-minded.” James 4.7

And now, Lord God, give us the courageous will to remain in you, that we might grasp and live out the purity of a heart knit with yours.  Amen.