Daily Butter 11/27: Devotion

My little addition to Our Daily Bread (11/27/11):

    Teach me Your way, LORD,
    and I will live by Your truth.
    Give me an undivided mind to fear Your name.

    (Psalm 86:11 HCSB)

“Devotion” is an English word that gets tossed around so much in Christendom that it seems to have lost any meaning. Stemming from the same root as “devoted” and “devout,” it has always bothered me that we talk about “doing our devotions” – a devotion is a commitment you have not an action you do. But even then, reading of Our Daily Bread’s ”daily devotional thoughts” becomes “having our devotions.” It’s killing the word and it just makes the hair on my neck bristle. If you’re “devoted” then it should be singular. Yes, I understand that I am devoted to my wife, devoted to my son, devoted to my local church, and devoted to serving people in my jobs, but I strive to have those simply be facets (fruit if you will) of my singular devotion to my Lord. (Eph 5:25; 1 Tim 5:8; Heb 10:24-25; Col 3:23-24) But enough of my angst at the death of one word in the ever-changing American English language…

Reading through this Psalm, the thought of an “undivided mind” (or heart [NIV]) is so appealing. When wrestling with all the “wish I could”s, the “gotta do”s, the “wanna do”s, the “oughta do”s, and the “but I can’t”s, can someone really have a singular focus? It reminds me also of Paul’s expression of frustration with the internal battle: “For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.” (Romans 7:15 HCSB) When he wrote this Psalm, David knew these battles. From the record of his life in Scripture we know he sometimes failed miserably and sometimes excelled brilliantly. This verse shows that he came to understand that it’s first and foremost something we CANNOT do ourselves, but something we MUST seek to be taught and ask to be given.

- Andy Jentes