Wholeheartedly His
Wholeheartedly His
The Undivided Heart Toward Him
Help us, oh Lord our God, for we rely on You
Speaker: Thomas Garvin Church: Life & Truth Missions Date: 6th September 2026
Main texts: 2 Chronicles 16:9; 2 Chronicles 14–16; 1 Kings 15:3; 2 Samuel 11–12; Numbers 12 (ESV, with the King James used for the Strong's word study)
Before You Listen
Here is a verse that sounds, at first, like a wonderful promise. "For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support..." God is searching the world, looking for someone to bless.
Stop there and you can build a health-and-wealth message out of it. But you can't stop reading God's Word in the middle of a sentence. Read the rest and everything changes: "...to those whose heart is blameless toward him."
This teaching walks through the rise and tragic drift of King Asa of Judah, a great reformer who started out relying wholly on God and ended his life hardened and unrepentant. Along the way we find out what that word "blameless" really means, why David is the man God holds up as the measure, and what God is actually searching the earth for. It isn't a formula. It's an undivided heart.
Press play and open your Bible.
After You've Listened — Recap & Application
The half-sentence trap
2 Chronicles 16:9 begins, "For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support..." Left there, it's a prosperity preacher's dream. God combing the planet for people to prosper. But the sentence finishes, "...to those whose heart is blameless toward him." And the verse doesn't even stop being uncomfortable there, because it goes on: "You have done foolishly in this. From now on you will have wars." This is a rebuke, not a blessing. So the whole thing turns on that one word, blameless.
"Blameless" is not "sinless"
The ESV says blameless. The King James says perfect. And "perfect toward him" would rule out every one of us. But the King James is where Strong's Concordance is indexed, so we can go back to the original. The Hebrew is shalem (Strong's H8003), from the same root as shalom. It does not mean sinless, flawless, or without a mistake. It means whole, complete, undivided, at peace with God. Read it that way and the verse says something different: God is searching for the heart that is entirely His, not half His.
David: flawed, yet whole
When Scripture wants to describe a whole heart, it keeps pointing to one man, and it's not the one you'd expect. Abijah's heart "was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father" (1 Kings 15:3). Solomon's heart "was not wholly true... as was the heart of David his father" (1 Kings 11:4). Over and over, David is the measure.
And David was an adulterer and a murderer. He took another man's wife, then had the man killed to cover it. If "blameless" meant flawless, David is the last name you'd write down. So what made him different? When Nathan confronted him, David didn't defend himself. He was broken. He wept, he repented, he was cut to the heart that he had offended God. His heart belonged wholly to the Lord, so reproof crushed him rather than hardening him. Hold onto that, because it's the whole point.
Asa the reformer
Asa was the fifth generation from David and the third king of Judah after the kingdom split into north (Israel) and south (Judah). He inherited a land that had drifted far into idolatry over the generations, the high places, the Asherah poles, the detestable practices God had warned about from the beginning. And Asa cleaned house. He tore it all down. He even removed his own grandmother from being queen mother because she had made an idol. This was a man wholly set on God.
Then the test came. An army a million strong came up out of Ethiopia (Greater Egypt). Asa went out to meet it and prayed, "O LORD, there is none like you to help... we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude" (2 Chronicles 14:11). We rely on you. That is an undivided heart talking, and God routed the enemy completely. Afterward the prophet Azariah told him plainly, "The LORD is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you" (15:2). Not the one-sided comfort we're used to hearing, but a warning. And Asa, to his credit, responded with even more reform.
The drift
But it didn't end there, which is why most of us have never heard of him. Thirty-six years into his reign, comfortable and secure after decades of peace, another threat came. Baasha, king of Israel in the north, began building a fortress to blockade Judah. And this time Asa did not cry out, "Lord, I rely on you." He took silver and gold out of the house of the LORD, the temple he had once given to, and sent it to the pagan king of Aram (Syria) to buy an alliance.
And here's the trap: it worked. Baasha withdrew, the border was secured. There's a dangerous idea in Christian circles that if a thing works, it must have been God's will. It wasn't. Good times make weak men, and thirty-six years of comfort had made Asa self-reliant and arrogant.
The reproof, and the difference
Then Hanani the seer came. "Because you have relied on the king of Syria, and did not rely on the LORD your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you" (16:7). You missed a greater victory God was ready to give you. And then the verse we started with, in its proper context: God's eyes searching for the whole heart. "You have done foolishly in this."
This is the moment that reveals everything. Asa had just done what David did, sinned, and been confronted by a prophet. But where David was broken, Asa was enraged. He put Hanani in the stocks and inflicted cruelties on some of the people (16:10). Same reproof, opposite heart. And it didn't stop. Years later, diseased in his feet, "even in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but sought help from physicians" (16:12). The man who once said "there is none like you to help" now looked everywhere but up. He never repented. He hardened his heart to the end.
A word on humility (Moses)
There's a caution here for the genuinely humble too. The most humble man on earth, Scripture says, was Moses (Numbers 12). When his brother and sister turned on him and challenged his calling, Moses didn't fight his corner, he was too humble for that. And God stepped in and defended him Himself. So if someone tries to twist you off the good thing God has called you to, set your heart on the Lord and don't worry. God will take up your cause. An undivided heart receives real correction, but it doesn't have to defend itself against every accusation. That's God's job.
The Bottom Line
This is what the Lord is searching the earth for. Not the loudest faith, not the biggest offering, not the person who has never fallen. An undivided heart. And there is no formula for it, which is the hard part, because the moment you teach it, we all want to turn it into a checklist. Do this and this and this. It doesn't work like that.
It's the whole heart that seeks the Lord and wants to please Him only. The same person on Sunday as on Monday. And the truest test of it isn't whether you fall, it's what happens when you're reproved. Do you soften, like David, or harden, like Asa? Guard your heart. Keep it whole. And when correction comes, and it will, fall on your knees rather than raise your fists. That's the heart God's eyes are looking for.
Reflection Questions
- When someone reproves me, a friend, a brother, a stranger, what comes out first? Sorrow, or anger?
- Asa relied wholly on God when he had nothing, and on himself once he had everything. Has comfort made me self-reliant?
- "Blameless" means whole, not sinless. Is there an area of my life I've quietly kept back from God, is my heart divided?
- Am I the same person on Sunday as I am on Monday?
- Asa's plan "worked," but it wasn't God's will. Where have I read success as proof that I did the right thing?