Welcome to our continuing discussion on the theme ‘The Secret of God’s Presence’ under our topic for this week, “Walk with a Perfect Heart.”
Our next text to explore under this topic is 2 Kings 20:2-5, which says, “Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted (perfect) devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.”
What a childlike simplicity of communication with God. When the Son (Jesus) was about to die, He said, “I have glorified you on earth, I have finished the work which you have given me to do. And now, O Father, glorify yourself in Me” (John 17:4-5). He pleaded His life and work as the grounds for expecting an answer to His prayer. And, Hezekiah, the servant of God, also pleaded, not as a matter of merit, but in the confidence that “God is not unrighteous to forget our work of faith and labour of love” (Hebrews 6:10). He knew that God would remember how he had walked before Him with a perfect heart.
The words first of all suggest to us this thought, the person who walks before God with a perfect heart can know it, it may be a matter of consciousness. Let us look at the testimony Scripture gives of him (2 Kings 18:3-6), “He did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did.” Then follow the different elements of this life that was right in God’s sight. “He trusted in the Lord God of Israel…He clave to the Lord, and he departed not from following Him, but kept his commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with Him.” His life was one of trust and love, of steadfastness and obedience. And the Lord was with him. He was one of the saints of whom we read, “By faith they obtained a good report” (Hebrews 11:39). They had the witness that they were righteous, that they were pleasing to God.
Let us seek to have this blessed consciousness. Paul had it when he wrote, “For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshy wisdom, but in the grace of God, we behaved ourselves” (2 Corinthians 1:12).
John had this consciousness when he said, “Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, we have boldness toward God; and whatever we ask we receive, because we keep His Words, and do the things that are pleasing in His sight” (1 John 3:21-22). If we are to have perfect peace and confidence, if we are to walk in the holy boldness and the blessed glorying of which Scripture speaks, we must know that our heart is perfect with God.
Hezekiah’s prayer suggests a second lesson that the consciousness of a perfect heart gives wonderful power in prayer. Read again the words of his prayer, and notice how distinctly this walk with a perfect heart is his plea. Read again the words just quoted from John, and see how clearly he says that “Because we keep His Word’s we receive what we ask.” It is a heart that does not condemn us, that knows that it is perfect toward God that gives us boldness.
Probably every reader of these lines can testify how painfully, at some time or other, the consciousness of the heart not being perfect with God has hindered confidence and prayer. And, mistaken views as to what the perfect heart means, and as to the danger of elf-righteousness in praying Hezekiah’s prayer, have in very many cases banished all possibility of attaining that boldness and confident assurance of an answer to prayer which John connects with the heart that does not condemn us.
Oh! That we would give up all our prejudices, and learn to take God’s Word as it stands as the only rule of our faith, the only measure of our expectations. Our daily prayers would be a new reminder that God asks the perfect heart. They would be a new occasion of childlike confession as to our walking or not walking with a perfect heart before God, and a new motive to make nothing less the standard of our fellowship with our Father in heaven. How our boldness in God’s presence would be ever clearer. How our consciousness of His acceptance would be brighter. How our humbling thought of our nothingness would be quickened, and our assurance of His strength in our weakness, and His answer to our prayer, become the joy of life.
Oh! The comfort, amid all consciousness of imperfection in attainment, of being able to say, in childlike simplicity, “Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you with a perfect heart.”
By Rev. Eric D. Maefonea
SWIM
