WHOLE-HEARTED: A 5-Day Journey Exploring the Essential Center for MissionSample

When King David passes the royal baton to his son Solomon (1 Kings 2:1–4), he describes what kind of missional leader God is looking for: someone who will “walk before me in truth and faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul” (a literal translation of verse 4). “Walk” is a key biblical verb for describing a person’s life; it refers to the entirety of one’s existence, the direction in which that life is oriented, resulting in particular behaviors and attitudes. That was Solomon’s starting point—a life (heart and soul) that was whole (characterized by truth and faithfulness) and directed toward or aligned with the Lord (walking before him).

The tragedy of Solomon’s story is that his good starting point was lost from sight by the time he got to the end of his journey. The writer of 1 Kings tells us that Solomon’s many wives turned his heart away from the Lord and toward their idols. Solomon’s affection for these women outweighed his love for the Lord, so he compromised, trying to mix the worship of Yahweh with devotion to other gods. The result was tragic: “his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father” (11:4, KJV). Other versions express it this way: “his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God” (NIV) or he was “not completely faithful to the Lord his God” (NLT). The Hebrew says, "he did not have a heart of peace with the Lord his God.” This is a picture of someone whose heart is fractured, divided, and compartmentalized (he had a “Yahweh box” that he kept alongside the “Ba’al box”). In contrast, a “heart of peace” is an undivided existence, a life of integrity, lived in a single direction, propelled by a singular loyalty.

Imagine the difference between Solomon’s and David’s hearts by reflecting on two kinds of bed coverings. Picture a quilt made up of hundreds of small pieces of fabric. Each of those seams is a potential weakness, a place where pressure can pull apart the stitching. That was Solomon’s heart, with each little compromise adding one more weakness to the fabric of his life. Each little loyalty that chipped away at his commitment to the Lord created a fissure or fault line in his soul. Now picture a tightly woven blanket like the ones you can buy in the artisan markets of Mexico or the Andes region. They are made of a single material, without seams; they are heavy, sturdy, and virtually indestructible. That is an image of a “heart of peace” (11:4) and of a person who “walks before the Lord in truth and faithfulness with all their heart and all their soul” (2:4). Their existence is oriented in a single direction and moved by a singular commitment, giving their life strength and integrity.

This is the essential, fundamental characteristic of a missional follower of Jesus: an undivided heart, fully and faithfully belonging to the Lord, unweakened by competing loyalties, and completely aligned with God’s character and purposes.