Psalm 86:11
Confirmation of Brenton Krivos
May 23, 2004
 
Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided 
heart…(NIV)
 
“Teach me your ways, O Lord.” If there’s one thing that we’ve been doing here for the 
past three years, it’s teaching you God’s ways. In fact, we could really say that we’ve 
been doing that for the past 14 years—ever since you were born and your parents brought 
you to be baptized. Even when you were very little, your parents taught you what to do 
and what not to do. They taught you to obey them. They taught you not to take toys from 
other kids, but instead to share. They taught you to fold your hands and pray before a 
meal. And they taught you that these were not merely their ways—not merely Mom and 
Dad’s ways—but that they were God’s ways. 
	Your Sunday school teachers taught you God’s ways when they taught you the 
Seventh Commandment—“you shall not steal.” They taught you God’s ways when they 
taught you that you could go against God’s ways, that you could sin just by the things 
that you say—for they taught you that in the Eighth Commandment God says “You shall 
not give false testimony against your neighbor.”
	And in catechism class the past three years I’ve taught you God’s ways. I’ve 
taught you that God’s way is to love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all 
your mind and with all your heart. (Remember that last word—“heart”—because we’re 
going to come back to it in a moment.) In addition, I’ve taught you things about God, 
terms and doctrines that many of us here today have unfortunately long since forgotten. 
You’ve learned about sins of commission and sins of omission. You’ve learned about 
mirrors, curbs, and guides. You’ve learned about prophets, priests, and kings. You’ve 
learned about justification, sanctification, Christ’s humiliation, Christ’s exaltation, and 
maybe some other –“ations” that don’t come to mind right now.
	You’ve learned God’s ways so well that if this morning’s examination in Bible 
class had taken the form of Bible Jeopardy and the entire Bible class had been invited to 
play along, I dare say that you would have beaten most of us. Your mind is filled with 
God’s ways.
	But that’s not what we want for you, Brenton. Or perhaps I should say that that is 
not all that we want for you. We don’t merely want you to be able to spit out answers so 
rapidly as to make all of us say, “Wowww.” We don’t merely want your mind to be filled 
with God’s ways. We don’t want these things to mean nothing more to you in the future 
than all the other things that you’ve been taught and have memorized during the first 13 
years of your life. We don’t want you to store “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a 
light to my path” somewhere in your mind between “Battle of Hastings—1066” and 
“volume=length X width X height.”
	No, we want you to store God’s ways not merely in your mind but also in your 
heart. We say that because it is the condition and the contents of your heart that will 
determine whether or not you do in the future as the psalmwriter said (and what you 
yourself will promise in a few minutes). It is the condition and the contents of your heart 
that will determine whether or not you “walk in God’s truth.”
	And to do that, you’ll need what David asks for in our psalm—“an undivided 
heart.” David’s reason for wanting an undivided heart is obvious—because a divided 
heart makes you a mess. Have you ever tried to walk in two directions at once? It doesn’t 
work, does it? Maybe you try to have one foot go west and one go east, but you can’t do 
it for very long, can you? It becomes quite difficult as your feet get further and further 
apart, and eventually—especially if you are as old as I am—it becomes quite painful 
because you’ll probably end up pulling a muscle. Or maybe you walk east for a few 
minutes, and then turn and walk west for a few minutes, then east, then west, then west 
some more, than east some more. To anyone watching, you will look like a fool and you 
won’t be getting anywhere.
	All of us here today can tell you that trying to walk in two directions at once 
spiritually doesn’t work either. We can tell you that because we’ve tried it. We’ve tried 
serving God while at the same time serving ourselves. But every time we try to serve 
ourselves, we end up being unable to keep one foot in the ways of God because we have 
to walk away from the ways of God in order to serve ourselves. So back and forth we 
go—walking a few steps away from God when some gossip is too good not to pass 
along—and then walking a few steps in God’s ways to make up for it—even as we are 
sometimes thinking about how long we have to walk in God’s ways before we can start 
walking in our own ways again.
	Those of us here this morning have tried having a divided heart, and we can tell 
you that it doesn’t work. It makes us a spiritual mess, trying to accomplish two different 
things and really succeeding at neither. And in the end where we really fail in trying to 
serve God and ourselves is in serving God. Jesus himself said that when he said, “No one 
can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be 
devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” 
(Matthew 6:24)
	Jesus spoke of trying to serve both God and money—and perhaps that will be the 
way in which the devil attempts to divide your mind. Perhaps he will attempt to 
encourage you to give up attendance in worship in order to “pursue your career.” Perhaps 
he will attempt to convince you that it’s still possible to serve God even while you lie on 
your taxes in order to save money. It isn’t. It only leads to hell.
	Or perhaps he will attempt to divide your mind in some other way. Sadly, the rest 
of us could spend the rest of this morning and a good portion of the afternoon telling you 
about the ways in which the devil will attempt to divide your mind through all the new 
things you will face and experience in the coming years.
	And let’s make it clear—the devil isn’t interested in dividing your heart. He’s 
interested in stealing it. And if you let him divide your heart, it won’t be long before he 
does exactly what he wants—stealing it.
	Does that make you afraid? I suppose that it should. Does it make you think a 
little differently about the vow you’re going to be making here in a few minutes—a vow 
to suffer all, even death rather than fall away from God and from Jesus? Does it make 
you realize what you will truly be saying? Does it make you wonder whether someone 
like you—someone whose mind has been divided all too often in the past—should be 
making—yes, can dare to make such a vow, can dare to vow to “walk in God’s truth”? 
	You can, and you should. Because when your parents, your Sunday school 
teachers, and I taught you God’s ways, we taught you especially, repeatedly, and joyfully 
about God’s sending of his Son as a Savior from your sins of double-mindedness. The 
answer that you gave as a little child in Sunday School—“Je-sus”—is still the right 
answer here today. For it was Je-sus who not only learned God’s ways, but also actually 
lived them, also actually “walked in God’s truth.” It is Jesus who had an undivided heart 
throughout his entire life, a heart that was entirely focused on God and his ways. And he 
did this in your place, Brenton. 
	It is the undivided heart of Jesus—an undivided heart that God credits to you—
that makes you confident as you approach the Lord’s table here this morning to receive 
his body and blood. 
	Brenton, we want you to have an undivided heart in the future because we know 
what sort of joy that will bring you. We know what sort of joy it brings when we walk in 
God’s ways by obeying his Ten Commandments. But we especially want you to walk in 
God’s ways in the future by confessing your sins so that you may always know the joy of 
being assured of your forgiveness. 
	May God continue to teach you his ways in the future as he has in the past—
through his Word. Be in his Word, Brenton. Be in his Word on Sunday mornings before 
church—there are two Bible classes for you to choose from. Be in his Word even—
perhaps especially—when you go away to college. Be in his Word so that you may have 
an undivided heart—a heart that desires to “thank and praise, serve and obey him”—a 
heart whose confidence rests solely in your Savior Jesus. 
	Congratulations, Brenton, and God’s continued blessings. Amen.