Rending your heart for the glory of God

Joel 2:12-13 – “ Yet Event Now” declares the LORD. “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD you GOD, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.
The passage is quoted from time to time. It tends to be a verse that is quoted by Christians when they are talking to or about other Christians in a place where they have been in sin for a while and are desiring yet again what seems like the 1,000th time for a forgiveness of some sin or vice or stumbling point where they have turned their back on God in a small way or a big way. And I agree, I agree simply from the context of this whole book. This is God telling the children of Israel that they have ran so hard and fast away from Him, they have as he says in another prophet, Whored after other gods. God was calling his chosen children unfaithful and committing soul adultery with other false gods. And then in the beginning of the book of Joel he talks about how he is going to send a whole bunch of disasters and hardship to them for their disobedience. Then after all of this he Say YET EVEN NOW RETURN TO ME. What incredible LOVE. What mercy, what patients, what an eternally loving God we serve that even when we sin and whore after other gods. Even when he sends a punishment. Even when we are in that place where we feel that we have run after other gods. He says I hate what you have done I hate your sin, I hate your whoring, I HATE SIN. He says YET EVEN NOW RETURN TO ME. A full returning, a true weeping for our sin, a mourning for what we have done to our eternal lover, a weeping and wailing for the sin we have committed. And then the Lord says “rend your hearts and not your garments.” The rending of garments was something that traditionally was done in the Middle East, even today it is still done as a sign of disgrace, sorrow, pity. It is done as a sign of sorrow. But God says essentially “ok you ripped your clothes in half…ok, your clothes are nothing, what about your heart, your heart is where the issue is, are you so sorry, for your whoring after false gods, no matter what they are, that you will weep and wail and rend your heart.” Seeking the Lord after we have sinned seems painful, think about that, RENDING YOUR HEART. Ouch, that has got to hurt. Imagine the pain, but imagine the freedom. Imagine the God glorifying wonder of rending our hearts. When we come to a full realization of the sin we have committed. When we come to a place of total realization of the pain we have cost God. When we come to the realization of immense misery and genuine sorrow God must feel when we totally disgrace him by whoring after other gods. When we get there, and then realize that God says “yet even now return to me” we can’t help but rend our heart. For we realize that we are so unworthy of all the forgiveness, all the mercy, all the love, we don’t deserve any of it and it brings about a pain, a good pain, but a pain none the less. A pain of sorrow that our heart hurts for the spiting in the face of God we have done, AND YET HE LOVES US STILL. And when we return and we take hold of that mercy and that grace, God is glorified by him magnifying his eternal qualities that surpass that of any human being. He is so eternally merciful and gracious that when we take hold yet again of that mercy and realize yet again how big his grace is, that even after we run after other god’s, he forgives and loves us. GLORY BE TO GOD.

does this life have gain?

If this life has anything to gain at all, I count it loss. Philippians 3
Does this life have gain? I believe the answer to this question is a resounding YES!!!. This life has much to gain, but let me talk about that for a minute. So this life has two things in my opinion to be gained. The first thing is the items of this world that are given to us that are pure and simple, the things of this world, what we would count as worldly things. The second thing that this life has to gain is the things from above that are not of this world. The rest of this verse says I count it loss because of the surpassing power of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. It is through Christ and for Christ and everything but Christ that we count as loss so we may know Christ. If we put anything in front of Christ, whether it be things of the world; money, power, health, prosperity, position etc. And even the things from above; spiritual gifts, blessings, gifting, etc. if we put any of these things in front of Christ we fail. We have our focus set in the wrong direction. Our gaze must be fixed on Christ, Christ is where we look, we look to him and his suffering, we look at everything that this life has to gain and we count it as loss. BECAUSE of Christ, It is because of Christ that we look at anything that we get, from this earth or from above, as loss in comparison to Christ. We live for Christ and never live for a pursuit of what he offers to us whether it be a gain of this world through his hand or even a gift of spiritual blessings. Even the things of eternity we will lay down as a gift at the feet of our savior for the death that he died for us.

Trust

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…
Trust, a full reliance upon something or someone. FULLY RELYING. I find myself lacking in the trust needed to fully trust. Make sense? I hope so because I believe I am not the only one. The Lord is the only being in whom we can fully rely but I find that my own human lacking’s get in the way. I need the Lord to teach me to trust, but I must trust in order to learn trust. I feel I over think a lot of this, I need to step back and allow him to do what he can and will do. Increase my faith by teaching me how to trust. What I love about the verse above is the statement of “lean not on your own understanding”, because that explains the number one thing that gets in the way of trusting in the Lord…MY UNDERSTANDING. If God was limited by my understanding he would be really small. Praise be to God that He is not limited by my understanding, that the trust I can have and should have in Him is greater than anything my human understanding will ever be able to achieve.