Rend Your Heart And Not Your Garments

Sorry... still catching up. This was nearly a month ago now... I need to get on the ball here! This was a brilliant passage from our one to ones in Joel.

Joel 2:12-17

12 "Even now," declares the LORD,
"return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning."
13 Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
14 Who knows? He may turn and have pity
and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings
for the LORD your God.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion,
declare a holy fast,
call a sacred assembly.
16 Gather the people,
consecrate the assembly;
bring together the elders,
gather the children,
those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
and the bride her chamber.
17 Let the priests, who minister before the LORD,
weep between the temple porch and the altar.
Let them say, "Spare your people, O LORD.
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
'Where is their God?' "

The words are just so powerful I think, "rend your hearts and not your garments"... but what does that look like?

Obviously this whole passage is about repentance, turning from sin, back to God. And we talked about how we cvan often say sorry, but not really mean it. And how people can act Christian, but not really be Christians. So what does it actually look like to rend your heart? Theres a line in a song by Hillsong that I love, it's called Hosanna and the line goes "Break my heart for what breaks yours, everything I have for your kingdom's cause." It's so amazing sometimes when you bjust get a glimpse into how God feels about us and about our sin. That's been something amazing this weekend on our church houseparty, I'll do another post about that later hopefully.

So yea... I dno that was challenging... we need to be really sorry and not just pretending.

We also talked about how IMPORTANT the peoples' repentance was. It talks about calling a scared assembly andhaving a holy fast, which it talked about in chapter 1 too, this would have involved the whooole nation, i.e. super important! Also, the references to brides and bridegrooms leaving their chambres... you might think that the decision of who to marry is the biggest decision of your life, and that your wedding day is one of the most important days of your life, but here Joel says that getting right with God is even MORE important. That's still true now... you can marry someone and be happy and in love your whole life, but if you've never got right with God, what is 60, 70, even 80 years of happiness in this fallen world, compared to an eternity without God and without any of His goodness?

There's something for me to think about for sure, even when you are a Christian, it's easy I guess to be taken over with other things and forget how amazing it is that we've been saved, and that we've already got the best thing ever in Jesus and that we are sorted for eternity. Our relationship with God should come before any earthly relationship.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple."
Luke 14:26