REND YOUR HEART, AND NOT YOUR GARMENTS

 TUESDAY, 19^TH DECEMBER, 2023.

Author: PASTOR DR. SAMUEL AYORINDE – General Overseer

 

TOPIC: REND YOUR HEART, AND NOT YOUR GARMENTS

MEMORIZE: “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.” Joel 2:13

SCRIPTURE READING: Joel 2:12-14

12 Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning:  13 And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. 14 Who knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God?"

 

EXPOSITION:

Garment-rending and other outward signs of religious emotion, are easily manifested and are frequently hypocritical; but to feel true repentance is far more difficult, and consequently far less common. Men will attend to the most multiplied and minute ceremonial regulations—for such things are pleasing to the flesh—but true religion is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the tastes of the carnal men; they prefer something more ostentatious, flimsy, and worldly. Outward observances are temporarily comfortable; eye and ear are pleased; self-conceit is fed, and self-righteousness is puffed up: but they are ultimately delusive, for in the article of death, and at the day of judgment, the soul needs something more substantial than ceremonies and rituals to lean upon. Apart from vital godliness all religion is utterly vain; offered without a sincere heart, every form of worship is a solemn sham and an impudent mockery of the majesty of heaven.

 

Heart-rending is divinely wrought and solemnly felt. It is a secret grief which is personally experienced, not in mere form, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit upon the inmost heart of each believer. It is not a matter to be merely talked of and believed in, but keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of the living God. It is powerfully humiliating, and completely sin-purging; but then it is sweetly preparative for those gracious consolations which proud unhumbled spirits are unable to receive; and it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God, and to them alone.

 

The text commands us to rend our hearts, but they are naturally hard as marble: how, then, can this be done? We must take them to Calvary: a dying Saviour’s voice rent the rocks once, and it is as powerful now. O blessed Spirit, let us hear the death-cries of Jesus, and our hearts shall be rent even as men rend their vestures in the day of lamentation.

 

PRAYER POINT:  O Lord, help us to be sincere and faithful to our pledge to forsake the world and sin and follow you in Jesus name.

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ANCHOR OF LIFE is the daily devotional guide written by PASTOR DR. SAMUEL AYORINDE, General Overseer, Anchor of Life & Redemption Ministry Int’l. It is an extraction of God’s word designed to draw the sincere seekers closer to God on a daily basis through an insightful exposition and analysis of God’s Word.

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