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Rend your heart

Posted by Jeffrey Smith November 9th, 2015 3,072 Views 0 Comments

Joel 2:13- 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.

God our Father is interested in our hearts, and not our appearance. Tearing your clothes when something happened that was catastrophic or considered a blaspheme was commonplace among the Pharisees. What scripture is pointing out here is that God wants us to focus on Him, and not what we can do. Tearing your clothes cannot change a situation, and in fact it just adds another level for someone to have to deal with you. Sometimes we do stuff in a reactionary manner that adds no value to the situation just so we can be noticed. Our response to things we perceive can be critical in how quickly they can be dealt with.
God is interested in our hearts, and when we see a situation that looks bleak, or fearful, then we know that allowing that situation into our hearts is dealing with it in a Spirit-filled way. We can pour out our hearts to the Lord for repair, but our clothing becomes useless if it has been torn. They turn into rags, and offer no more use.
Our hearts when broken, offer an opportunity to be held, and comforted. God longs to pour out compassion on His children, and when we have something that affects our hearts, you can be assured that our Father is there.
When I was younger and things didn’t go my way, I would often turn to self-destructive behavior that would just compound my problem. I would drink alcohol in excess, or say things to others in anger that I didn't mean. Those things never solved anything, and it only served to point out to others my lack of control, and fears. You see, with Jesus as our savior, we don't need to be in control of anything other than our hearts. We only need to feel the situation and know that because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we are assured of compassion, grace, and resolution through Him.
This scripture says to return to the Lord your God, and that means to give Him your heart. To give Him all the pieces that are broken, so he can mend them like a seamstress would repair torn clothes. The difference is that our healer will put your heart back together with a renewed strength, a deeper bond, and a built up faith. Trust in Jesus, and return to Him when things look bleak. Feel His compassion that will restore every broken part of the what He longs for most, and that is depth of seeing Him within your heart.

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Post from Dion Todd

Dion Todd commented on Dion Todd's blog post: Commotion

2 days ago


We are in the middle of replacing the firewall, switching, and upgrading the Internet to Fiber. In the end, it will one-hundred times faster, from 20 to 2,000, but things are a bit hectic here at the moment. You may have received 20+ devotionals this morning. I did. Hopefully that will not happen tomorrow! We have been working on it since 3AM and are aware of the issues. Thank you for patience and understanding during the upgrade which will hopefully be over this week! God bless. 😀🙏



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Comment from Sylvia Todd

1 day ago

We are back up and things are looking good :)! Thank you so much for your prayers 🙏!


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Replies to this comment

1 day ago

Praise be to the GOD and Father on high in the name of Jesus!


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Comment from Liesel aka lisa Wardle

2 days ago

Dear Pastor, please know that you and Sylvia are in my prayers!!! Had been trying to sign in yesterday, but couldn't, and since we had some really bad storms up here practically all of Monday, rain and flooding, I thought that something happened to you! Please know that you are in my prayers! 🙏 My heartfelt gratitude for all that you do and your dedication, thanking the Lord for you! 🙏🤗


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Comment from Lynn Brown

2 days ago

Prayers for the switch to be smooth!🙏 We appreciate your hard work and look forward to the upgrades!😀


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Comment from Celeste Strenn

2 days ago

Thank you so very much for your dedication and hard work ❣️ thank you so much, so very very much for this most Blessed and most loved devotional ❣️




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