Joel 2:13 says, “Rend your heart and not your garments.” We go through many experiences in our emotions which are often expressions of our spirit. We all get to the place at times where in sorrow, in frustration, or in grief we could react by rending our garments.
The Scriptures give many accounts of people who tore their garments in their reactions. Today we do not realize how precious clothing was to them, because most of us simply go to a store and buy new clothing. We do not realize how many hours and days and weeks were spent in making one garment. That is the reason the soldiers at the foot of the cross gambled for the seamless, handwoven garment that Christ had worn. It was of great value; and rather than rend it and make it worthless, they gambled over who was going to get it. They thought, “This man is going to die and will not need clothes.” They were thinking like the men who cross battlefields to steal boots, clothing, and other valuables from the dead, knowing that the dead will no longer need them. However, with Christ a beautiful thing happened; He came forth from the grave. How wrong the soldiers were!
Sometimes we feel like rending our garments, which is a symbol of death or of accepting defeat. We feel like rending our garments if futility creeps in on us when we are supposed to be overcoming it as sons of God who are to bind futility. However, the Lord is saying, “Do not rend your garments out of some frustration or sorrow or grieving or sense of defeat; instead, rend your heart!” Break your heart before the Lord. Be a broken and a contrite spirit that God will not despise (Psalm 51:17).
How is your heart? Let it not be withdrawn. Let it not be occupied with a multitude of devices. Let your heart not be set only upon effects and results; let it not be filled with a motivation that is carnal. Rather, let your heart be set upon the Lord. Rend your heart before Him. Let it be melted and broken before the Lord. Nothing can compare with a broken and contrite spirit. Whatever is done for the Kingdom’s sake cannot be done with any motivation other than to say, “O Lord, I want to please You.”
Let a brokenness be upon your heart as you come to a service. As you sing and as you worship, just open your heart to the Lord. Do not seek to be ambitious and to show what you can do. Do not worry about persecution. All that is ungodly is coming down. Just be concerned about His Lordship and the way you submit to Him, the way you open your heart to please Him. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Rend your heart and not your garments, for it is not a day of frustration. Yet it is a day that God has every one of us in a corner, saying to us, “How are you going to react; what are you going to do?” He may even be checking and testing your spirit every time you come to a service.
How many times has the heart of the Father been grieved because you were passive, insensitive, withdrawn, half asleep, not aware, not alive to God? Open your heart to Him. Rend your heart before the Lord. Rend your heart and ask God to forgive you of your frustration and of submitting yourself to futility. When satanic assault comes against you like waves, you must stand upon the rock of His Word. Even though you belong to Him, you must break before Him. Be ready to crumble; be ready to break. No one else can do it for you. No one can preach a sermon that will sweep you into it. It is something that you have to do.
The prophet Joel said, “Rend your heart.” The prophet Hosea said, “Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and rains righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12). Hosea also said, “Come and let us return to the Lord, for He has torn us and He will heal us; He has smitten us, and He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up and we shall live in His sight” (Hosea 6:1–2).
If we set human goals and try to accomplish them, we will be magnifying the wrong thing. Our emphasis should be to please Him, to worship Him, and to open our hearts to Him. In order to do this, we must repent where we have walked in our own willful way. We must repent where we have fallen short. Let us rend our hearts before Him, crying, “O God, help us.” Let us eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. With His life in us, let us submit to the death of the cross afresh. We must not give Him anything less than to love Him with all our hearts.
It is time to dump the garbage and to get rid of the attitudes that have been holding you back. The real issue is not the problems, but rather the state of your heart. Problems that have come and gone no longer matter. There will always be problems. If nothing else, you will have problems over yourself, causing you to walk in condemnation. There has to come a time when you simply rend your heart and lay it out before the Lord. The Lord never despises a broken and a contrite heart. He does not refuse anyone who comes to Him, saying, “Lord, I messed it all up, but forgive me. Meet me. Help me.”
There can be a turning point for you. There can be an end of that which causes you to stumble. You may crawl for a while, but you can break into a new walk with God because He is merciful. How difficult it is to say, “I am sorry. God, forgive me!” It is hard to say, “I will break my heart before You, Lord. I am determined to walk with a brokenness.” If you lose that broken spirit before the Lord, you have lost everything.
If you have been on the fringe, take the initiative and say, “Lord, You told me to rend my heart, so here I am!” The altar of repentance is a wide altar. There will always be room because it is not measured in feet; it is measured by how wide the heart of God is. Break your heart before the Lord. Give yourself to Him. Open your heart to all that He would bring forth. It is a new day before Him. Walk before Him with a brokenness and a contriteness of heart, and He will visit you anew. Circumcise your heart, for it is a time like the Israelites faced when they stood at the crossing of the Jordan. Stand ready to possess His Word.
Let us humble ourselves before the Lord and sing the song of the penitent. Let us not justify ourselves before Him. The pointing of the finger at one another ends as we look to the Lord. He can make us to stand. Let our hearts weep before Him. Let us be an invincible army of hearts that are broken and contrite before Him. Then His righteousness shall spring forth, and His name shall be praised.
In Psalm 130:3 we read, If thou Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? If the Lord would mark our transgressions, how could we stand before His face? But with our God there is plenteous mercy, that He should be praised and that our heart should be turned away from its follies. Let us repent of being human, so that we can become sons of God. In order for the divine nature to come forth, let us repent of the human nature, putting it all into one abominable garbage package and saying, “Lord, bury it in the sea of Your forgetfulness.” Let us open our hearts to love Him, for this is what we bargained for when we first began to follow Him. Let us break and rend our reluctant hearts before Him, determined no more to draw back or withdraw, no more to count the cost.
Renew a right spirit within us this day, O Lord. Let it come forth until it consumes us, until there is nothing left except the burning desire to do Thy will. Oh, that we might stand, Master, as You did, saying, “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7). Let the blood of Jesus Christ be applied to our hearts, for we may be unaware of our sins. Break us and melt us. Probe our hearts so that we become aware of every new need. Help us. Revive Thy work, strengthen Thy work, complete Thy work, finish Thy work within us.
There is something very precious about setting your heart to worship the Lord. Then when you sing, it is worship; when you praise God, it is worship; and when you repent, it is worship. God reaches out to pull you in. In a sense He says, “Little sheep, you are not going to wander. Come on now; come on back.” To such an easy entreaty, you should respond quickly. If you delay, He might break your legs as shepherds sometimes do to the sheep that tend to wander. Hebrews 6:10 says that God is not unrighteous to forget your work and your labor of love which you have done and continue to do in His name. God remembers all the sacrifice and the work you have done. Sometimes you can get to the place where you want to forget, and you say, “I am through! I did the best I could, and there were no bands, no bouquets of flowers. I did not get what I was after.” Nevertheless, your work has been done unto the Lord.
The Lord is calling, “Come on; come a little closer. Do not wander off.” If you go too far, it will be dangerous and God will deal with you. God wants to pull you in, and He is saying, “It is not too late. Come on. You have wandered a little too far, but come on back and walk with Me. If you go too far, you could fall off the precipice. Come closer to Me. Reach to Me.”
Relationships are measured by closeness. A little girl follows her mother around, saying, “Mommy, I love you. Mommy, I love you.” She has to communicate the fact that she loves her mama. A husband and a wife wake each other in the night to say, “I love you.” A child of God looks up, realizing that everything is based upon a relationship of closeness to the Lord, and he says, “Lord, I love You.” Hebrews 10:22a says, Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. Do it, even if you have problems or if someone has wronged you. Do not sing the blues; sing the hallelujah chorus of the angels. Reach in, reach in, reach in! Reach in to walk with the Lord, with your heart tender toward Him. This is the day and this is the hour to rend your heart before the Lord.
Throughout the Scriptures you will find a great many truths about the heart. It is important for you to know whether or not your heart is open to the Lord. Do you come before the Lord with a broken spirit, a broken heart that God really wants? It is not how hard you work that counts; it is the heart behind the work. It is the way you worship God in it, the way you seek the Lord. There must be more emphasis on this because you will become a casualty if your labors are not performed from the heart.
Unconsecrated hands should not build the things of the Lord. People who are not wholly set to do the will of God with a whole heart and a broken heart should not be involved in the labors of the Lord. Pastors, elders, deacons, and all who serve in the name of the Lord should weigh this question: “How is my heart?” Your whole heart must enter into your service to the Lord.
In the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses started out by voicing something that is repeated a number of times: “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you.” In verses 4 through 6 Moses said, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.”
The depth of the heart is difficult to understand. The Old Testament original Hebrew Scriptures spoke of the heart and the kidneys to convey spiritual meanings. The original Greek Scriptures carried this same idea in the New Testament. Kidneys were the sign of the integrity and the strength with which a person set his heart upon the Lord. The kidneys filter poisons out of the body. That meaning became spiritually symbolic. The heart, too, is spoken of symbolically, when the Scriptures speak about the meditations and the motivations of the heart, the things that come out of the heart. This does not refer to the organ that pumps blood, but to the central core of your life.
Moses taught God’s people, saying, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” Deuteronomy 6:5–7. That covers much territory.
There has to be a mainspring of God’s love and God’s submission rising in your heart, when you walk down the street or walk through a pasture, when you eat, when you sleep, whatever you do. Believers have too many motivations in which they are looking for something other than that. The cry of your heart must be, “O God, I want to serve You with all my heart!” All other motivations and goals become a challenge and a threat to His Lordship in your life, and they cause His jealousy to rise. Do you know what jealousy is? If you have jealousy in your heart, at times it becomes unreasonable, a driving force within your heart. If you have ever known jealousy, then think of God who has a jealous heart. His glory He will not share with another, nor will He allow you to be driven with motivations that are less than His perfect will and for His perfect glory.
If you have been serving God in order to receive certain blessings, and yet they have not happened, try putting God first. Really put Him first, and let everything else be so secondary that never again will it be an affront to God. Again and again the Word says that the Lord your God is a jealous God.
In verses 8 and 9 Moses gave further instructions for remembering the words of the Lord: “And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.” (The people actually placed the Word in leather pouches and tied them around their heads and around their hands.) “And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” In chapter 6, read verses 1 through 15 to receive the full picture that Moses was bringing.
In chapter 11, it is worthwhile to read verses 10 through 18. But here we will concentrate on a few select verses from that passage. Moses was speaking about the land which the people were entering into, to possess. In verses 13 through 14a he said, “And it shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, that ‘I will give the rain for your land in its season.’ ” Then notice the warning in verse 16: “Beware, lest your hearts be deceived and you turn away and serve other gods and worship them.”
Moses gave the people these words of precaution in verse 18: “You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.” Moses then told the people what to expect: “For if you are careful to keep all this commandment which I am commanding you, to do it, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and hold fast to Him; then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you.” Verses 22–23a.
You cannot expect anything but defeat, if you do not do this. Defeat will never come because of persecutors that rise up against you; nor will defeat come because you are weak or inadequate or insufficient. Defeat will come because you have not loved Him with all your heart. If you love Him with all your heart and cling to His words, He will bring you into His promises; every Word shall be fulfilled. Anything that is lacking in the perfect will of God in your life is your own fault. The reason is not your weaknesses or shortcomings. It is because you have not loved Him with all your heart.
The first and the great commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart. Open your heart. Break your heart before Him. Tell Him, “Lord, I am going to serve You.” He will take care of all the other problems. He loves to take the weak to confound the mighty and the foolish to amaze the wise (I Corinthians 1:27). That is one of God’s specialties. He loves to do that. You can be defeated only if you do not love Him with all your heart.
Whenever you have a wrong attitude in your spirit because someone did something to offend you, you may find it difficult to get it right. What people do to you should not make any difference. It is what God does to you that counts, and that is determined by the way you believe Him and love Him with all your heart.
In the twenty-ninth and thirtieth chapters of Deuteronomy are the words of the covenant which Moses spoke at Moab, and the promise of the restoration. Moses prophesied that the Israelites were not going to serve God, that God was going to scatter them throughout the nations, and eventually when they repented they would come back. The twenty-ninth and thirtieth chapters of Deuteronomy should be read by every Jew in the world, because these chapters describe exactly what happened in the history of the Jewish nation. God promised a blessing if they would keep His covenant, and a curse if they would not keep it. Does it ever seem as if God is fighting you? God resists the proud. He sets before you a curse if you serve Him halfheartedly. Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord negligently (Jeremiah 48:10). God wants you to serve Him with all your heart. God is not religious; He is thoroughly scientific. You are going to be exactly what He wants you to be. You cannot please God by following some phony religion. People have been trying that for centuries, but they have missed it.
At the beginning of chapter 30, Moses said, “So it shall become when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons.” Verses 1–2. Moses spoke somewhat strongly in verse 6: “Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live.” Return to God, and He will circumcise your heart. That is all you have to strive for.
Deuteronomy 30:9b–18: “The Lord will again rejoice over you for good, just as He rejoiced over your fathers; if you obey the Lord your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach.” (It is not too difficult, and it is not out of reach. Paul spoke about this in the book of Romans.) “It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it.
“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it.”
God dealt with the Israelites one way in the wilderness, but He had another way of dealing with them in Canaan. He told them what would happen to them after they went into Canaan land; and this could happen to you also as you go in to possess your inheritance. You will not last very long unless you serve the Lord with all your heart.
Milk and honey is not the goal of Canaan; wholehearted communion with God is the end result that He wants. It is not the things He promised to your fathers, the blessings He is going to give you to possess; it is the relationship to Him that He wants. And you had better be sure that God gets what He is seeking, or you will not get what you should have. You will not get it unless you open your heart and say, “Lord, show me what You want; that is what I will give You. I will delight in You, Lord.” Then He will give you the desires of your heart. If you seek Him and His Kingdom and His righteousness with all your heart, He will see that all the other things are added to you. Do not worry about them.
Moses had a Word from the Lord, and that Word was real. God said, “It is not afar off.” You do not have to reach way up to try to get a Word from God, and you do not have to go beyond the sea and bring it back. It is near you, right in your heart. All you have to do is give way to it. The context of Deuteronomy is speaking about serving God with all your heart. When you serve Him with all your heart, His Word is not far from you. You do not have to stretch for it; it is right there. Anyone who has had a Word from God will find that Word working as he opens his heart wholly to that Word.
What happens if you are critical or halfhearted or if your heart is divided? Hosea 10:2–4 says, Their heart is divided; now shall they be found guilty.… therefore judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field. Hemlock is a poisonous plant. If you are halfhearted, you will regret it. Even though you pay a tithe, you are wasting your money if you are not wholehearted about serving God. Perhaps you do not like to hear that. It probably bothers you. Did you think that you could kind of limp along, serving God, and still have Him bless you, perhaps even make you into a millionaire? God wants to have a wholehearted relationship with you. Did He send His Son to die for a flock of lame lambs limping along into the Kingdom? Or was He looking for a people who could be conformed to the image of His Son and come forth in righteousness, who would love the Lord their God with all their heart, all their soul, all their mind, all their spirit. How is your heart?
In Romans 10 we find Paul quoting Deuteronomy 30. Romans 10:6–7: But the righteousness based on faith speaks thus, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” To bring Christ down is the same as to bring the Word down. Christ is the Word. John 1:1 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Christ is not to be focused on as the Christ in heaven or the Christ who was in the abyss. That is not to be the issue. Christ is in the heart. The Word is in the heart. You can say all the prayers you want to, but until you know that it is Christ in the heart, you have missed it.
Paul continued in Romans 10:8–9: But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. Until Christ possesses the whole of your heart, and you serve Him with a whole heart, nothing will work for you. The whole heart must give way to the exaltation of the Lordship of Christ. What does it mean that God raised Him from the dead? God not only raised Him from the dead; He made Him sit at His own right hand and put all things under His feet with everything in subjection to Him (Ephesians 1:20, 22). You confess with your mouth that He is Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord of lords and King of kings. When you begin to believe that totally in Him, there is no place for wavering. The only issue is His exaltation and Lordship. His authority and what He has said. There is no other issue.
If you are weak, it is not an issue. The issue is that He redeemed you. Believe it. Confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord. Believe that the Father raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord of lords and King of kings. For with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. (A fuller meaning is “deliverance,” because we never lose our need of the salvation deliverance that God brings. We have been saved, but we are also being saved. We have been delivered, but we are also being delivered.) For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” Romans 10:10–11.
The Scriptures in Deuteronomy and the related quotation in the New Testament help you to realize that there is an issue at stake. How is your heart? God is saying, “Come on, rend your heart and not your garments.” This is to have the emphasis. Walking with God is not based on a set of doctrines or experiences or mechanics of ministry, but upon a wholehearted relationship with the Lord.
When Jesus was twelve, His parents lost Him, and after searching three days they finally found Him in the Temple. However, they did not understand what He said to them about having to be in His Father’s house. Luke 2:51 says, And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured (kept) all these things in her heart. Notice that she kept all these things in her heart. When you have a heart that loves God, you hold on to everything that God says to you, and tuck it away in your heart. You hide it in your heart. Whether or not the Word works for you depends upon what you do with it. If you want your heart to please God, just take the Word and hide it in your heart. Keep thinking about it, keep praying about it, keep walking in it. God will bless you to do it.
How is your heart? In the Old Testament we read this prayer: Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23–24. This emphasizes how God searches the heart of man. But in the New Testament you have the responsibility of searching your heart because you have a candle, a flashlight, an inner torch. I Corinthians 11:28 says, “Let a man examine himself.” If we do not judge ourselves, we will be judged with the world; but if we judge ourselves, we will not be condemned with the world (verses 31–32).
God is saying, “Do not be a phony. You know what the score is; you know what is in your heart. I have given you the Holy Spirit, and He makes you to know and to understand what is in your heart.” Do not try to fool God or anyone else on this matter. How is your heart? Do not say that you do not know. You do know! These are not Old Testament times; this is the day of the New Testament. Examine yourself. You have the Holy Spirit to reveal all these things—to convict you of sin, of righteousness, of judgment to come. The Holy Spirit comes and makes it real to you. You know that this is true.
Do you want a broken heart? That is what you should have. You should say, “Lord, not my will, but Thine be done. It is not what I want in my heart—that motivation has to go. Circumcise my heart for only that which pleases You. I will love You with all my heart.” It is not impossible. You can walk before Him with all your heart.
Seal His Word to your heart. Live in it as if it were bound around your wrists and upon your forehead. Let it be written on the tablets of your heart. Hebrews 4:12–13 says, For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
God rips us apart just like an Old Testament sacrifice that was cut open and laid upon the altar. The only difference is that today we are living sacrifices. Do not flinch. Do not try to close yourself up. Let everything be open to Him, and let Him be everything to you. Draw near to Him with a pure heart, with a true heart and the full assurance of faith.
Everything is to be laid open before Him with whom you have to do. If you want a good heart, keep it open. Keep everything open before the Lord, and He will bless you. Every time you come before the Lord, open up and say, “Lord, I open up to You, because every prayer and everything I do is going to come from a whole heart worshiping You.” Do everything that the Lord wants you to do from the heart.