Going beyond your garments

[The Glory Unveiled]

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. ( Joel 2:13 )

It is a very common old testament practice to see people rend their clothes when they sin and have come to acknowledge it, and to seek forgiveness. Many a person have the natural inkling to act up when they are wrong. This is often true when one has been trying to deal with a sin or a challenge by him/herself. In order to feel remorse or regret we sometimes tend to transfer our displeasure to the things around us. In the day of Joel, the prophet, the practice of rending one’s clothes as a sign of remorse for one’s wrongs had become so commonly practiced that the relevance or the true intentions for practicing it was lost. It is common to want to transfer one’s pain and regrets to something or someone other than ourselves. But the love of God for man has made enough room for His mercies to be dispensed. God would relent from sending the calamities due a people when His heart is touched from the sincerity of our hearts in repentance. For this reason, God asks us to rend our hearts instead of our garments. Our hearts are the seat of our emotions and desires. So to rend our hearts is the truest expression of remorse and repentance. Being bitter and angry with ourselves because we have not been faithful to God or because we allowed a sin that entangles us easily and tearing our garments in the process is sometimes a sign of pride. It shows that we depended on ourselves to come clean before God instead of depending on God to come clean. True repentance comes from the heart, not outside of it. Let us return to the LORD our God in rendered hearts not garments.

Prayer_Bead: Gracious and Compassionate Father, the Lord who is slow to anger and abounding in love, thank you for the grace to come to you in true repentance.

#GNews: Unveiling the glory of God.

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