Rend my heart

Joel 2:12 "Even now," declares the Lord, "Return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning." Rend your heart (which means turn so radically from sin that it causes discomfort) 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. Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing, grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.
Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breasts. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. 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?"

Tonight, I finished the book Rewards of Fasting by Mike Bickle and Dana Candler. It is challenged me and made me realize that my life needs to be different. I want it to be different. I am so prone to Western Christianity...this feel good, pleasure seeking society. I am a sinner, yes saved by grace, but a sinner still. I fail miserably in devotions, prayer and battle doing things on my own, rather than in community with others. I want to see God move in dramatic ways in my life, because I want to be a willing servant of my most high God. I long to see the bridegroom come. But that takes effort...on our behalf. Complacency and apathy does not line up with the end time church. I do not want that...I want to be prepared when the things of this earth get even more evil, I want to know how to respond to those who cry out.

I believe there will come a day when we will see things so evil that it will cause us to cry out in fear, but I want to be prepared...to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, to move in the gifts that Jesus is pouring out on his bride. I felt this fear...while living on the coast. I did not know how to express it with words, but I knew that there was something stirring in the heavenlies and I believe God moved in my life to change my direction and my course in life. If we believe everything is controled by God then I believe that he directed my path.

I want to press in, now more than anything, to forsake all else and follow after him. What does that mean to forsake all else? Everything that takes us away from serving God. Everything in our life is about him! It is serving, giving, loving and seeking to lay down our lives for others. It is a challenging and difficult path, one that is not chosen by many, but I desire to be one of those that does that. To enter into a new race...with much training and experiences.

What will this look like? Not sure at the moment...seeking God in where he is going to take this desire that is in my heart. I am praying for many things and how it will come about, I leave that to the one in control.

Jehovah...I love you and seek to walk in the way you walked, in laying down my life for others, to serve, to be the lowest of the low, to trust my Heavenly Father and seek his face in all that I do. To spend time prayer and fasting. To give away everything and not count it as loss, but gain. Lord teach me, strengthen me, for you are good, you have only good for me, even in the dark moments. You are my light and my salvation in whom shall I fear. You hold me in your grip and so I have nothing to be afraid of. Even when temptations and evil surround me to kill me and eat me up, you will cause that to fall away in a mess. I will not fear and I will be confident. I will seek you and dwell with you and look upon your beauty...all the days of my life.
amen