Easter 43 Rend Your Heart, Logging In (Joel 2:13)

[HKHaugan]

Knowing the Lord is risen, knowing the Lord has taken residence in our heart and knowing His call to us to share Him, whatever blocks those realities is what we rend. Rending is a spiritual exercise. It is tearing away the garments we have been given by the world to cover our insecurities. It is burning them in the fire of the Holy Spirit. It is receiving the clothes of belief, trust and faith. They are our real clothes, lasting clothes, clothes that cannot be torn, taken or teased away from us. They are our eternal dress clothes. They are the clothes the Lord Jesus wore on the Cross and carried forward in His Resurrection to pass on to His disciples. They are the spotless garments that shine with His light in the darkness of the world. They are what make us a true image of God.

Rending the heart is to lay aside our world conditioning in whatever way it may come to the surface. It's recognizing the sin that invites it. Fasting is the challenge to shred the effects of that conditioning, the strategies, the schemes conjured from our fear apart from God, we use to deal with the demands in every next moment. If there is to be fasting its purpose is to face the reality of the sin that blocks our heart's looking forward to seeing Him work in our every next relational event. Again this is not about giving up some physical pleasure, dieting, beating one's self with regret for past behavior or even spending time in depressing self-analysis. Rending is about taking the Resurrection seriously, knowing full well He is paving a path for us while we are on the way from one place to another, one person to another and one task to another.

It's all about knowledge but not the intellectual kind except as it becomes necessary to structure ideas we can share. Nor is it about doctrinal systems or religious participation. When the word 'knowledge' is used here it means adding to the log of personal experience the Lord has given us of Himself. It is our personal testimony, our ongoing witness to what He has been doing in our lives. Every day the Lord is providing something of Himself wherever we are and with whomever we are relating. This is 'knowing' the Lord. He wants us to know Him in the deepest personal sense. Rending the heart, fasting, is being consciously aware that He is working at building that reservoir of personal knowledge in us.

Like a ship captain who keeps a log of the events on his seafaring journey we keep a log of the Lord's effects on our lives. It's recapping our experiences of the Lord's work in us and those around us. That's real knowledge and the kind that keeps us in the positive expectation of what He will be doing next. So we are changing our tattered world's fig leaves for eternal clothing which returns us to the three basic approaches to spiritual 'logging,' the positive rending of the heart, to fasting, to staying reconciled to the Lord God: belief, trust and faith.

First, knowing the Lord is what believing is all about. Our minds are built to have and order our personal experience of Him. Think of the ways He has influenced us as our personal Savior and been there to direct us as our Lord. Record them as an autobiographical sketch with Him at the center.

Second, knowing He has taken residence in us is a call to trust Him. He will continue what He started in us. He is building a throne room in our heart and invites us to search His spiritual treasures available to us; His will for us, His Word to us and His presence in us. Keep those points of reference and the specific effects they have because new ones are awaiting us. They are the furniture in the throne room.

Third, knowing His call to share Him is all about the faith to act for Him. This means taking what He has given our mind, heart and spirit and being ready to give it away to the next hungry person we meet. Believer or unbeliever, it makes no difference, everyone is spiritually hungry, but being alert to them as images of God opens us to the reality of Him awaiting us and them. The Holy Spirit is right there giving us the inspiration, power and support to bridge the gap between us and others.

This is how we build our knowledge of the Lord. Note the exciting air of future expectation Joel received when he heard the Lord (underlining mine),

“After that, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will have dreams. Your young men will have visions. In those days I will pour out my Spirit
on those who serve me, men and women alike. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth.
(Joel 2:28-30).”
Referring to His gift of the Holy Spirit Jesus told the woman at the well, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water (Jn.4:10).” Then He goes on to say that Jacob's well gives water for temporary satisfaction “...but whoever drinks the water I will give will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life (Jn.4:14).”
Rending the heart is covering it with the Cross of Christ, looking forward and trusting the reality of His resurrected presence to carry you confidently ahead as the Spirit leads in every next encounter.