Welcome!
Today: Relationship from heart, not head
Passage: 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. 14 Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing— (Joel 2, NIV)
Repentance is often said than done!
Rending/tearing the garment was a form of expressing one’s grief/repentance, in the O.T days
But as time passed by, people started rending their garments, even when they did not feel any grief or sorrow
God’s biggest complaint against His people is that they come to God and offer rituals which they do not mean. They will pray and preach, not
from the heart but from the head. They will sing songs and worship, but they don’t even think about the meaning of the songs they sing. Even their prayers have nothing to do with their life. There is no relationship with God. Everything has become “ritual”, and the very people who do it are the only ones pleased with it. God is displeased and even angry, with many of our careless sacrifices (Isaiah 29:13)
Cain and Abel offered sacrifices to God, but there was a difference
3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. 4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. (Gen 4, NIV)-emphasis added
When Cain brought “some of the fruits”, Habel brought the best of the best, to God. He brought fat portions from the first born!
Our attitude is what God is watching, more than the actions
A normal person looking at both these sacrifices cannot easily make out the difference in their attitudes. But God did
We have a responsibility to pray for the leadership in Government (1 Tim 2)
God is about the “why” of the things, more than the “what” of things we do
When a poor woman offered two coins to God, Jesus knew that she gave “all she had”, to God
Let our judgements be based on God’s standard, not ours
God bless you
BG
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for your love and grace. You are a God of relationship, not rituals; you realed to me with your heart, not head. Help me to love you and others with my heart and not just head. Amen.
“What matters to God is our attitude, not aptitude”