Render your heart

“Render your heart, and not just your garments.” Joel 2:13

In the business of life, maintaining a job, ministry, family, friends and fun, it is easy sometimes to lose track without knowing quite what happened. God seems distant and no matter where you look you can’t seem to uncover Him. The good news is, He’s never moved. The bad news, you probably have. During such a time in my life recently a close friend said to me, “Render your heart and not just your garments.” It became apparent that with the busyness of life I had started living rather superficially in my relationship with God. At times like this it is easy for us, as God’s people, to come to God and give Him our daily lives. “God, help me at work, get me into college, send me some money, I need the car fixed, etc.” It’s just as easy to begin worshiping God in Spirit and then to let it slowly trail off into our own human effort. But as interested as God is in the details of your life, He’s much more interested in your heart.

To superficially give Him the ‘outer’ things of our lives is simply not enough and it’s definitely the easy way out. To render our hearts though comes at a cost, a sacrifice, it takes time, it takes searching our own hearts and offering it to God despite what we might find in it. In Galatians it tells us that God does not judge by external appearances. The truth is, He searches the heart but not many of us are really willing to let Him in completely. We come to Him to render our garments, all we have and accomplished in the natural, but we don’t realize that they are rags to God if we don’t surrender it all along with our hearts. If we come to Him to render our hearts, He would remove our rags and clothe us Himself. This is living life from the inside out, allowing what God does within our hearts to bring meaning to what we do externally everyday. This works much better than seeking fulfillment from the outside in.

My niece so aptly brought the point home to me the other day. She’s 5 at the moment and I daily remind her that she’s a princess. We decided to have a very special picnic to celebrate her holidays from school and I surprised her with a especially put-together outfit of princess accessories. She was so excited, she twirled around, the picnic temporarily forgotten, and said; “Now I even look like a princess!” I giggled with delight at her revelation that being a princess wasn’t about what’s on the outside but, it’s who she was with or without the clothes, on the inside. Knowing she was a princess came before dressing as one, we need to do the same.

Rendering your heart is about letting the truth of how God sees you penetrate the core of who you are. The outer trappings of your life is temporal, your heart shines through eternity. And what’s temporal is about what you need today but what’s eternal is about what God’s heart contains for you both on this day and forever...

Who's armour are you in?

“Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around.” 1 Samuel 17:37-38 We live in a society today that puts before us a picture of who we should be, how we should look, think, act and even what stages of life we should be at according to our age. This mostly results in us spending a huge amount of time comparing ourselves to others or evaluating our lives based on a largely invisible yardstick created solely on what we think people’s expectations are of us. But if we are going to go into battle for God then we are going to have to go in as ourselves. “Did I make a mistake with you?” I imagine Him asking each of us, “Did I not create every detail of who you are and what you are to do for me?” He sure did. If you are not convinced that you have to be exactly who God created you to be, have a look at David. We all know that he, a mere shepherd boy, killed the giant Goliath. But before he went out onto the battlefield something small, seemingly insignificant, took place that is often overlooked. He has a brief conversation with King Saul where David convinces him that he can fight the giant. Let’s pick up the story here. “Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. ‘I cannot go in these,’ he said to Saul, ‘because I am not used to them.’ So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.” The Message says it best, “David tried to walk but he could hardly budge.” Far too often I find myself like this in life. I try to move forward but can’t, I try to get ahead but seem stuck. Decisions are difficult to make and insecurity plagues me. And until the day that God whispered that beautiful line in my spirit, “I cannot use you unless you’re you.” I didn’t realize that everything I do while pretending to be someone else really means nothing. Even when I received the approval of those around me it was loss and not gain. At least, in the eyes of God, I was living second best. Our abundant life is irrevocably linked to accepting who we are. And to do that we have to whole-heartedly believe that God not only made us but also approves of us. How great that David was so sure of who he was that he could stand up to a King by removing the armor. What confidence to go out into battle as a shepherd boy instead of a soldier. It dawned on me that David not only had to stand up for who he was against the enemy but also to those in his own camp. A double challenge then, not only do we have to be ourselves no matter what but we need to accept those around us for who they are. Some people tell me that they don’t know who they are. Start taking off the ‘armor’ of your wounds, disappointments, pride and the expectations of others and you might start finding out. Many of us have the heart to fight, willing and able to go into battle, only to be defeated. Can we blame God for that when He has equipped us in every way to win only for us to put on someone else’s armor that leaves us immobile? I’m stepping out as myself today, I hope you’ll join me.