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...