Joel 2 Devotions by Stephen Taylor

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.

 

Rend, by definition, means to tear something and implies that you are doing it violently or forcibly! The Lord is telling us here to violently rip our hearts in repentance and return to Him! Don’t tear your clothes but rather tear your hearts away from sin and give them back to the Lord! He paid for our hearts, so we have to stop giving them away for free to things that aren’t the Lord!

 

True repentance starts from the inside, not the outside! Although it’s Biblical and good for us to confess our sins to each other, I don’t believe that repentance should be a show for everyone around us but rather a humbling of the heart and true turning away from the sin that our Lord Jesus died and rose to save us from! And through the fruit that is produced through the sincere humbling of the heart, people will see the change in you and prayerfully follow suit!

 

Jesus tells us to clean the inside of the cup first. Why is that? Because everything flows from the inside out, so if it comes out of the heart proud, arrogant, and evil, then guess what? Your life is going to be filled with that junk! But let me tell you, if it comes out of a loving, humble, repentant servant's heart, then the fruit you produce will be pleasing to the Lord and to those around you!

 

Daniel 4:34 - At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified Him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; His kingdom endures from generation to generation.

 

King Nebuchadnezzar humbled his heart and raised his eyes to the Lord, and the Lord restored him! Then he did what we all should do after we repent, and that is praise the Lord that we didn’t get what we deserved!

 

God bless! I love you all! Glory, Honor, and Praise to God Almighty, King Jesus, and the Holy Spirit! 

 

 

Joel 2:28

“And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”

Do we fully embrace the supernatural side of our God? Do we readily receive the fact that He does not operate in the same capacities or limitations that we do? We believe that God can raise us from the dead, but do we believe He can heal our sicknesses today? We trust Him to cleanse us from our sins, but we reject the thought of Him giving us the ability to speak in other tongues. In the middle of our arguments about this or that, we forget one important truth; He is God and can do whatever He wants!

Too often, we try to put our human limits on the limitless One! We try to evaluate what God can and can’t do by our own weaknesses and limitations. We have got to give Him more room to move if we want to see more movement of His Spirit. God works in the natural and the supernatural; He is God of both. Maybe we don’t see the healings and miracles of Christ as much because we don’t believe or allow for them to happen. Maybe we have closed ourselves off and put God in a neat little box, denying His power and thus weakening ourselves.

I don’t know this to be true, but it makes sense, as Christ Himself said that those coming after Him would do greater things than Him. I don’t know about you, but I’m failing to find these greater things on a greater scale, so somewhere, we got off track. Somewhere, we have lost the truth and forgotten that with God, all things are possible. That’s not a guarantee, but it is a promise that it’s possible. Think on that truth and then apply it to your life. What impossible situation are you facing, and are you facing it with faith or logic?

John 14:12- “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Luke 1:37- “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Matthew 19:26- Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

God bless! I love you all, but His love holds all the power! Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit!