Saying Prayers or being a prayer: Rend your heart not your garments

There is a sense within God’s people that there must be a whole refreshing and new approach to the Faith. A new revitalisation.

The Holy Spirit needs to come into this generation. The intensity of Church programs which centre on meetings of prayer and intense movements based on rediscovering prayer are spreading all over the world .

There is a impending sense that the Church is needing a generational rebirth, as the world hurtles along a path of wholesale confusion of values and mindsets.

I was not even seeking for this message when I saw in my mind’s eye the movements of prayer. I saw the tears of the saints . I saw the intense worship.

I heard these words “Rend your hearts and not your garments”

This word comes from Joel. I meditated in this as on first glance it seems that we can readily see its significance. Yet we do not see its implications .

Rending the heart must be more than just looking at “rending garments ” which is little shadowy to what we need to focus.

We need to see what is “rending the 💓” first.

Rending the heart is recognising God’s way of righteousness

Romans 10:3 shows us what happened when the Jews failed to see the WAY of God’s righteousness, that is through Christ.

We must DISCERN the way of God in our generation. At that time the Temple and it’s priesthood were locked into Moses and the Law. God was changing the mode of His dealing with His Covenant.

The problem with so called Church movements is that there is a perception that they have found the formula for connecting to God and His Purpose but in it they do not sense the shifts of God’s activity in the earth.

Jesus’ death was marked with physical manifestations. The curtain in the Temple was torn in two.

In many places God wants to Rend in two our hearts to reveal at times the fact we are far away.

What they needed to understand is that the way of God’s righteousness came through Christ. Now it is through the Church , but soon it will be through the returning King with His Subjects .

We must begin to look at the detail and be more still in prayer. Our intensity or our activity can never bring results by themselves.

Intensity and activity can never bring results of themselves

We can be mistaken that God is convinced him by our intensity or be impressed by our activity.

In the “Cloud of Unknowing ” the author makes reference of when Jesus visited the house of Mary and Martha. Martha is busy with preparations and material things whilst Mary sat at Jesus’ feet listening. Jesus’ heard Martha’s complaint that Mary was not helping. Jesus said that Martha’s busyness was born out of a life full of concerns. What was better was to have clear and defined priorities.

At time our busyness achieves less.

What I learned in prayer is that God responds to focus and faith.

What I mean is that our focus not being some vague objective. It must be the substance of a hope given by God Himself.

So what has God revealed to us about our generation , our nation, our city?

That is our focus .

Our faith will make a demand on God to fulfil His hope given to us in our hearts and prayers .

When we Rend our hearts we give up our ambitions and our agenda

Jesus’ disciples had an aspiration that He would come to bring freedom from the Romans through supernatural force. We can pray that God resolved the problems of a nations or a city using our Church . This very presumption can disqualify us because the Church cannot be reduced by one congregation or one denomination.

In every revival those who prayed it down are never known. They simply allowed their lives to be the womb that God used to birth His visitation.

Too many of our agendas and meetings have human expectations and limitations. This must go as we Rend our 💓.

As we Rend our hearts we take ourselves from being the centre of God’s plan to making Him the centre of our life.

Too many of us can embrace being egocentrical without knowing it. When the new minister comes to his church the tendency to believe he is the answer of all is exactly what we are saying by making God the centre.