Return to the Lord
12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.
Joel 2: 12-13
Prayer
God, we thank you for being the One we can always turn to. You are full of mercy and we give you great praise today. Thank You for being unchanging and all loving. Give us eyes to see our sins today, where we turn our hearts away from you. We want to come back home, where you wait with open arms. Warm our hearts with Your love today and help us to give that love to those around us as well.
Through Jesus we pray, Amen.
Return our hearts to the Lord. This is our call today. Each day we get another chance to turn from our own ways, to voluntarily go into the desert of Lent and stay the course—to deny ourselves, live for others, and praise God. Today, when we have more than what we actually need in life, can we step back from it all to tell God that we need Him more than any of it?
In the book of Joel, we are graciously reminded to give it all up through fasting, sorrow, and mourning. In our lives, we should feel this pain when we realize how far away from God we have gone. Thankfully, we have today—not to make it all better or make up for it with our actions, but to instantly turn back to God with repentance, denying ourselves and following His Son, Jesus. Take this warning again when we find loopholes in this season that show us we don’t actually have to deny ourselves from everything. If you don’t deny yourself, you cannot have new life in Christ. Return our hearts to the Lord.
