This word is submitted by Cynthia Blaskis [homework@windstream.net]

------

                         Rend Your Heart

The Lord spoke all day long and it started with this: "Rend Your 
Hearts!"

Now rend is not something one would normally say, it means to rip or 
tear out with violence, to split apart showing grief or anguish. I 
thought Lord I am not sure I am hearing You right, but I was and He 
spoke to me all day over those 3 words "Rend Your Hearts". At first I 
thought why would God ask people to rip and tear apart their hearts 
before Him.

This is what He showed to me today. God asks for our hearts first and 
above all and God asks for ALL of our hearts, not parts of it. God 
writes upon our hearts. He gives to us a new heart. We store things 
within our hearts. Unfortunately, we store most all things within the 
heart and sometimes those things are not things of God which God meant 
for us to keep there. We can store good things of God there or things 
such as hurt, anger, bitterness etc there. The things which are not of 
God makes our hearts hard in the places where we hold on to them. It is 
not always a result of our own sin that those things are there in the 
heart, many times it is from others sinning against us that allowed 
those things to be stored there hidden within our heart. The Lord 
showed to me that things/times/wounds which are hidden within our hearts 
are hard and we are to rend our hearts before God. Tear them wide open 
and expose all that is there before the God who can heal those things. 

God cannot heal our hearts or give us a new heart if it is hard and 
things are still hidden there. Rending the heart is painful, it is 
never pleasant to go into the things hidden in the heart, the past 
things which have caused us pain and expose them before God, but if we 
do not rend the heart, if we let those things stay hidden there, we 
cannot find His healing within those areas of our lives and that piece 
of our heart will stay hardened and hidden. It will bring spiritual 
death to the part of our heart that is hardened. 

When we rend our heart, the pain that is there can be healed by God and 
the things not of God will leave our life. When we do not rend our heart, 
that pain is trapped there and just allows the heart to get even harder. 
I think we have all had times that seemed to tear at our heart and cause 
us deep pain and all too often people tend to hide and bury that pain and 
let that part of their heart harden, they hide those times deep within 
the heart. It is painful to go back into those times or moments that are 
hidden there deep within the heart and when we do, it feels as if our 
heart is being ripped out once again. 

The trouble is that God cannot heal the heart, or parts of the heart that 
we have hidden away, until we are willing to rend or open that part up 
and expose it before God. God wants to heal and have ALL of our hearts,
and that means that we need to rend our hearts to God fully to find that 
healing that only He can give. 

If we do not rend all of our hearts, then all those things which God 
does not want there, those hardened places will remain with all of the 
pain, etc, trapped inside. You cannot have a new heart or the heart of 
God fully until you are willing to rend all of your heart.

God is sovereign, and while I do not know why God allows certain things 
into our lives, there is always a reason. And that is usually to take us 
to a place of deeper trust in Him or to grow our faith. I was reminded 
in the word of the time in the desert that God had allowed the people to 
be bitten by the snakes. The bites were literally killing the people. 
The Lord told Moses to build a bronze snake and put it on a pole and 
when the people looked at it, they would be healed. Sometimes the 
serpent does bite us in life and when he does, we have to stop and look 
at what bit us in the face to find the healing of God in that time. God 
made the people look at the very thing that caused their pain, grief, 
even death and He did not just say glance at it, but fix your eyes on 
it. 

When we are willing to face the pain of what is in the heart and we 
are willing to trust that God will heal it, God meets us there within 
that pain and He does show us truth of that thing and we will find 
healing. I personally know that the deeper the pain or wound or wrong 
done to us, the deeper it is hidden within our heart. The more the 
heart was hurt or torn, the deeper the wound gets hidden and the harder 
the heart becomes. You cannot find healing from God until you are 
willing to stare in the face the very thing that harmed you because it 
is rending your heart to God, exposing that thing to Him, that allows 
God the freedom to come to you and heal your heart. 

Many times that does feel like you are tearing open your heart with 
violence, it is painful to go to those times and places within our heart, 
but until you do, God cannot heal you and God will not have ALL of your 
heart. God is desiring to heal and have ALL of our heart in this time 
so that He can fill our hearts full of what He desires for us. 

Rend your heart, and God will pour out His Spirit upon you, and will 
fill it with new life from Him. God is calling His people to return to 
Him with ALL of their hearts so that He can fill us to a fuller measure 
of His Spirit within this time. 

God is wanting to sweep the land with His glory upon our lives for all 
to see, but until we rend our hearts fully to Him, His glory will not be 
fully seen by others within our lives. Rend your heart to the God who 
can heal it, return to Him with all of your heart, so others may see the 
glory of what the Lord Most High will do within the lives of His people.