Return to God with all your heart

We meet for the verse of the day and I am happy to share it with you. Let's read Joel, chapter 2, verses 12 and 13: "The Lord declares: "Come back to me with all your heart, it is still time. Fast, weep, sing songs of mourning! It is not your clothes that must be torn, it is your heart that must be changed". Yes, return to the Lord, your God. He is full of tenderness and pity, patient, full of love, and he regrets his threats". "It's not your clothes that need to be torn, it's your heart that needs to be changed"!

For our Lord, it is our heart and not the surface of our life. He wants our heart, he doesn't want half of it, not three-quarters of it, but he wants it all. The Lord invites us to return to him with all our heart.

Do you also sometimes get away from God? Do you ever get so caught up in day-to-day worries or greater trials that you forget about God or put him aside? What happens is that little by little, we take our hearts away from him.

As long as you live, you have the possibility of returning to God. It's called repentance. God ardently desires that we return with all our hearts to him. There are so many stories in the Bible of men and women whom God called to turn the hearts of his people back to him.

Like Elijah whom God sends in a situation where the people were divided between God the Eternal and the god Baal. Their feet were dancing on both sides, their heart was not entirely with God the Eternal, and this situation could not remain like this. Because God does not want just a part of our heart, no, he wants the whole of our heart. That's why he sent the prophet Elijah to go and speak to the people. Except that the people said nothing. We can read this story in 1 Kings 18 to 21.

So, Elijah will propose a challenge so that the people can recognize who the true God is. He proposes that the two parties, the prophets of the god Baal, 450 prophets, and himself, prophet of the Eternal, offer in sacrifice, an ox, and the one where the fire will come down from heaven to consume the sacrifice would be the true God - I tell the story a bit in a nutshell and I invite you to read it, it's really very interesting.

The 450 prophets of Baal tried everything, they even performed rites, dances, they implored their god Baal to come and consume the sacrifice, but nothing! Right after, it's Elijah's turn. He is so sure of the veracity of his God that he will even wet the sacrifice; he will do everything to make it humanly impossible to burn.

And there, Elijah's prayer, which I think is a key to this story, in 1 Kings 18 verses 36 and 37, he says, "Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel! Show today Today that you are the God of Israel, show that I am your servant and that I act on your command! Answer me Lord, answer me, then people will know that it is you the Lord who is God and so you will bring their hearts back to you!" "And so you will bring their hearts back to you"!

Here is one of the stories where we see the importance for God to have all our heart. It hasn't changed for you today! God desires your whole heart. God loves the heart that humbles itself, recognizes its mistakes, asks forgiveness and comes back to Him. He is full of tenderness and pity, patient and full of love.

So, no matter how far you have gone from God, no matter how bad your gap is, or finally no matter what other gods you have had so far in your life, the most important thing is that you can make a decision today to return with your whole heart to God the Eternal. He's waiting for you, it's not too late. God loves you so much that he wants you whole.

So take this as an invitation from God to give your whole heart to him. If so, then great! Go on and if you walked away, then take this chance to come back to him now.

Pray with me: "Lord, here I am, I give you my whole heart",

Amen!

Darya