Heart

In my devotional time yesterday I read from Joel where God says to wayward Israel "Rend your heart and not your garments."  In that culture tearing (rending) your garments was a way of showing remorse or sorrow or grief over some incident or calamity that had befallen you or your family or your nation. Often people who were sorry for something would tear their clothes and sit in a pile of ashes to show their contrition.  It was all for public display, supposedly to show what was going on inside, to show that they were truly sorry in their hearts for what had happened.  Obviously it had become a ritual, a spectacle, that meant nothing and did not equate with the state of the person's attitude or heart.  They would tear their clothes, sit in mourning, and meanwhile, inside, they would be planning their next crime.  They were not sorry for anything they had done, they just wanted people to think they were sorry.  What was worse, they wanted God to think they were sorry too.
But 1 Samuel 16:7 reminds us that God does not look on the outward appearance.  Instead, God looks at our hearts.  He wants to know if we are truly sorry.  He wants to know if we feel genuine remorse for our actions and for the harm we have caused.  He wants a heart broken so that he can remake it.  He does not want torn garments that we can mend ourselves with a needle and thread the next day once we think we've fooled everyone.
I have to ask myself every morning where my heart is.  I have to ask myself every morning if my heart is broken enough for God to remake it.  These last three weeks, alone in Vegas, have been a time for God to break and rebuild my heart.  I can't exactly explain it, but something is going on inside of me that I have never felt, or perhaps acknowledged, before.  I mean I am certainly not perfect or where God fully wants me, and I know I still have lots to learn and lots of areas to grow in, but for the first time in a while, I feel my heart slowly being mended and re-created by God.  It's a gradual process, but it feels good.  The best part is that slowly I am noticing how it changes how I think and act and treat people.  I'm starting to see evidence of the transforming work of God in my heart in my daily life.  How I think, how I process, how I re-act are beginning to change.  Again, not perfect, but beginning.  Now I am trying to find a way to symbolize this transformative work of God in an outward way.
It's kind of like going to the gym. I've been going to the gym 6 days a week for the past three weeks.  I get up at 5:45 every morning and work out for an hour and a half.  I am also starting to run (well, jog actually,....o.k. fast walk....).  My point is this: I want to see and feel results immediately.  I want to see muscle, I want to see my belly disappear overnight, I want to be able to enjoy running but it doesn't happen after one or two trips to the gym.  It's only now, after three solid weeks of faithful gym attendance that I am beginning to see and feel some tiny differences.  Today, for the first time, I was able to jog for a solid half hour without stopping and without feeling like my lungs were going to explode and I was going to puke all over the track.  Jo told me last night while we were on Skype that she can actually see some difference in my chest and arms.  Finally, there are some outward signs of what I am beginning to feel inside.
Some of us get so hung up on the outside, that we work endlessly to look good without realizing that it all starts from the inside and that without the inside change coming first, the outside thing will never last, and for as long as it remains, it will only be fake.  Like taking steroids. You might look good on the outside, but inside you don't match up, and what is worse, you can't live up to the life you are trying desperately to portray.  (I am reminded of the great Saturday Night Live skit on the steroid olympics where the olympians were allowed to take steroids and they looked huge but then their arms kept breaking off when they went to lift heavy weights because they weren't as strong as they looked.)
So, in the words of the prophet Joel, stop faking an outward change and start letting God change you inside so that the outward change is real and will last.  That is the only way to stay alive.