Rended

"Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Joel 2:12-13

Rend (verb): To lacerate mentally or emotionally

Six months ago, Jesus showed up.  And then...everything changed.

I didn't know Him before.  I only knew what people told me He was.  He isn't that.  I don't know who He is exactly, but it's not that.  He is completely other.  You know another word for other - Holy.  Yeah, I've heard that word a lot before.  But the people who were telling me about Holy - well they didn't quite get across that "other" idea.  In English, Holy means religious, moral, divine.  In Hebrew - it means totally other, separate, set apart.

Jesus isn't religious - He is other.  He is not like us.  His thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways, and His perception is nothing like ours.  That has been a truth that is sinking in deep to me lately.  I have what you might call - shattered sight.  They way I see things are not the way they truly are.

I am starting to get this weird sense of Him.  Or rather, things that are of Him, and things that are not.  Ideas that come from Him, and ones that are lies.

I have also been feeling, what I now understand this morning, as a complete rending of my heart.  The last few days have been horrible.  I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but reading Joel this morning, I can see it was a weeping, fasting, and mourning over what I have been chasing and calling my God.  

You see, God has clearly called me to leave the current local body I have been attending and even helped start seven years ago.  And I haven't obeyed.  I have rationalized, made excuses, and just plain stubbornly stayed - and then called it being a "good Christian".  I even made it in my mind "bad" to obey God.  "Good" Christians don't leave churches.  You never leave your church.  

I have wrestled and even plain ignored God all weekend.  Seriously.  I didn't even crack my bible.  I gorged myself in TV.  And when Sunday came around I snoozed the alarm and didn't go to the new church that I clearly know God wants me at.  And the next two days I spent mourning.  Mourning my stubbornness, my disobedience, and my idol.  My idol was my church.  Not His church, my church.  The church I helped build.  The church I worked so hard at.  The church where I have "paid my dues" so to speak.

Even the enemy was shooting arrows at me - planting thoughts in my head that Jesus blasted through this morning:

Enemy:  You're an instigator!  A trouble maker!  I thought good Christians were supposed to be peacemakers.  What kind of person leaves a church?  You're sowing unrest!

Jesus:  You have only shared your thoughts with one other mature Christian in your current body.  Everyone else you sought for counsel has been outside the local body.  You have done anything but sown discord.  To everyone else you have been positive and uplifting about the body.  You can leave well, knowing you are not making this choice lightly.  In fact, you aren't making it at all.  I AM.

Can't argue with that.  So I'll end with this

So let go my soul, and trust in Him.  

The waves and wind still know His name.