Joel 2:12
Therefore also now,
says the LORD, turn you even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and
with weeping, and with mourning:
Luke 19:1-10
Jesus entered
Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he
was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but
being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed
a sycamore-fig tree to see Him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus
reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down
immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and
welcomed Him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone
to be the guest of a 'sinner.'” But, Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord,
“Look, Lord! Here and now I give half my possessions to the poor, and if I have
cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus
said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is
a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
When Zacchaeus returned to
God with all of his heart, salvation came to his home. We come to God and we
see no change in our situation. No change in our heart, no change in our life,
no change in our home. We want change, but the kind of change that happened to
Zacchaeus seems to be just out of reach. When we seek Him with our whole heart
we will find God.
Jeremiah 3:10
And yet for all this
her treacherous sister Judah has not turned unto Me with her whole heart, but
in pretense, says the LORD.
We try to add a little bit
of religion to our lives as if that is going to help us in some way. God
doesn't just want to improve your current life. He wants you to let go of your
life and ask Him for a new heart. A
heart that is soft, not a heart that is hard and unyielding. We become so
hardhearted over the years of our lives that we can no longer love, or give, or
respond to others with compassion like we once used to do. When God changes our
lives, the old life we once lived passes away and God makes us new.
What shall we say
then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we,
that are dead to sin, live any longer in it? Know you not, that so many of us
were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into
death: that just as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the
Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been
united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness
of His resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that
the body of sin might be destroyed, that we should no longer serve sin.
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