“Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning, and render your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love, and he relents over disaster.”
– Joel 2:12–13
What an invitation from God to us. Whenever we sin, whenever we rebel against God’s ways, which we’re all prone to do. Whenever we turn, aside from his ways and our thoughts, our desires, our words, our actions, that God would say to us, “Return to me with all your heart. Return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and he is merciful, and he is slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love.” Is that not good news? That God the holy, just completely pure God over all the universe, against whom we have sinned and we deserve internal judgment, to know that he is gracious and merciful and slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love.
Joel 2:12–13 Teaches Us that Our God is Merciful and Gracious
Remember that, one, in a way that keeps you from sinning, in a way that keeps me from sin to remember that his ways are good. He’s gracious and merciful and loving, that we can trust his ways far more than we can trust our own ways. And then when we do foolishly, unwisely sin against God, let’s be quick to return. And I would even encourage us based on Joel 2:12, “Return me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning.” I would encourage you, as you struggle with sin, let one of your first impulses be to return to God with fasting, to set aside food for a period of time and to say, “God, I don’t want this world, even the basic daily necessity of food. I want you more than that. I want to walk with you. I want to be a holy more than I want to be full.” To set aside food and with weeping and mourning, to mourn over sin to say, “I hate it, God, I want to turn from it. I want to return to you.”
Joel 2:12–13 Encourages Us to Resist Temptation
Return to Him with all your heart. Oh God, help us to one, resist temptation today. We pray that you would keep us from sin in every way by the power of your spirit in us. And God, if we do turn from you in any way, God make our spirits sensitive to that in such a way that we are quickly convicted and we quickly return to you by your grace and by your mercy. And according to your steadfast love. God, help us to return to you with all our hearts. God, even as I pray that, I just think about us as your church. Lord, help us to return to you from all the ways that we are compromising with the world and culture around us. God, help us to return to you with fasting, with weeping, with mourning, with all of our hearts.
Praying for the Muslims in South Sudan
God, we pray. We want our hearts to be pleasing to you. We want to love you with all of our heart and all of our soul, and all of our mind and all of our strength. So help us to turn continually to you, to trust continually in you, and if, when we fall, to return to you quickly. And God, before we close, we pray this spirit of returning and turning to you over the Mongallese Arab people of South Sudan, this Muslim people group. Hundreds of thousands of them, no known followers of Jesus. God, we pray that He would send laborers to the Mongallese of South Sudan, who call them to turn to you, Jesus. And they would experience your grace and your mercy and your steadfast love. We pray that over to Mongallese Arabs of South Sudan. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
