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How to Repent — Continued... |
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Part 5... Why You Can be Sure that Repentance with Delight Will Help You to Drink from God! (I consider this among the top 5 most important pages on this site)
The Heart-training Promise! Note that this information occurs 2 times on this web! Skip it here if you already read it in the "Heart-training!" section. In that section it is under the button called "Why Heart-training Works."
A Conditional Guarantee The "Heart-training Promise" is my name for a wonderful guarantee from God that repentance will help you feed on Him. The promise is that if we delight to fast from feeding ourselves by earthly means we will take delight in Him and He will feed us! This promise is a powerful reason for strongly committing to the task of turning your heart toward God. Let me say it another way. If you use delight as a tool for "dying" to earthly ways of feeding yourself, then you will find you can feed on God! Heart-training! is designed to help you apply this promise and experience God "feeding" you as a constant reality in your life! The rewards are great and they are real! Because of the scriptures and because of my own experience, I know that this promise from God works. Let yourself to be fully convinced that God's promise will work for you!
A Wonderful Promise in Isaiah 58 Isaiah 58 is a chapter that is commonly understood as talking about fasting from food. When you look closely, you will find that it is talking about fasting from filling our desire for God by earthly means. It is also about God feeding us because we are fasting from earthly sources. The chapter begins by saying, "Cry loudly, do not hold back; raise your voice like a trumpet, and declare to My people their transgression..." (Isa. 58:1). That is God’s way of trying to get our attention. It goes on to say, "Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways, As a nation that has done righteousness And has not forsaken the ordinance of their God. They ask Me for just decisions, They delight in the nearness of God" (Isa. 58:2). These are good things to do, but the passage shows how we are missing other things that should be dealt with first. It even talks about how God’s people fast from food. But it also says, "...Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire, And drive hard all your workers. Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with a wicked fist. You do not fast like you do today to make your voice heard on high" (Isa. 58:3,4). Fasting from food is a good thing. But here we see that right at the same time while we are doing all our religious activities, we are being glutenous when it comes to "finding our desire" in sinful ways. Have you ever wondered why you can be doing something deeply spiritual and suddenly get angry or be off into some area of sin? The reason is because our basic need for God’s presence is crying out and we are ignoring it. Our disbelief about the grace of God to experience His presence—as we desire—leaves us empty, aching, and desperate to find something that will ease the pain. In our disbelieving and yet needy state, even though it feels like we are seeking God—even to the point of fasting from food—we are filling ourselves with earthly substitutions for God. We were designed to enjoy God—and that includes enjoying the closeness of His sovereign power. But in our disbelief, we twist the goodness of God’s power and feed ourselves with the only kind of power we think we can experience—ours. We are seeking God, but we aren’t finding Him—as we desire because we "find our desire" by driving people hard. We are also "striking with our fist" in order to get God to do what we want (v. 3,4). Doing so is idolatry. We are idolizing ourselves. The problem is that most of us don’t even realize what we are doing wrong. We want God. We were designed to enjoy His power. But because we don’t believe the grace of God to experience Him, God has given us over to earthly pursuits to the point where we are blinded to being able to see what we are doing. Rather than receiving an abundance of God’s presence out of simple faith, we are given over to trying to achieve a sense of being sovereign gods ourselves—and we aren’t doing a very good job of it. We keep twisting everything into something evil—however subtle it often seems. Next, God asks a question, "...Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord?" (Isa. 58:5). The interesting thing here is that even though He is still talking about fasting He isn’t talking about food. It says, "Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke?" (Isa. 58:6). God wants a kind of fast from us where we stop feeding ourselves by earthly means. We need to fast from the hidden sins of our heart. Just a few verses later He says,
We need to turn from pointing our finger in accusing ways. Speaking of wickedness should not be our delight. We need to fast from feeding ourselves because of how hard we worked to make our "voice heard on high." The promise is that if you repent so as to remove this yoke of bondage "your gloom will become like midday." It is not a fast from physical food that God is talking about. It is a fast of the soul that God is talking about here. We need to fast in order to be able to feast on God. This passage says we are also to satisfy the desire of the afflicted (v. 10). What is that? The desire of the afflicted is that they want God just like you and me. Earlier in Isaiah it says,
The "afflicted" are so needy for God that He likens them to dry land. Isaiah explains, "For I will pour out water on the thirsty land And streams on the dry ground; I will pour out My Spirit on your offspring And My blessing on your descendants" (Isa. 44:3). The desire of the afflicted is that they want God. It is God’s strong intention to satisfy that desire! God wants to give them the water of His presence. He wants to pour the Holy Spirit upon them. When you apply your effort to help them satisfy that desire it says, "And the Lord will continually guide you, And satisfy your desire in scorched places, And give strength to your bones; And you will be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail" (Isa. 58:11). The fast God wants first is a fast of the soul from sinful substitutions for the presence of God. The passage also says, "Then your light will break out like the dawn, And your recovery will speedily spring forth; And your righteousness will go before you; The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard" (Isa. 58:8). Do you want the glory of God as your "rear guard?" Humble your soul from earthly ways of easing your desire for God. Fast in order to feast. Next the passage talks about the sabbath. At first it may seem like He has changed subjects. He has not. Let me remind you again of the purpose of the sabbath, "It is to be a sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute" (Lev. 16:32). God's intention behind the sabbath rest is for us to humble our soul. Any time you see the word "sabbath" think of it as God’s way of teaching us the importance of humbling our soul.
An If...Then Promise Now consider this "If...then" statement. I call it the "Heart-training promise." The verses below will make more sense if you substitute the word "sabbath" for it’s underlying purpose (Lev. 16:32). I have replaced the phrase "the sabbath with the phrase, "humbling your soul." Each time I did this I put it in brackets.
In other words, if we delight to humble our soul from feeding ourselves with our own pleasure and the influence of our words, then we will take delight in the Lord! I call this passage the "Heart-training promise" because if we delight to rest—if we delight to fast from earthly sources—the promise is that God will feed us with the "heritage" of Jacob. To me, the "heritage," refers to Jacob having received a blessing from God. The Bible says he wrestled all night with what seems to have been an angel. Jacob wouldn’t let go until the angel blessed him. For us, it is different. Jacob wrestled with and angel, we have to wrestle with our own heart. Like Jacob we have to cling to the Lord, but we don’t have do anything to force God give us His blessing. The blessing we receive comes to us via the shine from Jesus face!
All we have to do is wrestle with the misplaced faith of our heart until we find freedom to enter the throne room and draw near to the Lord. There we can enjoy the thrill of all the attributes of God as He shines His presence upon us. That God wants to make us "ride on the heights" and "feed us" are promises that He will fill our thirsty desires with Himself. The Heart-training promise is this: if you delight to rest from earthly ways of filling our desire for God, then you will delight in the Lord and He will feed you with the closeness of His power, love, kindness, justice. Entering God’s rest involves fasting in order to feast. Another way of saying it is that we need to delight to die to self. Jesus said it this way,
Taking up our cross is a delight because it means we get to "die" to the pressure we feel to work until we achieve a sense of having glory. Based on Isa. 58, if we delight to humble our soul—if we delight to die to faith in our own ability to achieve and earn—then we will take delight in the Lord. If we delight to humble our soul, we will find faith in God’s grace and He will feed our thirsty soul! Have you ever felt, "under the pile?" That burden is not the result of carrying the cross of Christ. We all struggle and have circumstances that make life difficult, but those difficulties are the "cross" that Jesus was talking about. The load that weighs us down is not the cross of Christ. The load we carry is the result of a deeply held belief that we are responsible to achieve glory that somehow would make us feel equal to God. The cross is a far lighter. It is a joy to carry our cross when we keep in mind that we are dying to our earthly dependencies in order to turn and be "feed" on God. Repentance and change in accordance with the old covenant depends on how hard you work at changing your behavior using fear and guilt as motivation. Using delight and pleasure to help get our heart to hear is a new covenant approach to changing from the inside out. Like a sleigh that glides on snow when drawn by a strong horse, you can use your thirsty desires to pull you toward God. When you do something right and you honor yourself for it inside, take note of what it feels like. Then with those same feelings directed toward God, thrill your heart by praise toward Him and His closeness to you. Delight in His sovereign power to answer prayer. Delight in His power to accomplish His goals for the kingdom of God. He is your God. Don’t be afraid, nor hesitate to enjoy His closeness as your adequacy. Make God your boast. Let me say again that we treasure sources we depend on. We delight in them. Behaviors—including our pursuit toward God—track the ways our heart delights to "drink." Therefore, changing our behavior and growing spiritually works best if we focus our effort on changing the treasures and loves of our heart—by delight toward God. The principle is this: Delight is a powerful tool for helping to open the ears of your heart so that you can more repent and turn to God. You don’t have to keep hiding from God. Delight can help you to run toward Him. Delight can help you enter God's rest. Delight your heart into hearing that, "My pleasure is not to come to the place where I deserve God’s presence. Lord, I love that I can draw near to You and that it is by my trusting You to come that You draw near to me here." Delight can help your heart to hear, "The pleasure I long for will never come from sexual sin or lust. It is the presence of God that is my thrill and my pleasure. Lord I turn to You." Use great delight in your tone of voice to help you turn. Thank the Lord that, "The pleasure I want most will never come from my getting more toys—only the Lord satisfies my longings. Lord, I love that Your presence is so readily available—I can thrill my heart with You." Remember what Jesus said about our "receiving glory" from earthly sources and not from God (John 5:44). It is repentance that helps you turn to God and receive from Him that works. You have to replace what you are trying to receive apart from God. It is because of what God offers freely that you can delight to humble your soul. Delight to watch your earthly attachments shrivel so that you don’t drink by those means. Increase your delight in the Lord by thanking Him concerning the many ways you don’t have to "drink." If you delight to rest from earthly substitutions for God, then you will take delight in the Lord—and He will feed you with the blessing that shines from His face. As you listen to your thanks and praise, let the delight in your tone of voice be extreme and unreserved. Similar to when you delight yourself in earthly ways of finding refuge and strength, thrill your heart by thinking about the closeness of God’s attributes touching you all around. Delight to fast in order to feast on God. The "Heart-training Promise" will work for you!
Please consider supporting this ministry with prayer and by purchasing the ebooks. Thanks. Goes to one example in the "Heart-training! Index"
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I am praying for the Lord's abundant blessing on your efforts to direct your heart toward Him.
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Heart-training — Continued...
(C) Barry Hall 1999 Information on this site may be reproduced for personal or for instructional purposes if it is not being used for resale. If a page is distributed for instructional purposes, the web address must be included. Printed quotes must include the authors name and the web address. Quotes for use in publications intended for resale need the written permission of the author. All rights reserved. Scriptures are taken from the updated NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, © Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1987, 1988, The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Other scriptures are from the New International Version or Amplified Bible as noted. Bold emphasis in the scriptures quoted here has been added by the author of this site. |
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