“Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” –Joel 2:12

So it begins…our 21 day Focus Fast where we are denying ourselves to focus on God’s voice to give us clarity about the coming year.  For me, the single greatest point of the fast is making a concerted effort to return to God and to “repent”, to turn around back to God in ways that I had wandered from him.

Are there areas of your heart areas where you need to repent?  Maybe forgiveness that you need to issue or a critical spirit that you find keeps popping up?  Perhaps jealousy or rage or lust are heart sins in your life.  Whatever they may be, offer your heart before God for what it is, with all the blemishes that may be there.

Beyond the heart, this passage speaks of weeping and mourning in connection with fasting.  Our sins, when reflected on in the light of God’s Word, should strike our hearts with grief.  It has been our sins, after all, that sent our Lord to his cross.

May God today heighten your awareness of your need to repent, to return to  the Lord “with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.”