Below is a short devotion in outline form for the need and the steps that God proclaimed to the prophet Joel to bring revival to the land. Anyone can plainly see America is on the brink. We need morality and Godliness in our nation. God is so merciful to hear and forgive out sins. Please take a moment to read and pray through the devotion. Remember mercy is not getting what we deserve. 

    A Call To Repentance (Joel 1:13-15)

Warning

a. Gird yourselves and lament, you priests: Joel called the religious leaders to lead the nation in repentance. He told the priests to gird yourselves for repentance, the idea being “prepare to do the work of repentance.”

i. Joel also told them how to do the work of repentance.

· Consecrate a fast: Make getting right with God so important that even eating isn’t significant.

· Call a sacred assembly: Call for God’s people to come together and repent.

· Gather the elders: Bring the elders together to lead in this act of repentance.

· Into the house of the LORD your God: Come to the place where you should meet together with God.

· And cry out to the LORD: Finally, simply cry out to God and trust that He will respond in mercy.

Joel 2:12-17

Action

a. Now, therefore…turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning: Because they heard the warning of judgment, God’s people should repent. It doesn’t make their repentance less valid because they had to be scared into it. The important thing is that they turn back to the LORD in sincerity, and God tells them how.

i. Sincere repentance is to turn to God, and therefore away from our sin.

ii. Sincere repentance is done with all your heart, giving everything you can in surrender to God.

iii. Sincere repentance is marked by action (with fasting) and emotion (with weeping…mourning). Not every act of repentance will include fasting and weeping, but if action and emotion are absent, it isn’t real repentance.

Rend your heart, and not your garments: One expression of mourning in Jewish culture was, and is, the tearing of the clothes. It was a way to say, “I am so overcome with grief that I don’t care if my clothes are ruined and I look bad.” Joel knew that someone could tear their garments without tearing their heart, and he described the kind of heart-repentance that really pleases God.

Spare Your people, O LORD, and do not give Your heritage to reproach: Joel puts a rich prayer of repentance into the mouths of God’s priests. It’s as if the priests should pray with the thought, “How can we persuade God to have mercy on us?”

i. Spare: This implies that God’s people deserve judgment, but they plead for mercy.

ii. Your people: This reminds God that they belong to Him and provides another motivation for mercy.

iii. Do not give Your heritage to reproach: This tells God that mercy to His people will bring Him glory among the nations and that judgment may bring His name into discredit.

Joel 2:28-32

Result

It shall come to pass afterward: After the restoration Joel spoke of previously in the chapter, there will come a time of ultimate restoration and blessing. This latter time will be marked by an outpouring of God’s Spirit on all flesh – not only selected men at selected times for selected duties. Rh