When You Fast CalebJoel 2:13August 27, 2026

Rend Your Heart And Not Your Coat

This message is for having done the outward part of every church fast for years, being able to describe the outside of each one perfectly, and knowing that the inside of him never once moved

He could give you a full account of every one of them.

That is the thing he noticed this year, and it landed on him sideways, the way the true ones do. He was at the sink, and he was thinking about the one four years ago, and he realized he could describe it in detail. What he did. When he started. How he handled the awkward lunch with the regional team. The exact moment on the Wednesday when it got difficult and he held on anyway, which he is, if he is honest, a little proud of.

Perfect recall of the outside. All of it.

And then he tried to remember what happened on the inside of any of them, and there was simply nothing there to remember. Not a bad thing. Not a disappointment. Nothing. Like reaching into a coat pocket you were sure had something in it.

Eleven years of these. He has led two. He has stood at the front and explained to other people what to expect, and he has been believed, because he sounds like a man who knows.

If you have got a shelf of them behind you and nothing you can point to on the inside of a single one, come and sit down. There is no exam here and nobody is going to ask you to account for the eleven years.

The loudest part was never the part He was after

There is a moment in Joel where God interrupts a national religious response, and He does it in the middle of the thing, not before it.

You have to know what tearing your clothes was, or the verse just sounds poetic. It was not a mood. It was the recognized, public, unmistakable sign of grief and repentance in that world. You did it standing up, in front of people, and it cost you a garment. It was sincere, most of the time. It was also entirely visible, every single time, which is the part that matters here.

And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.Joel 2:13

Notice He does not tell them to stop. He tells them to move the tearing inward.

That is a different instruction from the one most of us have heard preached off this verse. It is not: your outward thing was fake. It is: the outward thing is not where I am waiting for you. Come further in.

You have a God who has been waiting one layer underneath the part you have been maintaining. You have that on the word of God rather than on my read of your last eleven years (Joel 2:13), and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence like that and makes it warm instead of accusing.

The second half of the verse is the reason the first half is safe

Here is what gets left off when this verse is quoted, and leaving it off turns a kindness into a demand.

Read the rest of the sentence. For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. That word for is doing everything. It is not decoration. It is the reason given, attached to the instruction, in the same breath.

He is not asking for the inside of you because He wants a better look at the damage. He is asking for it because of what He is like, and He says what He is like in the same verse, before you have shown Him anything.

That is the whole difference between religion and this. Religion asks for the interior and gives you no reason to hand it over. God asks for the interior and tells you, first, that He is slow to anger and of great kindness, and then holds His hand out.

You are safe to open the part you have kept shut for eleven years, and the safety is His character and not your progress. It is written into that same verse, right after the instruction (Joel 2:13), and the same Spirit who moved on the prophet who wrote it is the one who makes a man at a sink able to believe it about himself.

The paragraph that outranks the teaching

I am stopping here to say the thing that outranks everything above it.

Some people must not go without food at all. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with food or with eating, if you are underweight, unwell, frail or elderly, or if you are simply not sure, speak to your doctor before you go without anything and let their answer stand. There is no length on this page, no kind of fast, no plan and no schedule, and there will not be one.

And the privacy in all of this is about audience, never about concealment. Telling your doctor is right. Telling your wife or husband is right. Telling whoever cooks in your house is right and it is basic courtesy. None of that is a failure of anything.

You are not behind anybody, and you were not being ranked while you thought you were. Romans 2:11 says God is no respecter of persons, and His Spirit has never once handed out a grade in a room where people were seeking Him.

If today is heavier than a page can hold, call somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight.

A picture, not an account

Picture a man who repaired the front of a house for nineteen years.

Every spring he painted it. He pointed the brickwork. He replaced the door furniture twice and the door itself once, and people slowed down when they walked past, and he liked that more than he would have said.

And inside, one room had been shut since his father died in it, and he had not opened that door in all of those nineteen years, and every year he painted the front instead.

A friend came for coffee one fall afternoon and asked, with no particular weight in it, what was behind the door at the end of the hall. And he said, without planning to say anything, that he did not know how to go in on his own.

So the friend said: then I will come in with you. And they went in that afternoon, and it took an hour, and they came out and had the coffee, which was cold.

That is a picture, not an account. It is not a promise about your week or a claim about anybody's life. It is here because somebody needs to see that the front of the house was never the problem, and that nobody was ever asking him to stop painting it.

You are being come in with, and you were never expected to open that door by yourself. That is not my reassurance, it is Hebrews 4:15 and 16, where the invitation to come is built on a High Priest who is not repelled by what He finds, and the Holy Spirit is the one who walks a man down his own hallway.

The breakthrough

So here is the turn, and it does not wait for you to go without a single thing.

You are wanted at the layer you have never shown anybody, and He was gracious and merciful before you got there. Joel 2:13 says that in the same breath as the instruction, on purpose, and His Spirit is not standing at the end of the hall with a clipboard.

Eleven years of the outward part are not eleven wasted years. Nothing you did was fraud. It was real and it was partial, and the difference between those two words is enormous and nobody preached it to you. He is not asking for the eleven years back. He is asking for the room.

Declare this over yourself

Say these out loud, in your own voice, wherever you happen to be standing. The standing to speak like this is yours in Christ and it does not rest on how much has moved in you so far. Scripture is the ground under it and the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely willing, and what God does in that room, and when, is His, however He answers.

Outward part I have got so good at, you are not the whole of me and you are not being taken away. God said rend your heart and not your garments, and He said it to people who were already tearing. In the name of Jesus I am coming one layer in.
Fear that the inside will disappoint Him, you are quiet and you are not His opinion of me. He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and He said so in the same verse before I opened anything, and His Spirit is settling that in me now. I am safe on His character.
Father, You have been one layer under the thing I kept painting, and You waited without complaint. I thank You that You told me what You were like before You asked me for the room. Here is the sentence I have never said, and I am not arranging it first.

Why we ask you to say these out loud