12 Therefore also now, says the Lord, turn and keep on coming to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning [until every hindrance is removed and the broken fellowship is restored].

13 Rend your hearts and not your garments and return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness; and He revokes His sentence of evil [when His conditions are met]. – Joel 2:12-13, Amplified Bible (AMP)

Where I live, the average greeting when two people meet includes the statement, “Hello!”, and the question, “How are you today?” One of my standard responses to the question is, “I’m living the dream!” This response usually gets a laugh, and then the other person will comment, “I want in on that dream!” Every now and then, I’ll follow that response with this comment, “I didn’t tell you what kind of dream it was. Come on down with me into the gutter!” Another chuckle usually follows.

There are times in life when things don’t go our way, and during those times it does feel like we are living in the gutter. Such times are not fun, but they have a valuable benefit: they cause us to seek God with all of our hearts. I don’t know why, but for some reason we don’t yearn for God’s involvement in our lives when things are going well. When we are desperate, however, and all of our resources are exhausted, we turn to the one place we should have turned to in the first place: God!

When we turn to God, we need to understand that He can tell the difference between a superficial nod in His direction and a true humbling of the soul. The superficial nod won’t restore our broken fellowship. True humility, described in Joel 2:13 as a “rending of the heart,” is what is needed. To “rend” means “to remove from place by violence, to split or tear apart or in pieces by violence, and to tear (the hair or clothing) as a sign of anger, grief, or despair.” With grief and despair for our sin, we must violently rip pride, self-trust, self-reliance, and self-gratification from our hearts, and once we do, we’ll make room for the love of Christ that’s been missing far too long.

Yeah, it’s not fun being in the gutter. But when you emerge on the other side holding hands (in a spiritual sense) with the Savior, it is worth having been there.