Tearing your clothes and putting on other outward displays of religious emotion? Easy. Anyone can do that. And plenty of hypocrites do. But true repentance? That's another matter entirely. Far more difficult, and therefore far less common.

People will follow the most elaborate religious ceremonies down to the smallest detail. Why? Because such things please the flesh. But real faith? It's too humbling, too searching, too thorough for those who love their sin. They prefer something flashier, something shallow, something that lets them keep one foot in the world.

Outward religious performances bring temporary comfort. The eyes and ears are entertained. Pride is stroked. Self-righteousness swells up like a balloon. But it's all a delusion in the end. When death comes knocking, when you stand before the judgment seat, your soul will need something far more substantial than ceremonies and rituals to lean on.

Listen: without genuine godliness, all religion is utterly worthless. Every form of worship offered without a sincere heart is nothing but a solemn sham. It's an impudent mockery of the majesty of heaven.

True heart-rending is something God himself creates in you. It's a secret grief that you experience personally, not as some religious performance, but as a deep, soul-shaking work of the Holy Spirit in the innermost chambers of your heart. This isn't something you merely talk about or give mental agreement to. Every true child of God feels it keenly, sensitively, personally.

It humbles you to the dust. It purges sin completely. But then, beautifully, it prepares you to receive those gracious comforts that proud, unbroken hearts can never taste. And mark this: it belongs only to God's chosen ones. To them alone.

God commands us to rend our hearts. But our hearts are naturally as hard as marble. How can stone be torn? We must take them to Calvary. A dying Savior's voice split the rocks once, and that voice has lost none of its power. O blessed Spirit, let us hear the death cries of Jesus! Then our hearts will be torn as surely as mourners once tore their garments in grief.