Weeping for the lost

Richard, You have asked an important question. The Bible doesn't give us a formula for weeping, but it does teach us about the value of weeping. Here are some comments from the scriptures. This may give you some food for thought.

[url=http://www.thewayback.net/articles/timetoweep.htm]A Time to Weep [/url]

"There is a time to weep
and a time to laugh."
Ecc. 3:4

"Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh".
Lk 6:21

"If we wept as much in the prayer closet as devout Jews have done at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, we would now be enjoying a prevailing, purging revival!"

"These great Revivalists - Evan Roberts of Wales, Jonathan Edwards of New England, and George Whitfield of England and America - were all great reapers in public because they well all great weepers in private."

"Bible schools don't teach 'tears'. They really cannot, of course. This is spirit taught; and a preacher, however weighed down with degrees and doctorates, has not gotten far unless he knows soul-bitterness over the sin of his day....The scholarly Ander Bonar lay on his bed on a Saturday in Scotland, and as the people below trampled the streets from the taverns and shows, he used to call from his tortured heart: 'Oh! They perish! They perish!' Alas, brethren, we have not so learned Christ. Many of us know only a sick, tearless, passionless soulless round of preaching, which passes for the minister's office these days."

"Oh, for a generation who will daringly and desperately pray with Jeremiah: 'Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain daughter of my people!' (Jer. 9:1)

L. Ravenhill

I know exactly what you mean. I have wept over family members and friends, but not for the lost in general. I try to always pray for the lost that if not me, someone would show them God's Truth, but no tears.

I often pray that God would break my heart for the lost, that I would see people the way He does.

Thanks for posting this.

Richard,
again, I am in complete agreement. I feel the same way.

Please don't think of me as arrogant or as a know-all. I'm not. But I have wept for the lost. It is painful, physically painful. You cry and weep until your stomach hurts, the tears flow and won't stop and you want the pain and misery of it to go away. One thing you do not do is try to work it up yourself. It just comes. Especially after a time of fasting. It just naturally enchances it. Maybe that is why the enemy tries to hinder Christians from fasting. Jesus said this kind does not go out except through prayer and fasting. He was refering to demon possession. However, just think what is broken when we do fast and pray.
Just seeing people when you go out on the streets, and seeing their lost condition can affect you. Some years ago I saw someone wearing a t-shirt with abusive language on it. It lead me to do a 5 day fast. If satan can have such perverted people, why can't God have holier people. We are first to seek God's glory, let Him do the rest. God bless.

Brethren,

While I may not have anything to offer in the way of a ‘doctrine’ of weeping per se, (regarding such formulas as suspect), I do value the force of conviction, humility, abasement, and repentance behind tears. As a somewhat ‘hostile’ witness to the revel of tears, because not all tears are Godly sorrow, and because there is no lasting power in sweet tasting emotionalism, I would like to share some recent conviction regarding this subject.

In coming to grips with the drastic need for revival, not for the church but for myself, I have indeed experienced tears. When I am aware of the distortion to the name of God that my Christianity has left in it’s wake, I understand weeping. When I realized that I have taught my children Christian morality, but have treated their conversions as a charming Sunday school rite, I comprehend the need for weeping. I could make this list longer, but I think the gears of your own conscience will either be engaged or not engaged at this point if need be. In short, when my heart soberly tastes just a little have the dept and greatness of how far the Church has fallen from grace, I confess that I have convulsed in sobs.

None of this means I am spiritual! It means I am merely sorry, sad, or concerned, because Godly repentance is not measured by tears, but by obedience. We weep, but do we turn from our own lives, even our own religious fancies, to God’s interests with the glory of eternity in clear view? If not, then consider that we are not alive in Christ, perhaps not even yet converted! Such is the state of tragic affairs today that these things need to be said to the church. It may be the wound of a friend to observe that many weeping in the church are in reality no closer to the Kingdom of God then the young rich man who walked away in sadness when the cost of discipleship was too great for him. Does weeping lead to turning? Then so, then our tears are from heaven!

My point is that we do not see how close to home the need for revival is. If you say that you are spirituality healthy then you should be the greatest intercessor! I do not believe tears begin with the lost, but for the church that has lost it’s way. This is a tiresome sermon I know, because we are little different then those lost who shrink from conviction with fear and unbelief, rather then respond with hope in God’s promises.

This is not a sermon but a self-admission. Does my self-focus keep me from simply seeing how Jesus has wept over the lost? Over our own hardened condition?

And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes.

How can one admit their guilt in the church today without being exonerated? We dread sorrow so much that we do not let it cut the fat from each other’s hearts…we apply a salve of psychology so quickly that we can hardly be broken enough for God to heal us. Yet how else can the winds of revival, the waters of life invade a heart unless it is broken? A heart shut up in it’s own security, even religious concerns, cannot pray for others, much less for revival. Christians are not disturbed from their sleepiness because they do not realize how close the Almost Christian is in Church on Sunday morning. Revival is for the church we say…

Let me end this unhappy post with some apt 17th century preaching from a Puritan named John Howe.

And that thou mayst not throw away thy soul and so great a hope, through mere sloth and loathness to be at some pains for thy life, let the Scriptures, which hath been thy directory about the things that belong to thy peace, be also thy motive, as it shows the Son of God weeping over such as would not know those things. Shall not the Redeemer’s tears move thee? O hard heart! Consider what these tears import to this purpose.

1. They signify the real depth and greatness of the misery into which thou are falling. They drop from an intellectual and most comprehensive eye, that sees far and pierces deep into things,… in all the horror of it. The Son of God did not weep vain and causeless tears, or for a light matter… “Weep not for me, O daughters of Jerusalem, but for yourselves and your children." He knows the value of souls, the weight of guilt, and how low it will press and sink them; the severity of God’s justice and the power of His anger, and what the fearful effects of them will be when they finally fall. If thou understandest not these things thyself, believe Him that did; at least believe His tears

2. They signify the sincerity of His love and pity, the truth and tenderness of His compassion. …remember that He who shed tears did, from the same fountain of love and mercy, shed blood too!

3. They show the remedilessness of thy case if thou persist in impenitency and unbelief till the things of thy peace be quite hid from thine eyes. These tears will then be the last issues of (even defeated) love, of love that is frustrated of its kind design… He even tells thee, sinner, “Thou hast despised My blood; thou shalt yet have My tears.” That would have saved thee, these (tears) do only lament thee lost. But the tears wept over others, as lost and past hope, why should they not yet melt thee,…

4. They signify how very intent He is to save souls, and how gladly He would save thine, if yet thou wilt accept of mercy while it may be had… And that love that wept over them that were lost, how will it glory in them that are saved! There His love is disappointed and vexed, crossed in its gracious intendment; but here, having compassed it, how will He joy over thee with singing, and rest in His love! And thou also, instead of being revolved in a like ruin with the unreconciled sinners of old Jerusalem, shalt be enrolled among the glorious citizens of the new, and triumph together with them in glory.

Turn our hearts if they are not facing heaven Lord,

MC

Hi Richard:

My advice to you is to seriously ask The Lord to give you a spiritual Glimpse into eternity. Ask Him to let you see the lost as He sees the Lost. Ask Him to let you see yourself as He sees you.

You will not ever be the same.

Regards,
-Brudel

Richard, I found the following testimony of parents weeping for their son and his praise for Jesus. It moved me. I hope it moves you too.

http://www.fireonthealtar.com/compilations/eric/IdRatherJesus2.MP3

MC, this is quite a meal you have set out. I would like to take just a wee bite.

My point is that we do not see how close to home the need for revival is.

We are called to care for the poor and oppressed. (Judgment fell on Israel for their failure to do so.) Many of us do not consider ourselves wealthy enough to give much. Yet according to statistics, if you make $5000 yearly you are in the top 15% of the world’s wealth. If you make over $50,000, you are in the top 2%. Apparently, if all Christians tithed, they could almost eradicate world poverty. … we spend millions on our pets…. and on and on…..

That’s only one point…..

I wonder, how often do I fail to meet a need – whether physical, emotional, or spiritual simply because I’m too insensitive to notice it – even though it may right before me.
I’m absorbed in my own incredible self-centeredness – my bent to be more concerned about my own needs, my righteousness, and my struggle to fit in to my society?

I wonder, how many of our social deviants and broken families are a sad expression of the failures of the church? Weren’t WE Christians the ones given the divine ministry of healing and reconciliation? Yet, we cloister ourselves in our churches. Statistically, after one has been in the church for 3 years, he has only 2 non-Christian friends. Sad isn’t it? ..... But then, we have the same social problems the rest of society has. Something is terribly wrong!

How can any of us point our fingers at the sinners ‘out there” without seeing our own partnership in the sins of our society and our world - though negligence and spiritual impotence?

Surely we do not need to discuss the virtues of weeping. We just need to face reality - and then – how can we not weep?

May God open our eyes.

Diane

Wonderful, Melissa. Thank you.
-BRudel

I would like to take just a wee bite

To be honest, I really appreciate it when our posts are given and recieved as 'public journaling' and certainly not some authoritative diatribe.

You can't have a revival in the nation before first a revival in our own hearts!

Amen Richard...how I have sought these things with my mind many times but still failed to recognize the implications for my heart. I suppose my last post was a public wrestling and confession of this failure.

Like Diane said, the fingers turn back on us. Not just for accusation, but also for pity and weeping. We are painfully aware that our own churches are mostly broken down vehicles of religion putting along on fumes of the great revivals of yesteryear, while many churches abroad are great churning engines of evangelism plowing through jungles, filling homes and streets of cities and villages, and passing through walls of prisons.

In response we are jealous for their attributes. We want tears or courage to do the things they do. Yet, the real problem is not so fragmented as some needing tears and others needing courage. It is much more basic...and painful to me.

We do not have a capacity to weep like Christ over the lost because we are not Christlike.

To be sure this is a much different calamity then suffering from some type of emotional constipation.

So let's join our hearts to these quite noble thoughts for revival! We have too much of the world filling our hearts! There is no room for Christ in our crowded over-burdened lives. There is little use in praying for tears if we are unable to first weep over our own lack of Jesus. There is little use in asking for fire to fall if there is no matter in our lives that we are willing to see burn.

Now like I said, I am not ranting here like some preacher. I realize how great a fool I've been spouting Christian things in the past without the fullness of Christ in my heart. Jonathan Edwards once said that the devils are good orthodox theologians; indeed they know very well the doctrines about the saving power of Jesus and the love of God for mankind. Yet they are never invited to participate or benefit from these great things like we are!

I bring this up with a renewed sense of hope for us North American Christians. It is true we have been duped by world religion...we have been preaching that Jesus has come to bring us the world and that more abundantly. Many of us eaten silently, if not enthusiastically at this happy anti-christ feast, and now are choking on the bones of it's dead meat. But praise be to God he pursues us with grace and favor that is not rooted in our merit, or worthiness, or usefulness...such wonderful persistence of the Love of God is rooted in Jesus! It is for His benefit and glory that we are given a new chance of repentance!

So let's repent! I am easily a qualified spokesman for American Christianity; so let me begin to offer confession. My life is a reflection of the neat divisions we Americans bring into our hearts...secular and sacred. What idolatry...how is this possible for a Christian? My question is not rooted in fear and failure...I feel like my sight is being restored and like the blind man sitting in God's house of prayer itself I am being asked, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?...who is standing before you?"

"Lord I believe!"

In trying to understand more of what was actually going on during the Great Awakening and other revivals I have recently been earnestly listening to their sermons. I have observed one great diving principle in all of these sober sermons. First they sought to push sin as far away from the heart of a Christian as possible...there was no mercy on sin, no understanding, no sensitivity, no clemency in context, no credit for effort, no grading on a scale. All sin was awful and deserving of God being our great dreadful enemy. Second they sought to affirm the trustworthy and sure hope that is in Christ for those souls afflicted with the agony of their remorse and repentance. They did not grade salvation on different levels...old and young, poor and rich, the wild and the civil, if they truly were in Christ they were totally and wonderfully saved! Each compartment of mankind, the lost and the saved, was completely sealed from each other by the infallible bulkhead of Jesus Christ.

Those preachers simply did not have our vocabulary of seeker-sensitive, purpose-driven gradualism when they preached the gravepassing transformation of true Gospel salvation.

As I hear those great messages, a new and deep faith falls on me. I realize they were talking not only to 17th century mankind...but also to all mankind! To me, my family, and church! If the souls of men in their day were just like our own souls, then it seems reasonable to conclude that the revival in our day can be just like the one in theirs! There is no need to over-burden ourselves with cultural relativity or post modern acumen...the question remains the same even for us culturally savvy, worldly wise Christians.

"Do you believe in the Son of God?"

"Lord I believe!"

I suspect that the man healed of his blindness in the temple that day had tears of joy falling from his restored eyes, when he finally saw Jesus for who he was.

A wee bite indeed!

You can't have a revival in the nation before first a revival in our own hearts!

….another nibble…. though not a sweet one….

If the souls of men in their day were just like our own souls, then it seems reasonable to conclude that the revival in our day can be just like the one in theirs!

I suspect that we will face the same social/cultural upheaval that Jeremiah did - the absolute toppling of his nation. Though we have many prominent “prophets” around who promise otherwise, I am not convinced. Perhaps I am too gloomy. At this time Jeremiah’s agony seems somewhat of a foreshadowing – before a future ingathering, or perhaps accompanying an ingathering:

5: 3 O LORD, do not your eyes look for truth?
You struck them, but they felt no pain;
you crushed them, but they refused correction.
They made their faces harder than stone
and refused to repent.
4 I thought, "These are only the poor;
they are foolish,
for they do not know the way of the LORD,
the requirements of their God.
5 So I will go to the leaders
and speak to them;
surely they know the way of the LORD,
the requirements of their God."
But with one accord they too had broken off the yoke
and torn off the bonds.
6 Therefore a lion from the forest will attack them,
a wolf from the desert will ravage them,
a leopard will lie in wait near their towns
to tear to pieces any who venture out,
for their rebellion is great
and their backslidings many.

6:10 To whom can I speak and give warning?
Who will listen to me?
Their ears are closed [a]
so they cannot hear.
The word of the LORD is offensive to them;
they find no pleasure in it.

Jer. 8:21- 9:3 “ Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn and horror grips me.”
“Oh that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears. I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.
Oh that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them; for they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people.”

Jer. 9:10 “I will weep and wail for the mountains and takes a lament concerning the desert pastures. They are desolate and untravelled, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. The birds of the air have fled and the animals are all gone. ”

14:7 Although our sins testify against us,
O LORD, do something for the sake of your name.
For our backsliding is great;
we have sinned against you.

Surely these words for us today – foreshadowing painful times:

"Change your laughter to mourning
and your joy to gloom…
Grieve, mourn and wail…
Your rich people, weep and wail
because of the misery that is coming upon you." James 5:1;4:9

Weep and wail, you shepherds,
roll in the dust, you leaders of the flock.
For your time to be slaughtered has come" Jer. 25:34

"Arise, cry out in the night,…
pour out your heart like water." am. 2:19

Yet I wish I could be as optimistic.

If you read 'optimism' in my thoughts then I need to work harder at my communication skills. Yes, we have been "praying for revival" for many years now. It is most wearisome.

Perhaps many of us should be praying for salvation first. Untill we undertstand this very real need, how can we believe we even have a need for revival? What need of God does Almost Christianity have?

If the evangelist and prophet, and even the new babe in Christ undermines our feeble security in creeds and doctrine...don't despise them but thank them! They are leading us to Christ.

I am not convinced, even by my own sorry experience, that any people in any age are beyond revival. I am hopeful that nothing can seperate us from the love of Christ, though it must be that the Church by and large has never entered into that grace they are so eloquent at preaching and singing about.

So for me reivival is not a renewal of something old but something much more undiscovered in the first place. Many talk about a revival that will make our saved churches spirit-filled hothouses of emotion, enthusiasm, passion and fervor.

As for myself, I am more pursauded that revival means that many repent of enthusiasm, passion and fervor and, through spirit born conversion, truly find hearts that naturally (or supernaturally if you prefer...) love God and our fellow men more then our own lives.

If we do not believe that eternal salvation needs to visit the 'House of God', even our own houses, then we really don't see the need for revival. Imagine the consequences of embracing deep repentance in false profession in the one we claim to love. It is salvation, and not enthusiasm, that will mark the seismic faultline of revival's quake in the church.

What else could produce such lamentations in the Church as you have pointed out!? " Weep and wail, you shepherds, roll in the dust, you leaders of the flock. For your time to be slaughtered has come"

So I really want to stress that my hope in the power of the Gospel is not based on optimism. The Gospel is told to be everlasting and eternal, not bested by any age, dispensation, government, or economy of men. Our problem is not that American churches don't want revival, as revival is all the rage these days. No, in simple truth, our churches don't want the Gospel. It's message is too abasing for us who are already righteous, but perhaps only lacking in sincerity, energy and fervor.

God can change that...and if His reaching us requires desconstruction of our illusions on a catastophic scale, then God be praised for his mercy to us.

Blessings dear sister!

MC

MC said to Diane:

If you read 'optimism' in my thoughts then I need to work harder at my communication skills

if His reaching us requires deconstruction of our illusions on a catastrophic scale, then God be praised for his mercy to us

the Church by and large has never entered into that grace they are so eloquent at preaching and singing about.

I had always assumed that the faulty foundation was the “world” or the Law, but now it is dawning on me that the “sandyland” is really all the void tickets, endorsed by our institutions. The world doesn’t need to fall apart in order for the sand to shift. It’s already shifting. Ex: declining church membership. Many churches are gasping their last breath - and there’s almost no one left to morn their departure. So in a sense the quake is already rumbling, although the faithful members are blissfully going on as usual with their baptisms and strawberry socials. And they’ve drifted too far on the other side of the ever-widening chasm to hear warnings. (I dreamed that once)

I suspect that the recent flash-in-the-pan versions of religion are here today and gone tomorrow, simply because they’ve uprooted everything good from the past, and haven’t replaced it with much substance. They are already a leaning tower ready to fall when their real trusts erode - ex economy and gov’t.

God still calls out:

" I despise your religious feasts;
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps. "mos 5:23

There will be a lot of misplaced grief when he pulls the plug because “things aren’t the way they used to be”:

"You flood the Lord's altar with tears.
You weep and wail
because he no longer pays attention to your offerings
or accepts them with pleasure.

But there will be very little weeping because souls weren’t being saved in our religious system.

I think Jeremiah wept most over man’s resistance, and the destruction they invited on themselves.

The wrath of God is being revealed….
…. They neither glorified him as God, nor gave thanks to him” Rom. 1:18,21

“Give glory to the Lord your God
before he brings the darkness,
before your feet stumble on the darkening hills.
You hope for light,
but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom.”

our churches don't want the Gospel. It's message is too abasing for us who are already righteous,

“But if you do not listen
I will weep in secret,
because of your pride;
my eyes will weep bitterly overflowing with tears,
because the Lord’s flock will be taken captive.” Jer. 13:15-17

And so “optimism” - in the sense that God’s mercy will prevail, is sobered with grief over the implications of “deconstruction” for our fellow friends, families, and society in general.

Diane

Maybe the “ticket” is the greatest idol, and that’s why challenging its validity is such a threat.

You said it Diane.

I'm not sure if you had only the idea of "cheap grace" in mind...or if your ticket metaphor could be anything magic key we think will resolve all our struggles and doubts. I definately have a penchant for finding a new "ticket" and running headlong without the Lord.

Well, Richard, if your reading this, I hope I didn't stray to far from your original question. It is a good thing you want, to share in Jesus' tears for the lost. Surely the Lord is moved by such prayers. Your heart reminds me of an Amy Carmichael poem that has stayed with me.

"How has thou known me?

Oh my Lord I have known thee on the road to Galilee.

I see you have known me on the roads to Galilee. Where else hast thou known me?

My Lord, I have known thee on the tossing sea.

On the tossing sea thou hast known me. Where else has thous known me? Hast thou known me in Gethsamane?

For I would have thee know me, thorn crowned and nailed to a tree. I would have thee know me all the way to Calvary."

MC