Weeping for Ourselves

6/2/1996

Teach us, O Lord what it really means to rend our hearts instead of outer things.

Teach us, O God what we do not see about our hearts and of Your ways.

And Father, deal with our carnal desires to move in Your power but not live the life

And to love our neighbor with all that we have

And to keep our tongues from saying things we have not seen.

Oh, break our hearts with the things that break Yours.

If we sow in tears we will reap in joy

That we might pass through Your refining fire

Where brokenness awaits on the other side.

Raise up an army like Joel saw

Your Church that is stronger than ever before.

They do not break rank when they plunge through defenses

But the fear of the Lord will be their wisdom

That they might weep as Jesus wept

A fountain of tears for the wounded and lost.

Who ever heard of an army of God

That conquered the earth by weeping and mourning and brokenness?

But there will be a day when the nations will bow

And our Lord will be King over all the earth

And He will be the only one

And also His Name will be the only one.

(“Break our Hearts” Copyright 1992 Kevin Prosch)

The lyrics to that song give the idea that the mourning, the weeping and the brokenness were for other people. That theme is accurate, that it’s an army that overcomes satanic powers over the face of the earth by weeping and mourning and brokenness. That is accurate. But it’s not necessarily a weeping and mourning because we have such compassion for people’s lostness. That will certainly be the case at times, but the fact is, that in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus wasn’t weeping over lost souls. He was weeping because of Himself. He hurt and He didn’t want to go through what the Father wanted Him to go through. He was weeping and sweating drops of blood for Himself.

As it says in Colossians 2, satan is triumphed over only on the Cross, and the Cross means that we’re willing to be humiliated and we’re willing to suffer unfair things. The Cross was unfair. The thing that the Father wanted Him to do was unfair. It was totally illogical and unfair and unreasonable. It was humiliating. It was painful and it was degrading. But it was what God wanted in order to redeem others.

So Jesus’ tears and His mourning in that case weren’t about, “Oh, all these lost people.” He did weep for lost souls, no doubt. He did weep over Jerusalem, “I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks.” But that’s not the only kind of weeping that the army of God encounters. Sometimes they encounter weeping in the process of wanting to remove the thorn in the flesh, the buffeting, the messenger from satan. Paul wasn’t weeping in 2 Corinthians for lost souls. He was weeping and crying out to God three times that the thorn in the flesh and the discomfort to himself would be removed. He wanted the unfair beating that he was taking to go away—that’s why he was weeping in 2 Corinthians. And yet God said, “My strength is perfected in your weakness.”

It is true that God will overcome the enemy and bless the nations through our weeping and our mourning and our brokenness. But it’s not just a righteous weeping for others. Sometimes it’s for the cup that He wants us to drink and the baptism that He wants us to undergo that could be humiliating and painful and unfair. But that doesn’t mean it’s not from Him. And that doesn’t make it any less important to face it and say, “Not my will but Yours be done,” and to drink the cup. And Jesus didn’t say the cup was only for Him. He said if you want to sit at My right hand and My left, can you drink the cup? Can you undergo the baptism? Well, you will.