Serving with our tears
And the five ways to consume Scripture
When we talk about feasting on His word, consuming it in enough quantity that we find ourselves filled to overflowing, we must not forget all the ways that this can happen.
Yes, we certainly have the obvious daily devotional reading — working our way through the entirety of the Book in order to see the complete picture more clearly. But that is just one way we can consume Scripture.
Here are five:
Personal devotional reading
Through sermons, podcasts, teachings, and studies
Reading books, biographies
By the Spirit bringing to mind memorized passages, meditating upon them
Conversations and times of prayer with brothers and sisters in Christ
Each of these five serve a different purpose and I’ve found each to play their part in leading me to a more balanced diet.
When too many sermons pry me away from a stillness with the Lord, meditation upon His word brings me back.
When personal devotional reading bogs me down in routine, Scripture coming to life in the biography of an old missionary wakes me up afresh.
When an overemphasis on my personal walk tempts me to isolation, conversations with a brother, using the Scripture as the basis of our edification, put everything back into right perspective.
When knowledge of God fills my head, puffing me up to think I may have an answer for everything, the right word, aptly spoken in love, shatters the delusion, breaks my heart, and once again lifts God higher and brings Him nearer.
Let me give one example from this week.
Most nights we read the Bible — one passage from the Old Testament and one from the New — and pray together as a family. Two nights ago it was from Psalm 35. Reading aloud, this section stood out to me, “I am overwhelmed with sorrow. When they were sick, I wore sackcloth, and refrained from eating food. (If I am lying, may my prayers go unanswered.) I mourned for them as I would for a friend or my brother. I bowed down in sorrow as if I were mourning for my mother.”
“I don’t mourn for my enemies, let alone my friends, in that way,” I thought.
Once the kids were in bed, I picked up a book I had started and then stopped reading several months ago. Opening to the page I left off on, I read this line:
“David wept and fasted when men insulted God (Ps. 69:9-10). When his enemies were ill, he fasted and mourned as if for his brothers and wept as if for his own mother (Ps. 35:14).”
And then a few paragraphs later:
“A dry-eyed leader with a heart not really broken, who knows no tears in his heart, may denounce the sins of the people, but seldom leads them to the confession of sin that brings God’s mercy.”
Here was the word coming to life for me. The Spirit illuminating an area of sin and neglect. Using His perfectly refined word to continue His perfect refinement of me.
I’ll share the entire passage from the book below. Perhaps the Spirit will convict you of my same sin, an absence of tears in my service, or maybe you will be encouraged in another area. Either way, let us continue to be people who feast on the Scriptures, consuming it in all its multiple forms.
—
From, “Ablaze for God,” by Wesley L. Duewel:
Paul testified to the Ephesian elders, as he looked back over his several years of ministry among them, and now bade them farewell, “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord…with tears.” (Acts 20:18-19)
There were those in the Old Testament times who served the Lord with tears:
Job. Job was able to testify, “Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor?” (Job 30:25)
David. David wept and fasted when men insulted God (Ps. 69:9-10). When his enemies were ill, he fasted and mourned as if for his brothers and wept as if for his own mother (Ps. 35:14).
Isaiah. Isaiah, echoing the heart cry of God, wept when enemy Moab suffered in drought and famine; his eyes flooded with tears (Is. 16:9,11).
Josiah. God heard Josiah’s prayer for the nation as he fasted and wept before God for his people (2 Kings 22:19).
Ezra. When Ezra realized how deeply his people had sinned and brought the judgement of God upon themselves, he so prayed and wept before God that a large crowd of men, women, and children gathered around him (Ezra 10:1-2).
This is ever the pattern. A weeping leader results in a weeping, praying people. A leader who takes on himself the sins of the people, praying and repenting vicariously for them, will have a people who are led to repentance. A dry-eyed leader with a heart not really broken, who knows no tears in his heart, may denounce the sins of the people, but seldom leads them to the confession of sin that brings God’s mercy.
Nehemiah. When Nehemiah heard of the tragic condition of Jerusalem and his people, he recorded, “I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven (Neh. 1:4). For days he kept praying and fasting as he served the Lord with his tears. Thus God was able to use Nehemiah to bring revival to Jerusalem.
Jeremiah. Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet. What an example he set of burden-bearing and brokenness for his people! No doubt from the human standpoint it was the prayers and tears of Jeremiah and the vicarious prayers and tears of Daniel that brought a portion of Israel back from captivity. Listen to Jeremiah:
“Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?…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” (Jer. 8:21-9:1)
“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. 13:17).
“Let my eyes overflow with tears night and day without ceasing (Jer. 14:17).
Daniel. For more than sixty years Daniel was a statesmen in the court of the dominant world power of his time; he was also a man of God and a man of prayer. We read of some of his prayer times:
“I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed…While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord my God for His holy hill—while I was still in prayer” (Dan. 9:3-4, 20-21).
Paul. Paul was both the Isaiah and the Jeremiah of the New Testament. He preached the greatness of God’s grace, the amazing blessedness of the atonement, and the judgment and final triumph of Christ. He also went among the people pleading, weeping, and leading the lost to salvation. He testified, “For three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears” (Acts 20:31). Not only did he preach with tears and do his personal evangelism with tears, he also wrote with tears to the churches he loved so dearly, “I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears…to let you know the depth of my love for you” (2 Cor. 2:4).
Our Lord. Of Jesus we read, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears” (Heb. 5:7). Undoubtedly this included Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. The words, however, seem to imply that this was a characteristic often repeated.
Joel. God spoke through Joel at a time of HIs imminent judgement upon the nation because of its sins, “Let the priests, who minister before the Lord, weep between the temple porch, and the altar. Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord’” (Joel 2:17). The religious leaders of the nation were responsible to intercede with weeping for the nation.
Similarly Isaiah, at a time of national calamity, said to the leaders, “The Lord, the Lord Almighty, called you on that day to weep and to wail…to…put on sackcloth” (Is. 22:12). But instead they feasted and enjoyed themselves in revelry (v.13). So guilty did this make them that Isaiah adds, “The Lord Almighty has revealed this in my hearing, ‘Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for,’ says the Lord, the Lord Almighty” (v.14).
Samuel. What was Samuel’s attitude as God’s appointed judge and prophet for the people? “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you” (1 Sam. 12:23).
When that commitment to our people is as deep as God wants it to be, when we love them with a Christlike love as Christ’s under-shepherds, a mediatorial intercessory role is inescapable. The more we mediate in intercession of our people, the deeper our love becomes and the more certain it is that our hearts will be crying out to God in tears, whether they are visible or not. Our people will recognize the love and tears of our hearts by the tone of our voices and the power of our prayers.
—
In love,
Derek
P.S. I have two extra copies of Ablaze for God. If you are interested in reading, let me know, and I can mail it to you.