Blog

“With Many Tears”

 

“Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears…” Acts 20:19

“For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears…” 2^nd Cor. 2:4

“Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.” Acts 20:31

“Who, in the days of His (Christ) flesh, when He (Christ) had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears…” Hebrews 5:7

“Jesus wept.” John 11:35

David was a prophet (Acts 2:29-30) and he wept much.  You can read of his many tears in Psalm 6:6, 6:8, 39:12, 42:3, 56:8, 102:9, 126:5, and several more could still be mentioned.

Job wept much, Jeremiah was the “weeping prophet”, Moses wept much, Isaiah wept much, John wept bitterly, etc., etc., etc.

In all of these verses and instances, not one of them are tears of remorse, repentance, or regret.  I call them tears of solemnity, tears of sobriety, and tears of seriousness.

The deeper a man goes in the Lord and the deeper his walk in the word, a soberness begins to come over him.  As he lives in God’s word and studies God’s word, and meditates on God’s word, the seriousness of eternity comes upon him.  He realizes his life is no longer his own to do with as he would or to live his life as he used to.  Foolish jesting takes a back seat to holiness and jesting in general soon becomes a thing of his past life.  He sees more and more things being washed away and cleansed away from his soul and mind.

That which was hard is now becoming soft and tender.  That which was stained is now being washed in the blood; and red will far outlive and far outshine any black stain.  That which was old is now being made new.  The self-life is fading away into the distance of past memories and is being replaced by the divine life and divine nature of God.

I have noticed a lack of real seriousness and commitment to the Lord and to His word; and an abundance of joking, jesting, levity, and flippancy has taken its place.  If you’re a serious Christian that really loves God, then keep yourselves away from people like this.  Their weak and lazy spirit is like a virus and it will infect you.  A spiritual man can tell in less than 30 seconds where someone is spiritually.  You can tell where they are in their walk with the Lord, their walk in the word, and their living.  Become a spiritual man and this will become second nature to you.  This is why a spiritual man can minister to any man on any level.  Because 1 Corinthians 2:15 says that he discerns all things…”all things.” Most of you know that I minister to other ministers, that is one of my gifts.  One time another minister came into my office at the ministry and asked for help and guidance.  The Lord showed me many things about this man the night before he even came.  Things of his past, things he was struggling with in the present.  This type of discernment is for all who will be spiritual. And now today we are very close friends and he is a deep brother.  He brought his wife one day to speak to me and afterwards he went out to say goodbye to his wife in the car (as he was staying at the ministry) and she was frozen in the drivers seat, and couldn’t drive!!  He asked her what was going on and her reply was that she had never before been in a meeting where God had shown a man that much concerning their personal lives.  Brethren, this should be the norm and not the exception.  How can we minister to anyone effectively without knowing the secrets of their heart first?  People need to be ministered to and taught the word of God and this only comes by being with Jesus every day and living a holy, blameless, upright, and clean life before Him.  He will only entrust deep spiritual matters to His sons, and not the children.  Because a son abides in the house; a child is no different than a servant (see Galatians 4:1-2).  A son is taking care of his Father’s personal affairs (the Church) and his Father’s business affairs (the enemy).  A son sits at his Father’s table, but a child is outside playing.  A son goes to war, but a child doesn’t even realize there is a war going on.  A son comes to the table to eat manna, a child comes to the table to just eat food and dessert, and then to go out and play again.  God entrusts the kingdom to the sons.  This is all in the word for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see and a heart to understand.  Proverbs says to “guard your heart“ for out of it flow all the issues of life.

Jesus said to wake up and watch.  I just finished the Greek New Testament last month and ran across a rendering of Revelation 16:15 that I just absolutely love: “Lo, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is he who is awake, keeping his garments that he may not go naked and be seen exposed!” Greek: “Ἰδοὺ ἔρχομαι ὡς κλέπτης. μακάριος ὁ γρηγορῶν καὶ τηρῶν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ, ἵνα μὴ γυμνὸς περιπατῇ καὶ βλέπωσιν τὴν ἀσχημοσύνην αὐτοῦ.”

I could write of these truths for years and many of you not “see”…it will take the Spirit of the living God to make these things known to you.  If you will be faithful to Him and to his word and pay the price (yes…the truth comes at a price. Proverbs 23:23 says to “buy the truth” and did our Lord not say in Revelation 3 to “buy” of Him certain things?)  You will come to the place  where you begin to see inside and not according to anything of the mind or your bible knowledge.  You will see inside and you will never be the same again.

You see, Job had heard of God and His ways and His works.  He was the great-great-great-great grandson of Abraham.  He was Issachar’s third son (Genesis 46:13).  He had heard of how great this God was and what He had done in the lives of his family.  But it wasn’t until he saw God that he said, “I have heard of You with my ear, but now have I seen You with my eyes…and I place my hand over my mouth and I repent in sackcloth and ashes.” Wow!! That’s powerful.  When you begin to see God in this way, your life will never be the same again.  This is when 1 Peter 4:2 becomes your life, “That he no longer should live the rest of his days in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.”

A few of you reading this today know what happened to me awhile back .  The Lord appeared to me and rebuked me sharply.  He looked at me right in my eyes and said, “Is the cup of your iniquity not yet full?” And my life has never been the same since.  He ministered many other things to me to get me to really see the seriousness of His ways, His word, and His purposes in the earth.  I have always treasured this visitation and had never planned on sharing it, but in prayer this morning the Lord caused me to see that I needed to.  Paul shared his testimony of the Lord appearing to him and rebuking him sharply also (3 times in the book of Acts alone).  It is sad that the Lord had to stoop to that level to reach me and to get me to really see and understand.  This is not His best.  You see, I was not only Jacob; I was Simon, I was Thomas, I was Saul.

And now my life is consumed with Him.  It is completely taken with Him.  His word means more to me today than my own wife and children…yes, even more than my own life. His word will far outlive my experience.  Many tears running down my face even now while writing this and remembering Him and remembering how I treated Him and His word with cold complacency and am so appreciative of His everlasting mercy towards me and wishing He would appear to every one of you.  But He will and He can and He does appear to you in His word.  Visions and visitations are powerful, but Peter said that the word is greater than all these spiritual things. In 2 Peter 1, he speaks of the vision he had on the mount of transfiguration, but then he goes on to say that the word is greater than all this.  See 1 Peter 1:16-19.

When all these men saw Him (and you can see Him in the same way in His word) their lives were never the same.  I remember one time at a minister’s conference with Kenneth Hagin; he looked out at all of us and said, “Sin? Sins? Sinning? What are you guys talking about?  I go years without even knowing I have a body!!”  It took almost 20 years for me to understand that statement.  I understand it now though perfectly.  If you only knew what is waiting for you in the Spirit in this life if you will but deny your own self and see it for what it is: a liar, conniver, manipulator, schemer, plotter, self-serving, self-seeking, self-pleasing God-hater…then you would turn your back on it in one moment and run from it as if your very life depended on it.  AND IT DOES!!!

Why did God the Father listen to our Lord Jesus when He prayed?  Was it because He was the Father’s Son?  NO.  Hebrews 5:7 says that “He was heard because He feared God“.  Did you really catch that?  I said HE FEARED GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope that you will begin to fear God and take His word and His ways a lot more seriously.  Know you not that each man will give an account of everything said and everything done, and that your conscience is a divine recorder that will either be a witness for you or against you in that day?  I can’t speak for any other man, I can only tell you that levity and jesting and un-seriousness has fallen off me like a moth-eaten leprous-infested garment and has been replaced with a mantle of Godly fear and living.  I take nothing for granted anymore! NOTHING!! I have seen the truth… and He is a man, and he is God, and He is fearsome to behold.  And so with Christ Himself and with Paul and with many others, I implore you to repent and get your heart, life, conscience, soul, body, thoughts, motives, and intents right before Him;  pure before Him…quickly.  QUICKLY, before you lose any more reward!!  Wake up…the Thief is coming…the Thief is coming!!!  To those not living right, He will be a thief, but to those living right and obeying Him He will be a bridegroom.

The door to the ark is right now closing…very slowly, but it is closing.  Are you inside? Is your family inside?  Is your heart inside?

May God have mercy on our souls in that great and terrible Day!!!!!!!!!!!!  A day that I have seen and it cannot be described in words…you would not believe it in 5 lifetimes!!!

 

 

Lo, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is he who is awake, keeping his 

garments that he may not go naked and be seen exposed! Rev. 16:15