Broken...
She reached down into the depths of her heart stirring up the tears that had lain dormant far too long. As the hardness began to break in to pieces, the tears ran in streams down her cheeks. The floodgates burst open, releasing the pain and hurt of the deception she had been carrying.
The very thing that had caused the hardening of her heart, the wall of her emotions to hold fast, was now gone. Washed away...flowing away with the turbulent river of tears of a repentant heart.
Broken.At last, she was free!
The previous paragraphs? An excerpt from a book that is yet to be written. I won't expound on the story at this time because it is really just a seed that God planted in my heart...it will take much prayer, research, and the hard work of getting it on the page before it will come to fruition. It sort of just burst forth from my fingertips after contemplating something I had read in my devotional time one morning last week. It was most definitely one of those God whispering moments...and my heart...and fingers responded.
What I had read was from Elmer Towns book, How To Pray: When You Don't Know What to Say. If you are looking for a good book on how to pray or just ways to refresh and reinvigorate your prayer life I highly recommend this book. However, since this post is not a 'book review', I will leave it for you to check it out and discover the treasures therein.
As I read the chapter in Towns' book on repentance and deliverance, I was reminded of the importance of tears in our prayer life...more specifically, my prayer life. Towns writes: "to be an effective intercessor, we must have a 'weeping heart' before God. If our eyes are always dry, it means that our soul is also probably dry. And a dry heart eventually becomes a hardened heart." He goes on to tell us that tears and brokenness is the avenue to a softened heart before God. Tears and brokenness can push aside the pride long enough to expose our hearts for what they have become, hard and dry. Those very tears are a good sign that we are broken and ready to deal with our sin. We are ready to repent.
This has me asking myself...how soft is my heart before God? How many times have I cried over the sins I, myself, have committed. How many times have I wept over the very things that break the heart of God? And surely our personal sins, among many other things, break His heart.
How many times have I cried for other's, whose hearts are hardened by the harsh realities of the sin-soaked society in which we live...cried for those who have chosen to walk in defiance to the plan God has for their life. Do I cry over those who cannot even see that they are spiritually sick and have the cure to their sickness within their grasp, yet fail to latch on? Like a man in a swiftly swirling whirlpool getting weaker and weaker as he fights against the current, yet he refuses the lifeline that has been thrown to him.
I pray that God will soften my heart so that I may weep for those who don't even realize there is a reason to weep. To weep for those who are living broken lives and don't know how to fix what is broken. May the tears break down the wall of pride in my own heart so that I can see ever clearer the sins that are present in my life, so that I may repent and walk in obedience to the Word of God. I pray that the Lord will soften my own heart so that He can use me to reach out to others with open arms and open heart. May they see the love of Christ in my words, in my actions, and within my heart.
Lord help us to weep tears of repentance...to accept your forgiveness...so that times of refreshing may come.
I could use a bit of refreshing...
How about you?
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