Praying Our Tears

Expect the Tears

1. Expect the tears even when you are walking with God.
2. Life could be like a desert even if we don't do anything wrong.
3. “Conversion”: And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. -- Ezekiel 36:26
4. When the Gospel changes your heart, when God comes to your heart, you heart becomes more like a heart, it’s getting softer, more vulnerable, and more touchable. You may feel the evil and the pain around you, you didn't feel it before, b/c you were using a self-defense mechanism.
5. Christians growing in Christ should expect to cry more.
6. I want to be more like Christ!
7. If you don't expect tears you'll always be crying about two things, those that make you weep and the weeping (those that grieve you and the fact that you grieved).

Invest the Tears

1. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. -- Psalm 126:5
2. Don't avoid your tears, don't just express your tears, but plant your tears, sow your tears.
3. Don't waste your sorrows, invest and plant them, they produce joy, see them as opportunities for growth.
4. What kind of joy you really need? --> The joy comes through the tears.
5. How to sow and plant your tears? Pray!
6. Come to God with the tears, both the tears and the weeper will be transformed.

Pray the Tears

1. Put your tears in prayer into three things:
a. Realization of Grace
b. Vision of the Cross
c. Assurance of Glory
2. It's safe to pour your heart out. He knows. He knows how we speak when we are desperate. He understands when the feelings are so overwhelming that we say desperate words, wrong things.
3. "It's safe to come to Me." - Realization of Grace
"Plant your tears with a vision of the cross." - Vision of the Cross
4. He keeps coming to me even I say "turn away".
5. Take your tears, and think about Him crying on the cross. "What's wrong?" --> Look at the cross! He's not punishing you. He's abandoning himself. He was rejected for you!
6. Get rid of self-pity. Weeping is fine. NO weeping for self-pity!
7. My suffering is nothing compared to what He has done for me.
8. You'll be humbled by your tears.
9. No lamentation, confession, meditation, just PRAISE. All true prayers pursued far enough will become praise. It's not getting there easily, quickly. Don't rush it, don't try to push it.
10. Grief is like fear, you're afraid that it's never getting better, but if you know that all prayers will end in praise and you'll be with Him forever, are you happy enough to be a weeper?

Father, make me happy enough to weep, help me know how to sow my tears. Amen.