The Prayer of Tears

The Concept

The Prayer of Tears: “Being cut to the heart over our distance and offense to the goodness of God. It is weeping over our sins and the sins of the world. It is entering into the liberating shocks of repentance. It is the intimate and ultimate awareness that sins cut us from the fullness of God's presence.” It is penthos in the Greek or compunction in seldom-used English.

But rejoice! This is no morbid thing. The early church writers called this inner turmoil “a deep joy.” For joy is the result of a heart humbled in perpetual contrition. “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy!” (Ps. 126:5)

Tears touch the emotive center of our lives, an outward sign that an inner fuse has been lit. This prayer is not a purposeful act, not some conjured emotion, it is the truth of brokenness. Foster suggest we pray for it as a gift: the gift of repentance, the gift of mercy, the “charism of tears.” And he suggests it is a result of confession, not just the confession of sinful actions but of a distance from God, a reality all mortals occupy (Rom. 7:21-25) - wretched men that we are! The tears that begin in grief become tears of joy at the assurance of Christ's forgiveness.

Foster ended the chapter with a prayer from my own heart:
“Gracious Jesus, it is easier for me to approach you with my mind than with my tears. I do not know to pray from the emotive center of my life or event how to get in touch with that part of me. Still, I come to you just as I am. I am sorry for my many rejections of your overtures of love. Please forgive all my offenses against your law. I repent of my callous and insensitive ways. Break my stony heart with the things that break your heart.... Amen.”

The Experience

God has been so patient with me, and so intentional. This experience was just what I have needed, and everything has fallen into place like ordered choreography. At the beginning of the year, the Lord began speaking to me about watering dry ground. The story of 2 Kings 3 changed my life and I've been waiting for the deep digging of trenches to fill my sandy heart with abundant, blood-red-in-the-light water. I've also been reading the gospel of John, so rich in water language, and I've been waiting for a cleansing and a quenching (John 4:14).

Yet in the past few months, my heart has become an even drier desert: a waning of prayer life, a numbing of emotion, a crisis of faith, a tragedy of apathy. But I made a decision to push on with this prayer journey - even when I didn't "feel it," and I came upon the Prayer of Tears. Tears naturally fit with the water-desert imagery God has been giving me.

This past week, how I longed to cry, like I've never longed before! How I prayed to be broken – no, not to be broken, to be made aware of my brokenness! I confessed; I saw my wretchedness and claimed the beautiful righteousness of Christ. I saw my coldness and claimed the love of Christ who loves through me. Admittedly, much of this was mental exercise though I longed so much for it to be true. There is a real disconnect between my mind and my heart, but I have been forcing myself to pray as though I were whole.

Sunday, Pastor J. preached about Ephesus' first love. His focus was not on personal relationship, but on loving the brethren. He spoke about our tendency of gorging on knowledge and gorging on solitude and thus neglecting our call to love one another. This was the shock I needed back to life. Then Sunday night there was a conference on our identity in Christ. The speaker warned about the dangers of self-sufficiency and I recognized it so in my life. He called us away from a life of behavior-based acceptance because we have been re-born righteous, we have been re-born into God's love, we cannot earn it more than we have it already. As a result, we are moved to acceptance-based behavior and utter dependency. Everything just fell into place for me (though reading this, I see it is less a logical progression than a revelation beyond words). But just to clench it, my sisters, unaware of this project, have been crying around me constantly this week - even during grace over a meal - showing me how beautiful this gift of brokenness is.

No, I am not there. I have not cried. I remain deceived by self-sufficiency, but I believe I am not incurable and I have not been abandoned. I am moving away from over-thinking about it and committing to living it, by the grace of God.