Mark 9.24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
We are living in an age of dry eyes and selfish crying. It is indicative of the self-love of the last days. Hearts of men are both hardened by sin and waxed cold. But there are those souls who are found weeping because they have been touched by The Lord Jesus, or because they are desperate and in need of His tender touch. The father of this possessed child in our devotional passage is heard crying out to Jesus for His son’s healing. The woman of ill repute is mentioned in Luke 7, and “she stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.” Having been touched by The Lord Jesus, she unashamedly worships Him with tears.
The apostle Paul’s life and ministry was filled with tears of sacrifice, joy and sorrow. He served the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations, “which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews”.
Aware of the danger of false teachers, Paul exhorts the church to watch, and remember, “that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.” When it was necessary to rebuke the Corinthian church, we read “for out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you.” Timothy was a man of God who served The Lord with much emotion. When Paul was awaiting his visit, he wrote that he was greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy.
Weeping and serving The Lord are inseparable. The Master Jesus wept at Lazarus’ grave. He wept in prayer. “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared.” But when all is said and done, beloved, when the tears of worship, the tears of sadness, the tears of pain and tears of sorrow are done, God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Godly, holy weeping in the kingdom of God is not a sign of weakness, it is the evidence of the life of God within.
