DAY 33 – THE SECRET OF TEARS
One of the greatest gifts you can bring your king is the gift of absolute sincerity. Saying with a pure heart, God, truly you are all that I live for. My heart is totally and fully set upon you. Nothing surpasses the delight of being able to sing songs of total consecration with absolute abandon.
Feelings of sincerity are quickly defused when we allow the flesh to defile our conscience. No earthly pleasure is worth a defiled conscience. Feelings of guilt arise when we feel hypocritical before God, when we have spurned His overtures in order to gratify the desires of the flesh. Oh what delight when we can come boldly before His throne with a clean conscience! Even though we are not yet perfected and even though we struggle with weakness, our hearts reach for Him with impassioned desires.
True love must function in total sincerity, void of duplicity or adulterous passions. The beauty of it is that, when love is without hypocrisy, the sweetness of this sincerity is often accompanied by tears.
David cried,” Do not be silent at my tears.” (Psalm 39:12), as though his tears commended his sincerity to God. Another psalmist expressed the sincerity of his cry pointing to his tears: “My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, ‘where is your God?'” (Psalms 42:3). There’s something about tears that is pure and unfeigned. Nobody is about to fake tears while praying, when it comes to the secret place, tears are either honest or they are absent. Tears say more than words often can. Whereas words can sometimes contain the pretense of plastic platitudes, tears come straight from the heart.
There are two kinds of sickness in the bible that produce tears;
*—* The first is mentioned in Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” When the hope of God’s deliverance is deferred, the heart grows sick. This heartsickness produces a groaning from the depths of the spirit and is expressed in tears.
*—* The other sickness that produces tears is seen in Song of Solomon 5:8, “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am lovesick!” Lovesickness is the consequence of our lord’s restrained self- revelation, who reveals Himself to us dimly as through a veil or dark glass. Heart sickness is the product of unrequited power while Lovesickness is the consequence of unrequited love. Heart sickness weeps, “show me your hand!” Lovesickness weeps, “show me your face!” Do you long for a greater reality in your walk with God? Try Tears.
