Instead, let us pray.
Oh, Lord Jesus, we realize how You have humbled Yourself. You went so much deeper than anybody else.
Lord, we so desire to see You tonight in Your agony, going to Calvary. Lord, we so desire that we could be partakers in the fellowship of Your sufferings.
Lord, we pray tonight that You shall deliver us from any distraction, outward or inward. Lord, be merciful to us, and come and be with us. Wipe away all tiredness, all worry, everything, God, that will distract us from Yourself.
Lord, we thank You and thank You because You humbled Yourself. You have been lifted up high above every name, and You have been given authority over everything in heaven and upon earth.
Lord, we praise You both when we see You in Your agony at Calvary and when we behold You in Your beauty and majesty on the throne of God. Praised be Your name.
Lord, we pray that You shall anoint us this evening with a mighty anointing to hear Thy word and to speak it, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Shall we read Matthew 5?
Blessed are those who mourn,
For they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
I imagine that the spiritual quality of this attitude is not very attractive to a lot of Christians today. But for those who want to go on with the Lord and follow Him, they will be able to appreciate and understand how necessary and important it is that we share not only the blessings and the joy—not only all the blessings in the heavenly places given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ—but also the fellowship of His sufferings.
There are a lot of Christians who want to share the glory of God, the joy of the Lord. I think if we called for a conference and made a headline, “Come and enjoy all the blessings given to us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” there would be a thousand coming around.
Christians today are big on God’s blessings. They go around the country from one conference to another to hunt blessings. Well, there is nothing wrong with blessings; we need them too.
But I imagine if we called for a conference and put up a headline, “Come and participate in the fellowship of His sufferings,” I wonder if any of us would be there. At least, only a few would like to be there.
Is there such a thing as fellowship in suffering? Is God near in the place of mourning? Will the Spirit of God rest where there is a heart that mourns?
Oh, yes, very much. We can look at three Scriptures.
In Isaiah 61:1-3:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord hath anointed Me
To bring good tidings unto the afflicted;
He hath sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to captives,
And freedom to prisoners;
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn;
To grant those who mourn in Zion,
Giving them a garland instead of ashes,
The oil of gladness instead of mourning,
The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting.
Now, the Lord Jesus was equipped with the Holy Spirit and was sent by God to meet such people—those who mourn in Zion.
So, if we want to meet with Him, it is good to be in a place where we have learned to mourn. God can come much closer to a heart in such an atmosphere than sometimes when we are praising Him. There is such a presence of the Lord when we really, in our hearts, have learned to mourn in the presence of the Lord.
If you look in James 4:8-10:
Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, ye sinners;
And purify your hearts, ye double-minded.
Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep:
Let your laughter be turned to mourning,
And your joy to heaviness.
Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord,
And He shall exalt you.
Now, this is very interesting. I always thought that if we had to draw near to God, we ought to pray. But it does not speak of prayer here. If you want to draw near to God and want Him to draw near to you, cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be miserable, mourn, and weep.
Will God draw near to such a place, where people are miserable, where they mourn and weep? Certainly He does—if it comes from your heart.
Oh, the Lord is near, very near, when we come into the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ and learn to get a heart and attitude of mourning.
The third place is in Zechariah 12:10.
And I will pour out on the house of David,
And on the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
The Spirit of grace and supplication;
So that they will look on Me whom they have pierced;
And they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son,
And they will weep bitterly over Him,
Like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.
In that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem,
Like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo.
And the land will mourn, every family by itself.
Is that the thing we will experience when the Spirit of the Lord is poured out? Have you learned of any revival in all of church history where God has poured out His Spirit that has not involved people who really mourned and even wept before God?
There has not been any genuine and true revival by the Spirit of God that has not led God’s people into the sufferings of Christ, into fellowship with Him. There can be no claim of the Lamb of God, whom we have pierced by our sin, without our hearts coming to know something of mourning and weeping.
Now, where will we get this attitude? When we behold the Lamb of God, when we look upon Him, when we are coming along the road to Calvary and see Him in His agony.
Brothers and sisters, have you been there recently? Have you been out there and beheld Him? Have you been there? Have you seen Him in His agony? Have you understood that it was your sin that pierced His hands and His feet?
Oh, yes, very much. There is a fellowship with God for those who mourn. But, sad to say, we do not often find it among the Lord’s people in this day.
It seems as if we believe that Christianity is altogether happiness. It seems that the goal some Christians have for their lives is to get as much happiness and joy as they can get—in other words, to enjoy themselves.
There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not sufficient. If you really want to know the Lord as He is, you must know the Man of Sorrows.
The Lord Jesus rarely smiled. There are a few places where we believe that He rejoiced, but in more places we read that He wept and mourned. So, if you desire to know our Lord, you should not only seek for happiness. Come to the place of fellowship with Him in His sufferings.
Sometimes we are like the people of Israel in the wilderness. All we want is something to eat and something to drink, protection against the enemy, protection against the heat in the day and the cold in the night.
As long as we get that and are satisfied, we forget that God has a tremendous burden. The people of Israel in the wilderness did not desire to come into the promised land. They did not desire to go through the suffering. They just wanted to enjoy themselves, and the whole generation ended in the wilderness.
They were saved, but they never came to learn the God whom they served. This is a problem with us too. We can be saved and happy, have a great time, and enjoy blessings. There is nothing wrong with that. But, oh, how God wants to share the burden He has upon His heart. He is looking for someone who will follow Him along that line.
The Danish Bible says in Psalm 73, “But as for me, the nearness of God is my happiness.” In English, it says, “The nearness of God is my good,” but in Danish it says, “The nearness of God is my happiness.”
This is the true happiness we have as Christians: that the presence of the Lord will be with us, no matter whether we smile and feel joy or whether we are sad and weep.
Was the Lord Jesus happy in that sense? I do not think so at all. If you look in the well-known passage in Isaiah 53 and read about the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God, we will read only verses 2 and 3.
For He grew up before Him like a tender plant,
And like a root out of dry ground.
He hath no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
He was despised and forsaken of men,
A Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face,
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Well, that is very true: we did not esteem Him. We do not esteem Him as the Man of Sorrows, the Man acquainted with grief. But God so much desires for us this evening that we could come to know Him and the fellowship of His sufferings.
Was the Apostle Paul a heavy man? Well, I think he was. He was the one who wrote this phrase: “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”
So we see that we can rejoice, but we must learn as well to be sorrowful.
We read about the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:8-13:
You are already filled;
You have already become rich;
You have become kings without us;
And indeed, I wish that you had become kings so that we also might reign with you.
For, I think, God has exhibited us apostles last of all,
As men condemned to death;
Because we have become a spectacle to the world,
Both to angels and to men.
We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are prudent in Christ;
We are weak, but you are strong;
You are distinguished, but we are without honor.
To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty,
And are poorly clothed, and are roughly treated, and are homeless;
And we toil, working with our own hands.
When we are reviled, we bless;
When we are persecuted, we endure;
When we are slandered, we try to conciliate.
We have become as the scum of the world,
The dregs of all things, even until now.
Well, what is the apostolic question? Oh, are we true Christians? Do we know anything about this kind of life at all?
Mind you, if you are going to reign as kings with Christ, you will never be able to come to that position if you do not know anything of that type of Christian life—of mourning, of fellowship with Christ in His sufferings. You will never be able to reign with the Apostle Paul and his fellow apostles, and with Christ Himself.
Now, why is it that we mourn so little? Well, in fact, it is very simple. It is because we see so little. Our hearts are not burdened with what burdens God. We do not see things as He sees them.
If you look in Ecclesiastes 7:3-4:
Sorrow is better than laughter;
For when a face is sad, a heart may be happy.
The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning,
While the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure.
How do you like that? Are you a wise man, or are you a fool? Do you know anything at all? Do you know what God knows? Have you got His truth in your life and in your heart?
If you have God’s wisdom in your heart, you will know the place called the house of mourning, and you will very often go and visit that place. But if you do not know a thing, if you do not see things, then you are in fact a fool, although you may seem happy and smiling and can chatter beautifully.
Those who are wise will know the place, the house of mourning, because they see things. They understand things and situations.
If you go to the same book, Ecclesiastes 1:18:
Because in much wisdom there is much grief,
And increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.
The more wisdom you get—if it is the wisdom of God; I am not speaking about technology—the more you will know increasing grief. If you get true knowledge, it will result in increasing pain.
A brother from Denmark was visiting us. He was a professional pianist. Oh, he could play so beautifully. But at the meeting we had a little feeble sister sitting at the piano, and she was playing really awfully.
I noticed this man—I know him well—and while she was playing, he raised his fingers and put them into both his ears. Then he turned to me and said, “This is much wisdom, much pain.”
Oh, it is a true principle. If we do not know anything about mourning, it is because we do not see like God sees. We do not know the burden that is upon His heart.
I remember when we first took up a ministry to drug addicts in Copenhagen. At that time, I had never seen a drug addict before. I was the kind of person who lived in a nice area, among nice people wearing nice clothes in Denmark—even ties and everything else.
So, when we first started and I saw these young people, I despised them. I disliked them. They smelled awful. They had long hair, smoked different narcotics, and were dirty, and so on.
But it was only because I was a big fool. I did not know what was inside these young people’s hearts. But as I worked with them, as I looked into their hearts, I began to feel a burden upon me, a mourning.
Sometimes, when I went home to my beautiful home and lay down in my clean bed, I could not sleep. I had to get out of bed and walk in my room because I knew that several of these youngsters were drifting around in the city. They were not able to sleep for thirty-six hours without sleep because they had taken a certain drug called speed.
When you take that drug, your whole body is stirred up, so you will not find rest until thirty-six hours have passed.
So, brothers and sisters, if we know nothing of the burden, it is because we do not see anything, and we do not see the Lamb of God either.
I was together with George Verwer, the leader of Operation Mobilization, a few years ago. We had a conference together.
I remember one morning, coming down from the convention hall just before lunchtime. There were only ten minutes before lunch. As he moved down the stairs—this little brother, only about one and a half meters tall, but full of explosive dynamite—he came to me and said, “Brother, let us go up and have some prayer.”
I said, “Oh, we are going for lunch.” “Yes,” he said, “but there are still a few minutes. Let us go up and pray.”
So we went to his room. He fell down on his knees. He opened his heart and poured it out. He prayed for Bangladesh as I had never heard a person pray before. He wept in the room. He cried upon God.
And I was sitting there, dull like a fool, unable to pray, just thinking about the food I ought to get before it was gone.
He had just returned from Bangladesh. He told me that as he walked through the city, he saw great piles of bodies, dead bodies everywhere. A hundred thousand people were dying of hunger.
So he had seen something that I had not seen. Therefore, he had a burden on his heart.
Oh, friend, may we learn to mourn. May we come into the presence of the Lord, and may our eyes be opened to the people we live around.
Do you know anything of mourning over the people who are going to hell? Does it bother you? Have you wept sometimes over it?
I do not mean that you should be sentimental. I am thinking about the burden that is on God’s heart. I am sure that He has such a tremendous burden on His heart for everyone who does not know the Lord Jesus as Savior.
If you look at the Lamb of God in Luke 19:41-44:
And when He approached, He saw the city and wept over it, saying,
“If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace!
But now they have been hidden from your eyes.
For the days shall come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you,
And surround you, and hem you in on every side,
And will level you to the ground, and your children within you,
And they will not leave in you one stone upon another,
Because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”
The Lord Jesus wept over the city because He knew the destiny of Jerusalem. He knew what was going to happen. He had a clear vision of what was going to happen to this city.
So His heart was filled with sorrow. He mourned. He even wept. You can hear through the words how His heart was bleeding, filled with tremendous concern and tremendous sorrow that these people of Israel, of this city, were not able to see and understand the time of visitation.
Oh, brothers and sisters, when we go through our cities, do we really understand what is going to happen? Every city on this earth, every society, every nation, every crowd of unbelieving people around us.
Is there sometime, now and then, when we can weep and mourn and have fellowship with our Lord Jesus Christ? Can we share the burden in God’s heart for those who do not know Him?
Or have we come too far in our maturity? Have we been taken up with better things, bigger things for us? Have we grown so much that we do not care at all about those who do not know God today? Do we not care for our nation, our cities?
Have we been so taken up by all the beauties, all the doctrines, and all the knowledge we have that we can only speak about that and only feel anything about that? Oh, can we also come to the place where we share the fellowship of this wonderful Lord and Savior, whose heart is filled with sorrow even now as He looks down and knows the destiny of all those without the knowledge of repentance and salvation?
Oh, I love the Scripture about the Apostle Paul in Romans 9:1-3:
I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying,
My conscience testifying with me in the Holy Spirit,
That I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ,
For the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
What Paul is trying to share here does not come from a sentimental feeling of his own. Some people by nature are sentimental. They cry over everything; even when they get blessed, they cry. There is nothing wrong with weeping. It is a natural thing. If you want to weep, go ahead and weep. God bless you.
But here the Apostle Paul expresses something of a burden in the Holy Spirit: “I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.” Unceasingly—not just now and then.
This man of God, this mighty apostle, carried in his heart throughout his lifetime, every day, an unceasing grief in his heart.
“For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ, for the sake of my brethren.” Oh, how strong those words are. But it was true, he said. It was out of the Holy Spirit that he spoke.
It was the Holy Spirit that put that colossal burden upon the heart of Paul. He even wanted to be separated from Christ. Where did that thought come from?
Oh, was this not the thought, the wish, in the Lamb of God? That He should be separated, despised, forsaken by His Father; that He should experience such a terrible moment of being separated from the Father He loved so dearly, so much.
Oh, do not tell me, brothers and sisters, that there is no place for mourning and grief in the heart of God and in the heart of His people. It came from God, this burden in the Holy Spirit.
I remember reading about that the other day in 2 Peter 2:7-8:
And if He rescued righteous Lot,
Oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
(for by what he saw and heard that righteous man,
While living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day
By their lawless deeds).
Do you feel the same going down the streets of New York, seeing all the evil?
Well, if that is not bad enough, come with me to Copenhagen. Go down in the most evil quarter of the city that I know of, with all the pornographic shops, one after another—seventy shops.
See all the pictures openly exhibited to everyone, to such a degree that many who stay away from Copenhagen do not want their children even to catch sight of these awful things.
But, brothers and sisters, is there any reaction? Do we feel anything?
Oh, the heart of God is tormented like the righteous soul of Lot. Every righteous heart, every heart that is right with God, must feel such pain, such grief, and sorrow.
Mind you, God is going to mark those who mourn in these days. If you look in the prophet Ezekiel 9:
And the Lord said to him,
“Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem,
And put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan
Over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst.”
God is putting a mark. God knows those who are following the Lamb of God, even deep down, brothers and sisters, in the valley of tears, the place of sorrow, with the Lord Jesus in His agony on the road to Calvary.
He is putting a mark upon the lives of those who are sighing and groaning in these days.
But we do not only need this mourning heart over the people who do not know the Lord Jesus as Savior. We need it even more, sometimes, over the church, the people of God.
Now go with me to Hebrews 5 and behold the Lamb of God.
So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest,
But He who said to Him,
“Thou art My Son,
Today I have begotten Thee”;
Just as He says also in another passage,
“Thou art a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek.”
In the days of His flesh,
He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears
To the One able to save Him from death,
And He was heard because of His piety.
Although He was a Son,
He learned obedience from the things which He suffered;
And having been made perfect,
He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation.
In the days of His flesh, we never read much about the Lord Jesus smiling. There is nothing wrong with that. You are allowed to smile as much as you want to. But it says that in the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying.
Oh, we are so cultivated. If someone is raising his voice, we think, “How is he speaking in the place?” We are such fine people.
The Lord Jesus was crying with a loud voice when He was out there on the mountain seeking the Father. And mind you, He did not weep or cry over Himself. No, it was His ministry as the High Priest.
Oh, how He cried on behalf of His people, the church. Oh, He shed tears because of His people, the church. It was in His office as our High Priest that, in the days of His flesh, He offered up prayers and supplications with a loud voice and with tears. Behold the Lamb of God.
In the Holy Spirit, there is an element of mourning. You read in Romans 8:26 how the Holy Spirit Himself, when He intercedes for the people of God, intercedes for the saints with groanings too deep for words.
Do we know anything about that? When we look around in the church today and see the different groups at the Lord’s table, what do we do?
Well, it is so easy to criticize. It is so easy to say, “This is wrong. It is not good. We have a better understanding,” and so on and so forth.
How much there is of that. How easily we begin to criticize those who are bought with the same precious blood as we are, those who are redeemed and filled with the same precious Holy Spirit as we are.
I do not mean that we should not judge and look at the things around us among God’s people. But it would be far better if we could mourn a little more and criticize a little less.
Oh, look at this man of God, the Apostle Paul, in Acts 20:17-19:
And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church.
And when they had come to him, he said to them,
“You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia,
How I was with you the whole time,
Serving the Lord with all humility and with tears,
And with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews.”
Brothers and sisters, do you know this very peculiar ministry, the ministry of tears? Do you know anything about serving the Lord with tears, serving the people of God with tears?
From the very first day Paul came among these Christians, he served the Lord with tears. In order to see the work of God go forward and His people brought into everything that is in Christ, he wept.
Oh, may we learn then to mourn over the things in the church.
In Acts 20:31, it says:
Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
This is very much in detail. Night and day, for a period of three years, I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. That must have been a tremendous lot of tears in the life of the Apostle Paul.
Also, in the second letter to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 2:4:
For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears;
Not so that you would be made sorrowful,
But that you might know the love which I have especially for you.
Can you imagine the Apostle Paul sitting at his desk one day, writing the second letter to the Corinthians? Can you imagine how the tears were really coming down that day? Is it not incredible?
“Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you with many tears.” Not that you should be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which I have especially for you.
Now, brothers and sisters, he wrote that letter because there was a wrong attitude in that church. If you meet a wrong attitude somewhere in a group of the Lord’s believers, in a church, would you go home and shed many tears over that?
Oh, friends, may we know something of a burden for the things in the church.
In 2 Corinthians 12:20-21:
For I am afraid that perhaps when I come I may find you to be not what I wish,
And may be found by you to be not what you wish;
That perhaps there may be strife, jealousy, angry tempers, disputes, slanders, gossip, arrogance, disturbances;
I am afraid that when I come again my God may humiliate me before you,
And I may mourn over many of those who have sinned in the past
And not repented of the impurity, immorality, and sensuality which they have practiced.
Do we find these things today among the Lord’s people? Oh yes, we do. How do we act when we are discovering jealousy, when there is strife going on, when there are disputes and accusations and so forth?
What an attitude Paul had: “I may mourn over many.” What a beautiful attitude, right out of the heart of God Himself.
May God impress it in our hearts so that we stop all the fighting for the best place in our groups and churches and fellowships, and even between the different kinds of people and denominations, and learn to mourn over them.
In Philippians 3:17-18, there is another lovely word:
Brethren, join in following my example,
And observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.
For many walk, of whom I often told you,
And now tell you even weeping,
That they are enemies of the cross of Christ.
Now, is that not a beautiful attitude? Instead of saying, “Follow my example, the pattern I have,” and then criticizing everyone else and saying, “Those people are just in this place. Those Christians are out of the plan of God, and we can get nowhere, so we just leave them there.”
Oh, Paul did not leave any of God’s children. “Many walk as enemies of the cross,” he was saying that weeping.
Oh, may God enable us to mourn over the church, and even to mourn over ourselves.
You remember when they brought the Lord Jesus to Calvary. There were all these daughters of Jerusalem, all these women, weeping as only women can weep. And the Lord said to them, “Do not weep over Me, but weep over yourselves and your children.”
Do we sometimes even need to weep over ourselves? It is not tears coming from the heart of Esau. He wept, but it did not help him a bit, because he wept out of a bitter attitude. He wept because he lost the blessing and wanted to get it back.
It will not help you to weep like that. But if you could learn to weep like Peter wept—oh, in that moment when he had denied his Lord, he came out of the courtyard, and the Lord Jesus turned and looked upon Peter.
Something happened in him when he saw the eyes of the Lord. He went outside, and he wept bitterly. But that was mourning; those were tears that brought him to the Lord.
You remember the Scripture saying that there is a kind of sorrow that leads to repentance, a kind of mourning that leads us to turn to the Lord.
How we need it, brothers and sisters. Why do we not weep over ourselves? Because we do not know ourselves.
But in the light of the Lamb of God, while we are before Him and our eyes are meeting His eyes, surely many times we will see how we have pained Him, how we have forsaken Him, how we have turned our backs on Him.
Oh, may God give us the blessing of knowing how to mourn. How are we going to know it? We must behold the Lamb of God. There is no other way.
We must come to see the Man of Sorrows. We must come to Calvary.
Take me to Calvary,
Let me see the Man of Sorrows,
In His agony,
There at Calvary.
There is a place where this kind of attitude will come into our lives. And also, when we learn not only to behold the Lamb of God, but when we learn to follow Him.
You remember that Scripture from Hebrews 5:8, that even the Lord Jesus was made to mourn and to weep through the sufferings that the Father permitted.
If you do not know anything of this, do not despair. Just follow the Lord. He will lead you into such difficulties and suffering, and you will be made one of those mourners. Your heart will be broken.
Paul also testified in those Scriptures that it was out of much affliction that he got that heart, much anguish. He said he served the Lord with tears and with much affliction because of the plots of the Jews.
If we follow the Lamb of God, the Lord will lead us into circumstances in order to break our hearts, melt our hearts, so that we can weep and mourn.
I can never forget. Three years ago, I went to Norway to speak at some tent meetings, the biggest tent-class evangelistic meetings in that town. There was a big tent that could take three thousand people.
I had been very busy at that time, so when I came to the city, I was so down, so cold inside, and I was to preach the gospel to the unsaved.
As I came, two of the pastors called me on the telephone and said, “We are sorry, but we are right in the middle of a midsummer celebration, so we cannot come and get you. We are away in the country. But we have booked a room at the hotel. Go there and stay there.”
That meant I would have to stay there for twenty-four hours. I went into the room, knelt down, and said, “Lord, what am I going to do? How can I preach when my heart is so cold? The tent is so big. I do not see the people.”
After a while, the Spirit put this prayer upon my heart: “Lord, let me see, in a glimpse, the Man of Sorrows and His agonies, His suffering, His mourning.”
And you know, this is the most tremendous experience I have ever had in my life. If the first great experience was being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, which I had many years back, this experience was the most precious and greatest experience I have ever had with the Lord.
So the evening came, and I saw, actually in a glimpse, in a vision, Calvary. The very thing came upon me.
When I went down into the city and walked across the square, I saw young people carrying big boxes of beer, drunk people lying in the street, and lots of noise coming out from the restaurants.
I saw something I had never seen before. I saw the Lamb wounded in all things. I am not ashamed to tell you, I cried openly for hours.
When I told these people, I went back to my room, and it went on and on. Right in the middle of the night, I had to say, “God, You must withdraw this burden. I cannot bear it. It is too heavy. It will flatten me. I will not be able to continue.”
And the Lord took it back. But it is needless to say that when I met with these people and the word of God came forth, oh, what a presence there was of the power of God unto salvation.
Brothers and sisters, may God enable us to see the Man of Sorrows, to see our hard, cold hearts become alive. How the Lord desires so much to share His burden with us. How He looks for someone who will come into the fellowship of His sufferings along with Him as we pray.
Lord, we do want to be with You, not only on the mountain in the glory of Your transfiguration. We do not want only to sing praises and be happy.
Though we want to be with You even at that terrible place of Calvary. Lord, let us not forget all God reminds us of Yourself. Open our eyes, God.
May we indeed learn to weep with You, share Your burden for the people without Christ, and for the church, Your people, and even for ourselves.
Lord, be praised, in Jesus’ name. Amen.