Monday, May 9, 2011

Trading My Sorrows...

What makes you cry? What makes you feel deep sorrow? And does that sorrow lead to action?What makes a person cry says alot about them, whether they are self-centered or God-centered. As one of God's choice servants, Jeremiah stands alone in the depth of his emotions as he writes the book of Lamentations. Broken by his care for the people, his love for the nation and his devotion to God, Jeremiah laments as he writes these five funeral songs.

While the book of Jeremiah looks forward with warning, Lamentations looks backward with mourning. Jeremiah sees the devastation, destruction and desolation of the city of Jerusalem. The temple, where God dwelt, is gone and so is God's presence. The people are dying in the streets and there's nothing he can do now. They did not listen when he warned of what God would do if they did not turn back to Him....so he grieves, mourns and weeps.

Do you weep because your selfish pride has been wounded or because people around you lead sinful lives and reject the God who loves them dearly?

Do you weep because someone has insulted you or because someone has insulted your God?

Do you weep because you have lost something of value or because people around you will be lost forever because of their sinfulness?

Our world is filled with injustice, poverty, war and rebellion against God, all of which should move us to tears and to action!

Is it time you traded the things/people/situations/circumstances that cause you sorrow and weep over the things that break God's heart? Jeremiah wept tears of empathy and sympathy. Can you say you do the same thing when you see others reject God's love? Jeremiah's tears were not self-centered. Can you say the same thing?

Ask God to give you a heart like His. One that breaks and mourns for the lost. The abused. The exploited. The innocent. The weak. The poor. The missing. The one who causes you sorrow. Your rejection.

BLOG COMMENT: 1) What breaks your heart and what action have you taken about it? OR 2) Has God put a passion in your heart for a group of people you know He wants you to help?

3 comments:

Nancy Bailey said...

What breaks my heart is the way people with disabilities are treated. There is so much talk in the world about equality, opportunity and abolishing discrimination; and yet so much discrimination allowed to go on every day in society against the disabled. There is even segregation about different types of disabilities as if one person's suffering is more grand than anothers. Experiencing a life of this has given me an acute awareness of it and a heart for helping those beaten down by it.

Tonia said...

God has placed a new passion on my heart and I'm trying to learn all I can about it.
Sex/Human trafficking is not just something that happens in foreign, third world countries. While no one konw for sure how many people are enslaved in the US, a conservative estimate would be @ 50,000 and growing.
A great book - The Slave Across the Street by Theresa Flores, is about a woman who spent two years as a sex slave (from age 14-16) in a city not 30 minutes from where I currently live. Hers is an amazing story and the fact that she escaped and lived to tell about it is even more amazing.
What humans do to other humans for their own sick satisfaction is something we can't turn our back to.

Deanna said...

After finishing the "Designed with Your Purpose in Mind" Bible Study. God truly showed me a strong compassion for the "widows in our church"; as we have many ladies who have lost their spouses and seem so lonely and left out.

This has been a couple of years now and I have finally seen God at work in putting together a program by two widows in our church who are seeing the need for fellowship.

My heart was to be apart of this work, but God said just pray and let me do the final working in lives of these women. Praise Him that that is happening, slowly, but in HIS time all will be what he has set forth and purposed.