Do you weep for your family, friends, church, nation and world?

1) Jesus did- Jesus wept over the sins of others, over their bitter consequences in judgment and death, and over Jerusalem which would not receive him. Jesus was a Man of Sorrows (Isaiah 53). Why? Because he took our sins upon himself, because He totally identified with us in our sorrows, and because today His loving heart still longs so ceaselessly for the lost of earth.

2) Paul did- (Acts 20:31) - "So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears."

3) John Knox constantly carried the burden for his land. Night after night he prayed on the wooden floor of his hideout refuge from Queen Mary. When his wife pleaded with him to get some sleep, he answered, “How can I sleep when my land is not saved?” Payne reports that often Knox would pray all night in agonizing tones, “Lord, give me Scotland or I die!” God shook Scotland; God gave him Scotland.

4) In April 19, 1742, David Brainerd, missionary to American Indians, wrote in his diary: “I set apart this day for fasting and prayer to prepare me for the ministry. In the morning, I felt a power of intercession for immortal souls. In the afternoon, God enabled me so to agonize in prayer that I was quite wet with sweat, though in the shade and the cool wind. My soul was drawn out very much for the world: I gasped for multitudes of souls. I think I had more enlargement for sinners than for the children of God, though I felt as if I could spend my life in cries for both.”

5) John Hyde was called the Apostle of Intercession of India. He often cried out, “Father, give me these souls or I die!” He alternated in agony of intercession and joyous praise, receiving tremendous answers to prayer and by the end of his missionary service was averaging more than four souls a day, largely won through prayer.

6) It was said of Hugh Price Hughes, “That morning Hughes looked like a broken man, his eyes were wet with tears- broken, and he was but fifty years old! ‘Are you ill, sir?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he answered, and then continued, ‘Walters, we have had three Sunday nights at St. James Hall without conversions and I can’t stand it. It’s breaking my heart.”

- Precept Austin