Some years ago a friend of mine went forward at a Meeting for the laying on of hands for Baptism in the Spirit. That evening God touched her very powerfully but not in a way that she had expected. What happened was HER NOSE STOPPED RUNNING!
Let me explain:
For years she had been plagued with a runny nose. Ever since she was a child she had had a runny nose - she went through handkerchieves and tissues like nobody’s business. But that night, as she returned home from the Meeting, she started to cry. She went to bed crying - when she woke in the morning she started crying again - she went on crying for days and days, and then she stopped - and when the crying stopped here nose stopped running!
Later she told us, "I was brought up in a household where tears were never allowed. My Mum and Dad always told me "BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY" - and if I did cry I was laughed at......... I suppose I just bottled it up.................. and I suppose that the runny nose was the way my tears found their way out of me. All I know is that, when hands were laid on me for the Baptism in the Spirit, nothing really startling happened - except that, for the first time inside, I felt warm and wanted......... I felt I could be myself......... and as I came home I realised that MYSELF wanted to cry - so I did................. and no-one stopped me......... no-one said it was wrong............... that was a real relief LITERALLY.
Sigmund Freud once said, "At times the things our consciences tell us is wrong is actually just a repetition of what our parents taught us, or what the world around us said when we were children......". Well, whether that is true or not, what is true is that we British for many years found it very hard to deal with tears.
I’ve been to lots of funerals where people speak with admiration of widows who don’t cry: "Wasn’t she brave" they say, probably quite thankful that they have been spared the task of finding something to say about her tears.
It’s different in many places in the world. I still remember the SHEER ABANDON of widows in Israel after the 6 day war in 1967 - what a contrast to an English funeral.
I once visited a widow who had lost her husband, and she didn’t shed a tear - I visited her 6 months later when her pet dog died, and found her crying her eyes out. Why is it OK for the English to cry over their pets, but not over their husbands?
What’s happening in situations like this? I think the honest truth is that we are AFRAID to be seen as we are - afraid of what we call ’EMOTIONALISM’..... afraid of the things deeply buried inside ourselves which, we think would overwhelm others if we really let them go........ so we lock up our emotions, not realising that, if we do, they find another way of getting out, not just in runny noses, but in lots of other ways too..... things which come up from inside us and we don’t understand why we’re acting that way.
I wonder if some of the so-called NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS which people experience (sometimes even happening after they have had prayer for healing!), are actually BREAKTHROUGHS, reality breaking through............. and when that person has worked through it and come to a new stability, they can examine what happened, they will then see that God has actually let this happen so that they are no longer bound by the prison their past life has placed around them....................
and that, though a nervous breakdown is often a sign of failure in the eyes of society..... it’s actually all right to be a failure.
I do realise, of course, that some people use tears for blackmail or self-pity. I also recognise that, in the case of severe depressive illness, excessive crying can be dangerous, so that we have to lead that person away from looking at SELF TO SEE WHAT GOD HAS ALREADY DONE.
LETS MOVE ON!
Not only is it therapeutic ( HEALING) to shed tears for our own pain, it can be wonderfully healing to shed tears for another person’s pain.
I remember sitting in the Counselling Room with a girl who had a terrible self-image.
At the age of 30 or more she felt abandoned by life - alone, lost, no-one to love her, her life’s story poured out. As I listened I found myself weighed down with a terrible feeling of loss - her loss. I wanted to speak words of comfort to her, but nothing would come out.
As I listened to her the second time and then the third, I found myself praying - "Lord show her that you love her and accept her. Show her that she’s not alone. Give me the words to speak to comfort her"........... but no words would come.
And then I began to cry. I sat there crying for ten minutes or so, rather embarrassed at the picture I was giving to her . When I stopped she said, "You know, I haven`t been able to cry for over 20 years. But seeing you cry today, and more than that, seeing a man cry, I began to see that you were crying all the tears I couldn`t weep myself. You were crying FOR me. Thank you"......... a few weeks later she wrote to me. In the letter she said, that, after she’d arrived home, her own tears had started. For days and days she’d cried, and when the the tears stopped she found herself at peace for the first time in her life. She began to feel loved and accepted by a God she’d never really known before. A year later another letter arrived - a miracle had happened. She’d met someone, and they’d fallen in love, and now they were getting married. She thanked me for my tears which had opened the gateway to healing for her.
Do you remember that JESUS WEPT - He wept over His friend Lazarus who had died. He wept over him even though He KNEW He was geeing to raise him from the dead.
He wept over Jerusalem when it rejected Him - He wasn’t afraid to show what He felt, and if it’s all right for Him it’s all right for us.
The Bible tells us ’HE WAS FULL OF COMPASSION’. The word compassion means ’TO HAVE THE BOWELS YEARNING’.
To the Hebrew the bowels were the seat of the emotions:
So the Bible is telling us that, when faced with those who were in need, Jesus found Himself deeply moved WITHIN, INSIDE HIMSELF, and from that deep inner movement of the emotions His whole being reached out to touch them.
St. Matthew 9.36 tells us "When He saw the crowds He had COMPASSION on them for they were harassed and helpless - like sheep without a shepherd". They were lost - they didn’t know where they were geeing.
Matthew 141.14 says, "He had compassion on them - healed their sick and fed them in the desert".
Mark 1.41 says, "When He saw the leper He was moved with PITY/COMPASSION, and said, "I WILL - BE CLEAN".
There is a movement in Compassion - it is the self reaching out to touch and heal.
And the self that is afraid of itself:
Afraid of the things inside:
Afraid to be seen to be COMPASSIONATE & INVOLVED.......
TOUCHED WITH A COLD PROFESSIONALISM....
WILL NOT TOUCH AND HEAL.
Jesus was able to be truly compassionate, because He was under the control of the Spirit....
And that is His gift to us..... to be compassionate - with His compassion, as He lives within us.
To be compassionate means that you join in with, and experience the pain, and the lostness, and the loneliness, and the helplessness, and the hopelessness and the sorrow that is at the heart of the other.......... and set them free. FREE TO BE THEMSELVES...... LOVED AND CARED FOR BY JESUS.
THAT IS OUR CALLING, TO A MINISTRY OF COMPASSION.
