Weeping for the Unsaved

Heaven is a happy and holy place, but the Heavenly Father reaches with great mercy to the lost souls inhabiting our sin sick world. I cannot imagine tears in heaven, but God is weeping by His saints on earth. We are laborers together with God. Nothing we do is more powerful than intercessory prayer. Whenever prayer is anointed by the Holy Ghost, the Spirit prays in us and through us with groaning that cannot be uttered. This is the greatest business of His Kingdom on earth. The ultimate rewards will not be for great sermons or great songs, but for great prayer warriors.

I recently preached a powerful sermon on the "Sounds of Hell." One thing stands out to me about hell: The Father does not want you to go there. Yes, He created Hell for the devil and his angels but not for you. If you go, you will be an unwelcome inmate. The Father wants you to be saved. Listen, "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain" (James 5:7). He calls the unsaved the "precious fruit" of the earth. Even if you are a liar, a homosexual, or a Christ rejecter, He still calls you "precious fruit" yet to be plucked out of sin. He has had "long patience" in calling you to Himself.

Apostle Peter speaks the same truth about our Father. "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (II Peter 3:9). Notice that the Holy Ghost, the very Spirit of the Father, said, "not willing that any should perish." The Father and the Son by the Holy Ghost is calling you back from the precipice of those hellish flames into the fellowship of the forgiven. While sin is so hellish itself, the Father will wipe your record clean and give you a new beginning.

Isaiah speaks of the great travail that will characterize Israel at the conclusion of the seven years of tribulation. This nation will be reborn and redeemed in a day and the travail of Zion is the act of God within Israel’s repenting heart. Listen, "Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children" (Isaiah 66:7-8).

This same promise is ours in the church age while we conclude our time as the wild olive branch. Listen to the Apostle as he speaks to the Gentiles, "For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office. And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree. Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy" (Romans 11:13, 17, 31). We are responsible to be intercessors in mercy, both to the Jews and the Gentiles. Weeping will never fail to prevail when the cheeks that are stained are holy cheeks of Holy Saints.