David:     How long has it been since you cried?

Karen:     And do you remember what you cried about?

David:     When you cried, were you alone or with others?

Karen:     Did you find yourself apologizing for your tears?

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David at Karen Mains.

David:     This visit on Before We Go we will talk about two times in Scripture where it’s recorded that Jesus cried.

Karen:     One of those times was just before the raising of Lazarus. Now Lazarus was a good friend. That whole family was very close to Jesus. And the Bible reads this, “When Jesus saw Mary, the sister of Lazarus, weeping and the Jews who had come to mourn their loss, also weeping, he was deeply moved in the spirit and troubled. ‘Where have you lain him?’ he asked. And they replied, ‘Come and see.’” And the rest of this short verse is only two words. “Jesus wept.”

David:     The other passage we want to look at takes place shortly after the one Karen just referred to. It occurs toward the start of what’s called the triumphal entry. In the Gospel of Luke reads, “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it. And said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace. But now it’s hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you, and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.’” It’s a profound statement.

Karen:     It is a profound statement. Right. You wonder, I mean we know the circumstances that were going on historically at that time. But you wonder if his audience knew what he was lamenting. Not just the future thing, but what he was lamenting in the present.

David:     Well, the God of the universe had come to the world, had proclaimed his kingdom, his message. And now he was received enthusiastically by some of the people as he came into the city. They wanted an earthly king. So, they didn’t totally understand. But the power bases, both religiously and politically, they had only one intent, that was to kill him.

Karen:     To get rid of him, this troublemaker, this charismatic person that everyone is claiming and going after.

David:     And Jesus wept.

This was a time when Jesus was saying, “It’s unique.” There’s not another day like it. And with tears in his eyes, he proclaimed that nations need to recognize special times of God coming to them. Looking back on my own life, Karen, the closest I can come to thinking of a time like this was probably 9-11.

Karen:     9-11 commemorates the day that the Twin Towers were hit by American Airlines that had been taken over by terrorists. And the Twin Towers just went down right in front of our eyes. Those of us who are watching on television.

David:     There were actually four coordinated attacks. Almost 3,000 deaths. Pretty much people, they can bring back exactly where they were when this happened. I was in Atlanta, Georgia. I was speaking to the Salvation Army, in the Eastern Division, and I had the opening session on that Tuesday morning. And then I noticed some whispering. I had only gotten started.

Karen:     You couldn’t have been that bad, right?

David:     I didn’t really think that. I thought I was pretty good. Something was unusual because there was a buzz that went through the room.

Karen:     You said that people just started to get up and leave. Now this is the Salvation Army.

David:     They knew the attack had come. And they were in Atlanta, but they were going to get to New York because that’s where they belonged.

Karen:     That’s where Salvation Army kicked into all kinds of work.

David:     And the high gear. And pretty soon, I just had to stop because I would say probably two-thirds of the audience, a large group of people who were gone.

Karen:     When the planes hit the towers, and we may have listeners who didn’t live through that.

David:     It could be. What, 19 years ago?

Karen:     Yeah. When the planes hit the towers and then they hit the Pentagon as well, and there was an attempt in a field that went awry.

David:     It went awry, right.

Karen:     Because of the bravery of some of the passengers on board. Then because we realized we were under terrorist attack; we didn’t know how many of these have been set up to go up all over the country is Al Qaeda. So, then there was a freeze that was put on air traffic. So, you’re in Atlanta. Your meetings with the Salvation Army are over.

David:     I needed to get home.

Karen:     And you needed to get home. So, there was someone, I think, who was driving home.

David:     It was one of my great God-hunt sightings.

Karen:     Well, I don’t recall quite what happened.

David:     I can’t even remember it fully, but there was a friend of a friend who said he’s driving home. I don’t know if he’s still in Atlanta.

Karen:     Driving back to Chicago.

David:     Let me see if I can get a hold of him.

Karen:     He wasn’t even in your meetings, was he?

David:     No, not at all.

Karen:     Ok.

David:     But that dear person went out of his way to get me and drove all the way back to Chicago. It was really something. But that day was unique. And Karen, one of the things that happened as a result of that, that was a Tuesday morning, the following Sunday the churches were packed.

Karen:     Well, I think they even started to fill up before Sunday morning. I think churches opened their doors and people came to pray. And many of them, people who never darkened the doors of a church or hadn’t for decades or years. But that was one of the results of that particular phenomenon was, people turned to prayer. They went to their churches because the unknowable was how much more is this going to happen?

David:     Yeah. It was a time of great fright, a great patriotism of all the nation coming together. That’s the best illustration I have. And it doesn’t equate what happened with the Son of God coming and the start of the triumphal and so on. I have this sense that something unique is happening like this once again. There’s a convergence of things that are taking place. I’m not wanting to blame God for them. Not saying he’s responsible. Could be. I mean, the Lord has brought great tragedy into nations.

Karen:     Allowed for great tragedy. Yeah.

David:     Sometimes you don’t know whether he caused them, or he let them happen. But that’s beside the point.

Karen:     So, your analogy of 9-11 is more because it has some comparisons to today. What we’re going through today, nationally, as a nation where the entire nation knows what’s happened and is attentive and trying to discern and respond.

David:     I don’t know if we’ve come that far. In my head, I can tell you what I’m seeing in my own eyes. I’m seeing this convergence which is most unusual. I would say, well, this is all news to people. I’m just reviewing the coronavirus.

Karen:     It’s the pandemic. We have a pandemic that’s ongoing. It’s not only just a national pandemic. It’s gone around the globe. So, everyone is in some way concerned or at least knowledgeable that it’s happening.

David:     Of course. And I think that as long as that trend line keeps going up, it brings incredible fear. I think that there’s a certain amount of frustration and anger. We can’t control it. We don’t like it that it continues, and it just doesn’t go away. We’ve stayed in place for a long time and it’s just one of those times. This is a big thing that is going on. I would say that along with that and related to it obviously is that we are in the midst of an economic recession. When that will end, we don’t know.

Probably no one knows. All of us would like to end very quickly. But we know people who have lost their jobs. We’re talking about literally millions of people in this country who are without work now. We’re talking about businesses, many small businesses unable to open. Or they open then they had to re-shutdown. Their names that all of us recognize that we’ve gone bankrupt. This is a huge thing that is happening in the land. And if you talk about the people who don’t have resources. The food lines where free food, bless these people who have figured out how to get to the food and hand it out but mile long lines of cars of people waiting because they’re hungry.

Karen:     And many of them never dreaming or even suspecting that in their lifetime they would have to wait in lines for food because they didn’t have enough food or couldn’t pay for food.

David:     That’s two. I’m going to just name three or four. Here’s another one. Protests regarding systemic racism. That’s something that has been talked about for a long time, but we have seen in the land protests that are beyond anything that anyone ever imagined.

Karen:     You and I have been very involved in the civil rights dialogue all through our ministry. We had an intentionally interracial church, interracial congregation that we planted in 1967. In the year before Martin Luther King was assassinated and where we met in our church was a local 705 team through on the west side of Chicago. And when King was assassinated, that whole west side went up in flames. We have lived in this and talked about it.

David:     Yeah. It’s very much a part of who we are. And yet at the same time we’ve never seen protests. Well, there were the protests regarding civil rights movement.

Karen:     Civil rights movements. The marches and stuff like that during that time.

David:     But with those protests’ marches, there is also a very high level of expectation that new laws are going to come in but that hasn’t happened yet.

Karen:     Well, what’s different about these protests that have occurred during our current time is that they’re diverse.

David:     They’re interracial.

Karen:     They’re interracial. There’s a diversity of people who are gathering. It’s all over the country. The civil rights marches were not as comprehensive as this. We have daily media coverage. I mean, we know what the protests have evolved to become, and there are protests against systemic racism and black and brown communities particularly. And they’ve gone on for months now. That didn’t happen during the civil rights movements. Not like this. This is different.

David:     And the declaration of the leaders. This isn’t going to stop until we get justice.

Karen:     Yes.

David:     Let me just name another one, because I’m trying not to be political. I’m just trying to analyze in terms of the day. I would say that we are in an incredible unrest politically. Obviously, we have an election coming up in four months, but the country in many ways is still divided. I find it a tough climate in which to be alive because people don’t say nice things about each other.

Karen:     It’s tiresome. Just tiresome. Christians are as bad as the rest of the culture.

David:     I hope we’re not, but it’s possible.

Karen:     I suspect we are.

David:     Well, Karen, it’s a time of chaos. In fact, if you say the media, the media thrives on chaos.

Karen:     Yes, right.

David:     It’s all newspapers by controversy.

Karen:     Oh, advertising if you’re on television, you know, right.

David:     Yeah, but it is all a part of what is this pot boiling that is going on. And it’s a strange day. I don’t know if God is prompting some of it to say, “Why don’t you turn to me? Don’t you understand that you don’t have the resources on your own? You don’t have the message on your own.” Where are the churches at all this? Well, the churches can’t meet like after 9-11. They can’t even come together.

Karen:     Filled with people on their knees in prayer because of the COVID-19 restriction.

David:     They may have to think different ways to pray. I don’t know. But in my own mind, I wouldn’t put it past God to say, “I will allow this to happen to try to bring my people to prayer so there can be a moving of my Holy Spirit in the land.” Is that just too naive to think that way?

Karen:     Well, I think we certainly do need a moving of the Holy Spirit, a moving of God, or however you want to frame that event. We haven’t really had a national movement, or spiritual movement for decades. Maybe there are some regionally that I’ve gone on or some in certain denominational groups. But not where people cross the defining lines have gone on their knees before the Lord and say, “We need you.” We need to go through intense soul examination. We are not the moral message, not the moral message with love attached to it.

It’s easy to be critical, but it’s not easy to love our enemy. And that’s what needs to be modeled today. And it needs to be just inspired by an overcoming of people of the church, people of faith, by the power and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

David:     And I’m thinking because revival always begins in the church. Then when the church has sensed this amazing presence of the Lord, then it spills out over to society in general. And there’s a great reforming that comes in society. But in this extraordinary moment of history, which I think we’re in, should people of faith throughout America ask Jesus for the gift of tears? That’s what I’m asking.

Karen:     Ok. So, what are you thinking about that?

David:     Well, I think that’s what needs to happen. I don’t know if it will.

Karen:     And you’re in tears right now.

David:     I said to somebody the other day, “I don’t know why I feel like crying all the time.”

Karen:     But David, in this old age, you’re spending so much time in prayer. Don’t you think that’s partly God sharing his heart with you? Is he weeping himself over the condition of the church in our land? I mean, when I think of my own, go ahead.

David:     Sorry to interrupt. I think part of it is that. And I also think it’s a warning.

Karen:     Yes, okay.

David:     “If you don’t heed what I’m trying to say to you, there are very bad days ahead.” So, how does the church come to the place where together people start to pray and pray with great feeling, pray with tears?

Karen:     I think that those tears come in my life, when I go before the Lord and I say, “Just show me where I am in error.” You know, we can have and slip into so easily a cultural kind of Christianity that demands nothing of us. You know, we tithe, we attend meetings, we’re nice. But when I begin to ask the Lord to show me, then I feel close to tears. Show me, me.

David:     Yeah.

Karen:     You know, the harshness that can rise up out of me of judgment. The categorizing of people into groups that I like or don’t like. A lack of prayer, I mean.

David:     The demonizing.

Karen:     The demonizing of other folk. People who are not Christians, but also people who are Christians.

David:     Yes.  Calling people fools.

Karen:     Calling people fools or names. So, when I, in humility, and this does require humility, say, “Lord, show me where I am in error. Don’t let me be satisfied pointing the fingers at others. Show me where I am in error.” And he begins to do that. There’s plenty to weep about.

You know, I can just run through my days with a thousand things to do. And I feel convicted recently, partly because of listening to these wise people who you pulled out of the Chapel of the Air broadcast were now dead. But their words to our generation I think are as apropos today as they were when you interviewed them 30 years ago. But the lack of prayer, I mean real prayer, I mean my life, you know, I do a lot of praying on the run. You know.

David:     Good for you.

Karen:     Bullet prayers you know. But I think the Lord is saying to me, “I want you to become a woman of prayer. Don’t do anything unless you bathed it in prayer. Don’t start making your list before you have prayed about it.”

And so, knowing we’re going to do this podcast, I spent a lot of prayer. I got up, I don’t know what it’s 4:30 or something like that. Just a lot of prayer this morning and going through the things I wanted to get accomplished. And I’ve made the list, but I could truthfully say that I had not prayed over all those things I felt I needed to do. So, that’s a feeling in my part. It’s a habitual feeling. And I need the Lord to keep reminding me of that. And I worked with him enough in my life to say, you know, bring me to point of repentance. That he can do that very harshly for our own good. You know, where we have a real near disaster in our lives because it’s the only thing that in his loving heart he knows will draw us back to him.

So, I’m hoping we will prohibit that sort of thing by just going into it and saying, “Now Lord just help give me a longing for prayer. Give me a longing to be a woman of faith and prayer. Help me to just habitually develop a habit. You know those 30 days of doing something every day, every day, every day, actually change the neural paths in our brain. So, it’s not just an idea habit, it becomes a functional habit that’s occurring within the neural system of our brains. I mean brain science tells us this now. It’s fascinating. So, that’s where I am in this dialogue. And if I need to have tears help me to weep, not only over my lack but, over the need in our culture and the need that I see often in Christianity and people of faith who have a cultural Christianity.

David:     Yeah. I used to ask myself a question often and then try to come up with the answer and then apply it to my messages. If Jesus were to come back and say, he was given the microphone a Christian radio or Christian television, what would he say to the nation? And that’s a very hard exercise to try to figure out. But I think I have a bead on it. I’m not sure he’d anything, I think, he just might cry. Just weep. And then when he’s done, everyone would listen. And then he probably speak very quickly.

Karen:     …and simply.

David:     And simply.

Karen:     Yeah.

David:     Speak about love because he did that all the time.

Karen:     Right love one another.

David:     To my church, this is how people will know you’re my disciples by your love for one another. You know I don’t know what he would do but I have a feeling that would be there. And I think his tears would be profound in terms of what they would say

Karen:     Yeah. Jesus wept. That’s all the scripture needed to say.

David:     Yeah.

Karen:     So, what are we doing with this podcast? I think in that sentence you’re asking for us to…

David:     Well, I started by saying, “The last time you cried when was it?” And “Were others around?” And “Did you try to stop and then say I’m sorry?” A lot of times that’s where people are when they cry. “I’m so sorry.”

You’re not supposed to do that because it makes people very uncomfortable. I think that that’s maybe where we are. We don’t know how to pray that much anymore. But we just join Jesus. And I thought. In fact, I said this the other day to a friend, I thought maybe I was having a breakdown because I was near tears. I’ve come to believe it’s a gift. It’s a gift from the Lord of a sensitivity. And instead of feeling funny about it, I think, I’m just going to accept. Not use it. Not abuse it. Just say thank you. Thank you for feeling your heart and help me to somehow use this well. Use it wisely. Use it fully. Find those people who want to weep with me.

Karen:     Okay. So, we’re asking for God to give us the tears of Jesus in a way right to weep along with him. And I’m sure that there is much rejoicing going on in heaven. And probably much weeping going on in heaven as well.

David:     The Lord is good.

Karen:     The Lord is good. Right.

David:     It’s really good. Yeah, thank you, Jesus.

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address,  hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois, 60187.