Why You Should Try Tears When You Pray

Emotionless prayer is foreign to the Bible.

The author of Hebrews remembers Jesus’s prayer life like this:

Luke records Jesus both “rejoicing in the Holy Spirit” (10:21) and praying with so much “anguish” that he sweat drops of blood (22:44).

In fact, Jesus’s disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray shortly after he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and after watching him quietly withdraw to pray. I’m convinced that there was something about the texture, quality, and maybe even the emotion of his prayer life that made the disciples say “I want that!”

Then in Luke 11, Jesus teaches the disciples both what to pray (content), and how to pray (posture).

The what to pray is the Lord’s Prayer, which many of us are familiar with in some form or another. But this morning, I want to draw our attention to how Jesus invites his disciples to posture themselves when they pray.

First, he tells the story in Luke 11:5-8 about a friend who shows up at another friend’s house in the middle of the night asking for bread. Jesus celebrates the persistence of the knocking friend as a model of how to pray.

Then, he teaches that prayer involves a posture of asking, searching, and knocking in confidence of God’s good-natured character as a Father. (Luke 11:9).

We might call Jesus’s teaching on prayer as advocating for a posture of consistent, confident contending.

I love silent, contemplative prayer, but I think that perhaps there is a posture of intercession in the way of Jesus that many of us might want to rediscover!

Dr. David Thomas, who did his doctoral work on the Hebrides awakening (which I wrote about here) and helped to host the recent move of God at Asbury University, argues that there is a consistent style of contenting prayer, usually with tears, that runs like a plumbline through the history of the church.

Writing specifically about his interviews with folks in their eighties who lived through the Hebrides revival, he says:

In a famous story shared by Leonard Ravenhill, a couple of Salvation Army workers were so discouraged by their lack of effectiveness at their post in London that they wrote to William Booth and asked to be moved to another station.

William Booth wrote back with two simple words: “Try tears.”

And God gave them the gift of this consistent, contending prayer and they saw a revival come.

But here’s the catch: Jesus ties this consistent, contending posture of prayer to confidence in God’s good-natured ability as a Father to answer. In other words, this consistent, contending prayer is tied to the nature and character of God Himself! As Martin Luther says, “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.”

I’m convinced that many of us are perhaps resistant to emotion in our prayer lives because we are actually limited in our capacity to see, hear, and feel God’s tears. And, thus, we are limited in our capacity to do what intercessory prayer is intended to do — partner with God’s heart to see His plans released on the earth.

This is the true shock of the invitation to intercessory prayer — God waits to move until we pray. Instead of ruling like a dictator, God chooses to partner with us. And the primary way that we partner with God is through prayer. And prayer is, in many ways, connecting with God’s heart and emotions.

And all true God-partnership, and therefore all true prayer, begins with an intimate knowledge of who God is. We are invited to friendship before partnership and intimacy before intercession. But, I would argue, that healthy friendship will always move towards caring more and more about the things God cares about.

If Jesus weeps over injustice, we are invited to weep with our Friend.

If Jesus weeps over those who don’t know Him, we are invited to weep with our Friend.

If Jesus weeps over brokenness and pain, we are invited to weep with our Friend.

Would you be willing to let God break your heart today for what breaks His today? Would you be willing to let Him give you the gift of tears? Would you be willing to receive the grace to keep going, and to build a consistent, contending prayer life based on confidence in the nature and character of God the Father? Friend, let this be your encouragement—keep going!

P.S. I so appreciate those of you who have messaged me to let me know that my words have been helpful to you as we seek to come alive and live in love with Jesus through prayer! If these words are helpful in any way, if you disagree, or just want to start a conversation, please always feel free to hit “reply” and let’s chat 😀