Prayer of Tears

[Psalm 6]

While preparing for our church's Word conference, I prayed a prayer of tears, moved by God's delicate love. The pastor who came as the speaker for our church's conference, before leading the first session, participated in a radio gospel interview with two other pastors from different churches. As I was listening to the interview, I had hoped that the speaker would mention something about our church's conference, but when he didn’t, I felt a little disappointed. However, not long after, a journalist from JoongAng Ilbo (a major Korean newspaper) called the church out of the blue, asking for an interview about our church. After hanging up the phone, I bowed my head at my desk and wept as I prayed to God. The reason for my tears was because I felt God's delicate love. I have experienced that God knows and answers even my smallest desires, and for this, I shed tears of gratitude and emotion for His love.

In Psalm 6:6, we see that the psalmist David "washes my bed every night; I soak my couch with tears." I reflect on what meaning might lie in his tears. Upon thinking about it, I believe David’s tears were tears of repentance. During the preparation for this conference, the grace I received was that God showed me that I no longer have tears of repentance. As the speaker mentioned in the radio interview, we, as participants in the Word conference, need hearts of repentance, but I have already dried up many of my tears of repentance. David, having sinned against God, did not want to face discipline coming from God's anger but desired the discipline of love from God. And through the discipline of God's love, he wept tears of repentance, even as his bones and soul trembled (verses 2 and 3). “It is a gift of the Holy Spirit to be able to repent when there is physical suffering” (Park Yunseon). David, through the physical suffering he was undergoing, shed tears of repentance, which are a gift of the Holy Spirit. He knew that the discipline he was receiving was the loving punishment from God for his sins, so he accepted it as necessary and did not try to avoid it. This is the psychology of repentance (Park Yunseon).

However, I am deficient even in this psychology of repentance. It seems I have lost sensitivity to sin. Not only do I not regard sin as sin, but it also seems that I have lost the ability to see it as it truly is. I have an instinct to not fear God's wrath and even to reject His loving discipline. Right now, instead of humbly accepting God's loving discipline, it seems I am trying to avoid it. In fact, even while receiving God's discipline, I don't even know what my own sins are. Therefore, I have many tears to shed before God. Of course, I should also shed tears of gratitude, devotion, and love for a soul, but right now, I want to shed tears of repentance. The reason is that without tears of repentance, I cannot honestly offer my gratitude, devotion, and love with an unclean soul.

Tears of Repentance Dried Up,

Pastor James Kim's Share
(Trusting in the precious blood of Jesus on the cross)