Water with tears (Weeping prayer for our generation)

Hi everyone, this is Emma from Encounter Church Henley and thanks so much for tuning into our

podcast. Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life and now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

The Book of James says that prayer is powerful and effective. The prayer of a righteous person

is powerful and effective but it's dependent on God. That prayer is foundational to revival

but even if you set up a beautiful 24 seven prayer room and what you are doing is spectacular.

It is storming heaven but unless you go in there totally dependent on God all you are doing is

setting up a nice room to show people. It's a showroom in a display house unless you are crying

out on your knees for the power of God to turn up in power. In the 1940s in the Hebrides Islands

in Scotland a revival started. This is a far out part of the Scottish Isles because two 80 plus

year old sisters prayed day and night for the Spirit of God to be poured out. One of them was

blind, the other one was getting there but all they had was faith and prayer and eventually the

Reverend Duncan Campbell was called over to the mainland and he came to their home and he explained

oh listen I've been called here to be the minister in the area. I understand you to a bit of prayer

worries and they said yep you need to go to a distant village and start to preach the gospel.

And he's like I'm kind of the minister here. I don't think you realise I'm going to question

the wisdom of your request. He said besides I've had no leading to go to that place and Betty the

blind woman turned and looked at him or looked in his direction and said Mr Campbell if you were

living as close to God as you ought to be you would be hearing from him what you ought to hear.

And he went to the village and the entire village came to Jesus. This is in the 1940s it's not that

long ago. In 1857 a businessman called Jeremiah Lanpheer, what a name just child name ideas for

those who are considering it, Jeremiah Lanpheer quit his job to pursue ministry in New York. He

had a deep burden for people to know God for themselves and so he started a prayer meeting

but he wanted one that was accessible for people who worked weekdays right because he was a businessman

and so he started on Wednesday 12 to 1 at lunch, printed off a bunch of flyers and started handing

them out around the city and then he turned up on Wednesday and prayed and 12 o'clock and nobody's

there and 10 past, 20 past, half past, a half past somebody turns up, 40 past, a couple more people

turn up by the end of the hour there are six people there finishing praying and he goes that's

great I'll take it. By the end of the second week 20 people turned up and prayed. By the end of the

third week 40 and it just kept going exponentially. It's okay I guess something's happening here

better take it daily so we took it daily. The New York Times got involved they realized that

something was going on so they said okay we want to count how many people are going to this prayer

meeting because they're multiplying now all over the city every day across Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn

everywhere and so we're going to try and count them. They could not get to all the meetings in time to

do it all they could do is estimate that at least 10,000 men a day were praying every day in New York

City. That year 1 million people prayed to receive Jesus in the United States. The United States

population at that time was 30 million. One in every 30 people made a decision to follow Jesus

because one businessman set up a prayer meeting in his lunch break. Evan Roberts had a deep life of

intercession. He was a prayer he would he would be awoken by the Lord at 1 a.m. and be in a prayer

for four hours to the break of dawn. Carmen's like that too. Just I wakes up at one and three to five

praying for four hours as he sought the Lord's face to revival to break out in Wales. That's what

he wanted. He was Welsh. He wanted revival to break out in his hometown. In 1904 he was in prayer at

a chapel meeting and he had an encounter with Jesus and he wept. And following that he said the

salvation of the human soul was impressed solemnly on me. He said, I felt a blaze to go the length

and breadth of Wales to tell all of the Savior. And so Evan began praying more seriously and

eventually one night he asked his friend Sidney Evans, hey seriously tell me if I'm crazy. Do you

think God could give us a hundred thousand souls? And Sidney Evans went, yes I think he could.

Nine months later the Welsh revival had seen 100,000 people come to Jesus.

Wales is not a big place. That's everything. Like what they noticed that people was that

the law courts were empty, the jails were empty, the mines were featuring prayer meetings underground,

the ponies underground in the mines that were trained to respond to the miners were not responding

to the miners because they were used to being sworn at and they didn't understand the changed

language. The mining industry dropped in productivity because the ponies couldn't understand the new

Christianized language the miners were using. That is the impact that happened because this man said,

God give me 100,000 souls for your kingdom. They gave out white gloves to all the judges that year

and the reason was to say this is a physical representation and when I say they, I mean the

government gave out white gloves to all the judges say this is a physical representation to

remember that God showed up in power this year. We don't want to forget this, take the gloves.

There was no crime this year, white gloves for everybody. This is revival. That's what it looks

like. It's a consistent part of our Christian heritage. It's not something we're meant to drop.

It's not something we're meant to be bored by. It's not something abstract we're meant to read about

and consider. I want to tell stories about revival because revival ultimately is something that is

drawn from the heart and it's seeded by prayer. It's seeded by weeping tears of prayer for a broken

and lost generation. Now people cry all the time in the Bible think of David in the Psalms or like

anywhere really with David all the time he's crying. Think of Jesus weeping at the death of Lazarus,

right? Jesus' web, the shortest perfect sentence in the English language. Think of Job, tears of

grief and pain. They're very, very common but that's not what we're describing here. When we talk about

sowing the ground, watering it with tears of prayer for a generation, we are talking about

near Maya broken in Babylon weeping as he hears stories of his fellow Jews back in Jerusalem,

the broken city walls, the destroyed temples, the exiles foraging in a broken land. He's there in a

foreign land watching his people be enslaved. He's going, God what can we do? This is a broken prayer

for a generation. God do something. We're talking about Jeremiah and Lamentations which is an entire

book of grieving prayer and Jeremiah in Lamentations 2 11 says this, my eyes fail from weeping.

I'm in torment within. My heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed

because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. This is what the Psalmist means in

Psalm 126 when he talks about sowing in tears. God calls us to hold within us an urgency for the

lost, a desperation. People who want the spirit of God to pour out over a nation don't just cry

over a situation no matter how genuine. They put that situation to the side and pour themselves out

for the lost again and again and again. It's a broken hearted generation. Now what I want to

talk about a lost generation, this is what I mean. A generation who has turned away from God and has

attempted to fill that hole with everything else imaginable. A generation who is obsessed with

sex and sexuality, with distraction, with the environment and the brokenness of the environment,

with their earning potential, with politics, with increasing tech addiction. A generation that is

so broken that every one of them is constantly caught in mental health crises. You know the

generation I'm talking about? Everybody. Every generation. That is every generation. You thought

I was talking about Gen Z. No, no. Every generation deals with this. Every generation is a lost

generation. And so when I say a lost generation, I mean everyone who is far from God, everyone who

has not received the gift of salvation from Jesus Christ. Whether we like to hear it,

whether we like the language or not, whether it makes us feel uncomfortable or not, without Jesus,

we are lost. Lost. Now Jesus himself watered the ground with tears. This is what we read in Luke 19.

It's before he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he wept. This is a triumphant moment for Jesus

in Luke 19. This is what it says. But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began

to weep. How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it's

too late and peace is hidden from your eyes. Before long, your enemies will build ramparts

against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into

the ground and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place. Why?

Because you did not recognize it when God visited you. You just let it go by. Jesus is seeing them

and he's not condemning the city. He's brokenhearted for it. Now he's God. Everyone in the city

sinning against God, is sinning against him personally. And he knows what is to come. But

his brokenheartedness is not for himself. We see a little bit of that in the garden who gets

seminy as the weight of sin falls on him. But his brokenheartedness is for the city. Because

Jesus' primary focus of mission was to the Jewish people first and was never meant to stay that way,

of course. It was always going to open up to us. But Jesus was specifically sent to what he called

the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So he comes to Jerusalem entering like a triumphant king,

but he weeps for their rejection of him. Not because they rejected him, but because they

have rejected God and he knows what that rejection will cost them. He is the author of life. He is

the shepherd of the flock. He sees the physical and spiritual future of Jerusalem and he sees it's

totally destructive. Friends, this is why we sow the ground with seeds of tears. We sow the

ground with tears because the price not to is too high. I said earlier that every generation is a

lost generation. That's true. But we are a young church at Encounter. We aim young. 72% of Henley,

you're under 30 as adults. Sorry. Tax car. 47% of prospect adults are under 30. So not quite as

many. We're a young church. It's not an accident. We're deliberately focused on blessing and

strengthening the younger generations. Now, sometimes people get a bit uptight about that.

I mean, I don't know why. Like I'm not one of those generations. So I'm not focused on blessing

and strengthening myself here. The reason why we do that is because we're taught in the Scriptures

that we are to grow up into spiritual maturity. So my vision is that we are growing young people

up into spiritual maturity so they can pour out into the next generation. If you're a very young

person, it's hard to have spiritual maturity because you're not even physically mature yet.

How can you be spiritually mature? It takes time. But the responsibility of us as older,

more mature Christians is then to pour ourselves out for the next generation. We pour more efforts

and energy because we are spiritual parents to them. You with me? Yeah, even if you don't like it,

you understand what I'm saying? Okay. So if you want to wait for a generation, wait for Gen Z and

Gen Alpha. Gen Alpha is coming, man. The oldest Gen Zs are 30. Oh, no. You want to feel old? There

you go. The oldest Gen Zs are 30. Now, if you ask the Gen Z about their fears for the world,

you would probably be able to guess them and you'd probably get in some order the ability to enter

the housing market and have a financial future. Some sort of problem with tech addiction of some

form or another. Politics, very politically engaged generation. The environment. And of course, the

big one, making a phone call to another human being. These are obviously the major fears of the

generation. The ones that really make your hands shake. There's climate change and then there's

the telephone. But behind all these fears, there's the secondary fears, right? Under everyone's

fears are the true fears. The ones that you've got to scratch the surface to get to. Am I truly

loved? Does what I do matter? Do I have a purpose? What am I even doing here? Who am I really?

And in this generation, there's an extraordinary hunger for the spiritual,

which means we are in a moment in time where not only is there a need as there always is

for believers to pour themselves out in weeping prayer on behalf of the generation,

but there's actually a hunger for the first time I believe in three generations.

A genuine hunger for the things of God or at least something spiritual. There's a recognition.

The Gen Zs, you're a much smarter, more spiritually aware generation than the ones like me that have

all come before you. Well done. And of course, what's the meaning of life and who's behind it?

That's the question, right? If they're asking the questions, are you ready? Are you ready to

respond? Are you willing? So perhaps the obvious question then is this, how, how do we do it next?

How do we prepare ourselves to have a heart? How do we develop a desire to weep in prayer for our

generation? Well, we hear the answer in Revelation. As Jesus speaks to the church in Ephesus, now

Ephesus is in modern day Turkey. When we say the church of Ephesus, we mean like the book of Ephesians

in the Bible. Ephesians, Ephesus, same thing. It's one of the few churches in Revelation that's

commended for their hard work, their endurance, their discernment, their suffering. Jesus encourages

them. He's like, you guys are actually doing great. But then he says this, and it's on the screen.

I have this against you. You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then how far

you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. Now this church in Ephesus, you've got to

catch this. This church was planted by the apostle Paul, right? That's pretty good. That's a lot better

than encounter. And then the apostle Paul handed it over to Timothy, his son in the faith who gets

two whole books written to him. That's a lot better. No disrespect. Then Pastor Tim and Pastor Tex

receiving it from Jenna myself. And then Timothy as he moves on, hands it over to the apostle John,

the beloved who writes the Gospel of John, the three letters of John and the book of Revelation.

That church has been pasted better than any church in history. And what does Jesus say?

You have forgotten your salvation love. Man, if they're going to forget it, anyone can forget it.

No church has had better pastoral leadership than those three. Yet here they are forgetting their

first love. We can forget what salvation has done for us in our day to day distractions of life.

We get caught up in everything else. We get caught up in the busyness we have to do. And we are all

busy. There's a million things we have to do. There are a hundred reasonable excuses we can make.

Friends, I believe so often for most Christians, it's not sin that gets in the way of sharing the

Gospel. It's distraction. That's not sins there. Like don't get me wrong. We can talk about that

another time. But distraction is the enemy of the soul. You know, C.S. Lewis is once quoted as saying,

he's in the screw-taped letters when he's pretending to be in the place of a senior

devil talking to a junior devil. It's a brilliant book. Very, very clever. C.S. Lewis is quite

just saying this. The older devil says to the younger devil, if you can't keep them sinning,

keep them busy because the distraction takes us away from focusing on Jesus. Now,

when we remember and we turn and we focus on Jesus, we remember the staggering audacity of

what Christ has done for us. This is a Jesus who has emptied himself of all power. Philippians says,

coming down to earth, not as one of us, but to serve us. It actually doesn't say in Philippians

that he came down to be just like you and me. No, it says he came down to be a servant of all

emptying himself of power. This is a Jesus, although he was fully God who washes his disciples'

feet in an act of extreme servanthood. This is a Jesus who took on the insults and cruelty of

his own hometown in Nazareth, who took on the misunderstanding of his mother and brothers,

who took on the sins of the world and allowed himself willingly to be led to the cross to see

two centimetre thick nails punched through his wrists and his legs as he hung up on a cross to

die with the weight of sin and grief on his body, on his shoulders, all of humankind. When we remember

that, when we focus on the pain, the grief, the beauty of Jesus, and salvation comes back into

focus a little more. It's the pure unadulterated love of Jesus for us. Church, we weep when we love.

We weep when we love. I wept over a generation of lost kids because I love them. It was my greatest

gift as a youth pastor, maybe my only gift as a youth pastor, that I loved them more than anybody

else. I poured myself out with love for those kids. What about you? Do you weep for the lost?

Do you recognise the urgency of salvation? What is your hunger level for the salvation of the

lost? And you guys can get back up. I'm going to come towards a close now.

We have four core values as a church. They're pretty good. If you're new, they're, well,

they're on the walls. Jesus, people, generous, real. They're great. Every single one of them

is about helping people have an encounter with Jesus. But to live them out requires a focus on

salvation. Now, hear this, I know people are walking around. I know it's getting warm on a

Sunday afternoon. Hear this. Give a man to give a man a fish and he'll what? Eat for a day? You

heard this before? I would say give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man a fish to

fish and he'll fish for a lifetime. Let me try that one more time so it makes sense. Give a man a

fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. And then he dies.

But teach him to feed on the living word and that all his hope is in the salvation of Jesus Christ

and he feeds for eternity. It's an old thing the mother Teresa used to lean on. Where's she go?

Oh, you've got to feed people so they know they're loved. But ultimately what you're feeding them with

is the living word. You come with a sandwich in one hand and a gospel in the other.

People need to be fed. They need to know they're loved. I was reading about Exodus this morning.

I was just reflecting on Moses. He's in the desert and what happens? Manne comes down from heaven and

the Israelites are sort of complaining about it and then Quail comes in and they feed on the meat

and they feed on the bread and I thought that is just like Jesus to break the bread and to bring

the meat, the lamb of God, the bread of life to feed his people. It's just like Jesus to take

a couple of loaves of bread and a few fish and split them among 5,000 and feed everybody. If you're

not catching what I'm putting down here, this is what it is. Jesus can take a little seed of faith

and that's like that's all you have. Or at least it's all I have. A little seed of faith.

A seed of faith and he can multiply it, magnify it. Henley, I need to talk directly to you guys.

This is specifically Henley centric. This is a church with quite a high percentage of introverts.

Introverts in the room. Jump up and wave your hands up and down.

You knew that you were never going to do that. That's the joke.

I get it. I'm an introvert. I'm already dreaming of being by myself.

Here's the thing. You don't get to play I'm an introvert when salvation is on the line.

It's not an option. Your personality type is irrelevant when it comes to the salvation of

souls. It's too important. It's not that your personality type doesn't matter. Of course it

does. You need to work out of who you are, out of your giftings, out of how God has formed you.

However, you don't get to wave the I'm an introvert flag, however small and quietly

when it's salvation is on the line. A broken world is desperate, desperate. Let me just tell

you this. There's a message of Christ and is the only message that is true and works. Jesus is not

just good like as in it makes you feel good. It works when you bring the gospel to people.

It doesn't just hype them up. It feeds them for a lifetime. Our world is crippled by a mental

health crisis and the only answer the world has is to create an opioid epidemic.

God's people are being eaten inside by loneliness and a lack of genuine connection. Our response

is more apps in a subscription mentality. We got a broken sense of identity and a broken creation

of God and the world has no answers except to yell furiously that something's wrong and they're right.

But nothing's going to fill it except Jesus. This world is going to hell, literally, figuratively.

All this and we dare, and I'm just talking to Christians in the room, we dare to act as

if sharing the gospel is optional. Jesus is not an option. He is life. He is home.

He's hope. We didn't plan encounter Henley as a cool alternative to an older church.

We planted it to bring people to Jesus. Pure and simple. That's it. That's the goal. That's what

church plants do better than anything else. That's why you have a 24-7 prayer room because good coffee

doesn't bring salvation. So what are you going to do about it? Listen, come to a finish. This is the

same Jesus who wept over Jerusalem, weeps over your friends and your family. So do you. Do you?

When Jesus came and Lazarus, a Bethany, his dear friend had died, he came and he witnessed this

and he weeps. We talked about that before. Jesus wept. Do you know what the people said about him

in response? See how he loved him. See how he loved him. The love of Jesus was so visible. It wasn't

just something that they were like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus has power. No, he has loves because

sowing seeds of tears comes from a place of love. And I believe we're in, in the Bible, what they call

a chai-ros moment. A moment where God has begun to do amazing works and he invites us to join with him.

Not every moment in history is like this. I'm not sure at any other time during my life, I felt this

sense that God is on the verge of doing something powerful. He's going to do it with or without us,

but we have a choice. We have a choice of whether we participate. Do we repent and join with him,

or do we continue to numb ourselves with the distractions of modern life? This is what Duncan

Campbell said back in the 1940s about that similar moment in the Hebrides. He said this,

now it seems to me that the all-important question for us to face at this hour is what we have as a

church to offer a generation that is awake, but a generation that is failing to find the true way of life.

Thanks so much for tuning into this week's message. If you felt challenged or need prayer,

we'd love to hear from you on Instagram at Encounter Henley. Or if you're interested in how

you can support this ministry, please go to our website, EncounterAdelaide.com.au.

Thanks again for listening. God bless you.