Where Are Your Tears Bringing You?

Where Are Your Tears Bringing You?

Since tears are a gift from God, what reward have your tears brought you? Or I can word it like this: To what destination are your tears leading you?

Even if you do not realize it, your tears are doing something in you, and how you handle them determines where they will lead you. Everyone processes grief differently, and we must not judge someone for still feeling sad. We cannot predict how long someone’s grief will last or if they will ever fully heal. Some people move through grief quickly, while others take their time. Tears are part of the journey, but they will lead you somewhere.

Our tears can lead us to three destinations through our sorrows. Each of them is a different response to our pain. A biblical example of this is found in the life of Job.

Job was a man God blessed and loved. The Lord said of him, “There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8). Job had a big family, servants, possessions, and health. Then, by God’s ordinance, everything was taken away in an instant.

How would this man who loved God respond?

First, our tears can draw us closer to God so we can learn to trust Him through sorrow. In this case, our tears are both a gift to express emotion and a tool God uses for sanctification. They propel us to worship God.

When Job learned of his devastating losses, he “fell on the ground and worshiped” (Job 1:20). He said, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). Job was not joyful that these things happened. He mourned. He tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell to the ground. Yet he used his tears to draw closer to God.

Everything Job had came from God. He knew that when he lost it all, it was also by the hand of God. From a human perspective, Job had every right to be angry. Instead, he praised God in the most challenging moment of his life. He focused on God’s goodness, God’s sovereignty, and God’s grace.

When we weep, we can have a pity party for ourselves, or we can remember the One who is worthy to be praised. Job teaches us that it is not enough to praise God when things are good. We must also worship Him in the darkest days of our lives.

The psalmist in Psalm 42 had a similar experience. “My tears have been my food day and night” (Psalm 42:3). His sorrow was so deep that he could not even eat. Yet he preached to himself: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?... Hope in God” (Psalm 42:5). He truthfully expressed raw emotion, but despite the depths of his sorrow, he used his tears as worship.

Second, our tears can lead us to apathy. Sometimes we are so overcome by sorrow that we cry until we cannot cry anymore. After a while, we can become numb. This grief desensitizes us to sorrow and even to joy.

Job also had this experience. After he lost his health and was afflicted with boils, he was so distressed that he could not even speak. His friends “sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him” (Job 2:13).

Silence can sometimes be good. There are moments when we just want to lie there and say nothing. Yet the longer we remain in that state, the harder it becomes to worship God in our pain. Job became paralyzed with sorrow. His problem was not his grief. His problem was his inaction with his grief. If we wrongly use our tears and reject God in our sorrow, we will only hurt ourselves.

Third, our tears can become a vehicle that drives us toward bitterness and anger. When we fail to worship God and trust Him in all His provisions, our hurt begins to move outward. It can hurt others mentally, emotionally, verbally, and sometimes even physically.

After sitting silently in sorrow, Job arose a different person. This was the man who had once said, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10). Yet now he “opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth” (Job 3:1). He did not even want to live any longer.

If we let them, our tears will drown out the truth we once believed. We will begin to see our trial only with bitterness, not providence. We will see God as unjust and cruel rather than excellent and holy.

Job’s sin was not that he was displeased, but the manner in which he handled his displeasure. John Flavel wrote, “There is no sin in complaining to God, but much wickedness in complaining of him.” The way we relieve the pressures of grief is to give them to God. We should not keep our emotions bottled up while ignoring everyone around us. We should give them to God in prayer and rely on godly friends and elders to help us stay on the path toward God, not away from Him.

So where are your tears taking you? Are you closer to God? Have you been driven away? Have you grown apathetic and numb?

Learn from Job. He is good, although the journey has told you otherwise. The only way out of your sorrow is to keep going toward Him and not away from Him. God is doing something far greater in you than you could ever realize.