Extract from — Compassion and Travail by Priscilla Van Sutphin

“Let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run with tears, and our eyelids gush with water. For a voice of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How we are plundered! We are greatly ashamed, because we have forsaken the land, because we have been cast out of our dwellings.’ “Yet hear the word of the LORD, O women, and let your ear receive the word of His mouth; Teach your daughters wailing, and everyone her neighbor a lamentation. For death has come through our windows, has entered our palaces, to kill off the children — no longer to be outside! And the young men — no longer on the streets!” Jeremiah 9:18-21 NKJV

” Okay… here we have the verse that tells us what the intense wailing and screaming that becomes a part of travail is about.

“FOR DEATH has come through our windows, has entered our palaces, to kill off the children.”

This is the point of the wailing and screaming. It is a terrible thing to see the violence in the world today.

A few years back, in a few days time, people had sent to me three heart wrenching videos. One was on the Palestinians teaching their children to use guns, showed them gloating over a Jew they had murdered, and holding his liver in their hand and cheering.

I began to wail and scream in the spirit. I am not that way naturally. I was an Registered Nurse (RN) with a Master’s degree and for years worked in hospitals. This is not normal behavior for me. Compassion may be, but not wailing like an Italian funeral, okay?

So then I got another video, showing how fetuses are sold as a FOOD on shelves in Taiwan. And another photo showed a man cooking one! I wanted to throw up, again wailing, weeping, screaming ensued in intercession for these atrocities.

Then another came about the Sudan and what they were doing to Christian women there, raping and maiming them, leaving them to die. And again the same response.

The LORD was wanting me in the wailing room in The Spirit, because of all the violence in the world. It had been stirring His Heart, so should it not convict our own hearts?

God is weeping. He is so brokenhearted for what His Creation is doing to each other.

Note that in the above scripture He is telling women, teach your daughters to travail! He is not wanting us to be complacent.

If we shut our eyes to all the horrors of the world completely, then it will not change our heart. I know that nurses, after being just in a few rotations of medical surgical floors in nursing school, that we went through some heavy changes in our emotions.

We had one day a week for a couple hours where we had psychiatric counseling session for us, because I was in a Christian program (long before I was Born-again) and they recognized we would have to deal with our emotions of seeing people die, seeing difficult things happen to people.

Watching children die was so hard. Nurses and doctors and other health professionals are exposed to things MOST people NEVER see.

So it was important for us to be able to talk about the feelings we had to get through, and the change going on in us.

I was very blessed to be in that program even before I was a real Christian! What this taught me, is that God doesn’t want us to completely turn our heads from seeing the bad things.

He wishes we never had to see bad things/ or situations. But if we don’t look at them, there is a tendency that we will become complacent and apathetic.

We will deny it even exists eventually, or become so hard that we blame people all the time for their problems, instead of seeing the overall picture, from a godly point of view.

We need to be asking God A LOT of questions if we want to hear HIS view on things.

“But if you will not hear it, My soul will weep in secret for your pride; My eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears, because the LORD’s flock has been taken captive.” Jeremiah 13:17 NKJV.

“Therefore you shall say this word to them: ‘Let my eyes flow with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people has been broken with a mighty stroke, with a very severe blow.” Jeremiah 14:17 NKJV.

PRIDE comes before a fall, the Word says. We have been very proud in the western world about our affluence and blessings.

We have judged others who have not had it so well. When you travel and see the reality of the world others live in who don’t have it so well.

It jars you, but it is still too easy to become complacent when all our needs are again met. It is too easy in American society to forget about the poor of the nations, or even of our own nation.

Comfort always seemed to cause Israel to go in that same direction also. So I know it is true. Every time they got wealth and comfort, they backslid!

So we need to recognize our true spiritual lack and be sure we have a reality check on our hearts from time to time. Asking for His Heart is key to keeping ours in check. ”

 

~ Priscilla Van Sutphin

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PRISCILLA VAN SUTPHIN is the founder of Upstream Ministries, California, online at www.upstreamca.org and blogtalkradio.com/ Upstream. Email: upstream.ca@me.com For Donations: send to ‘Priscilla Van Sutphin’ on envelope, but to Upstream if chk at 15660 Tustin Village Way #27, Tustin CA 92780 or https://www.paypal.me/UpstreamMinistries or Zelle thru using upstream.ca@me.com

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