The Prophet's Tears: Compassion in Proclaiming God's Judgment

Isaiah cries, "My heart shall cry out for Moab" (Isaiah 15:5), modeling a truth too often forgotten: God's servants must speak His judgments with broken hearts, not hard voices. When we announce doom without tears, we harden rather than convict.

Charles Finney's autobiography preserves the example of Abel Clary, a licensed preacher so burdened with souls that he could scarcely preach. Instead, he spent himself in intercessory prayer. The weight of men's spiritual condition would render him unable to stand; he would "writhe and groan in agony." During six weeks of Finney's ministry in that church, five hundred souls converted—not through eloquent preaching alone, but through prayer saturated with pastoral anguish.

Similarly, in sixteenth-century Ulster, the minister Glendinning possessed meager natural gifts but spent days and nights alone with Elohim, burdened for his people's state before God. Under his pleading—delivered from a heart broken for the lost—multitudes were seized with conviction. The boldest men of the neighborhood, warriors unafraid of sword-drawn conflict, were so stricken by God's Word that a dozen in a single day were carried outside as if dead.

These revivals transformed entire regions. The prophet's weeping for Moab reveals the secret: effective proclamation of judgment flows from a heart already grieving the very doom we announce.