Adventures in Prayer: The Prayer of Tears

Foster’s Chapter 4 (click there to read) is entitled the Prayer of Tears.  Essentially, he is speaking of the essence of having a broken and contrite heart before God.  What stood out to me in this chapter was the difference between simply being sad over things (nothing very spiritual about that!) and being sad over the things that God is sad about.  Just this morning in my quiet time I read about Esau getting gypped out of his birthright and his blessing.  He was sure sad over that!  He wept and wept.  But these are not the kind of tears that Foster is talking about. Esau’s sorrow was entirely wrapped up in his self and his loss and his wants.  What Foster urges us (through innumerable passages of Scripture, I might add) is to ache and hurt and weep and mourn over the things that break the heart of God.
I get glimpses of this.  I know, however, that I have not even come close to scratching the surface of understanding what this means.  Sorrow hits me when I see a tragedy.  For example, we have been praying for some little baby twins that were born prematurely.  We prayed and prayed that God would let them live, but yesterday we received word that they’d died.  That grieved my heart.  And it grieved God’s heart too, I know.  But the biggest offense against the love and holiness and righteousness of God is our sin. 
I know enough to know that I cannot bring this broken and contrite heart upon myself.  So as I sat and read this chapter, I wondered, “How is one supposed to do this?”  Thankfully, Foster anticipates that and gives helpful, practical advice.  Basically ask, then confess our sin, specifically, then receive the forgiveness of God, then obey (the evidence of repentance). 
So, by way of response and application, this morning I confessed.  Self-centeredness, scheming to get my own way, holding tightly onto things that God wants relinquished, demanding my own way, pleasing man rather than God, having critical thoughts in my heart toward others, pride, arrogance, vanity, impatience, having critical thoughts in my heart toward others (hey, some of these come up more than once!), scheming and not letting Jeff be the leader of our household, taking matters into my own hands, being short with my immediate family, having a me-first attitude, being focused on the things of earth more than things above, being obsessed with myself—my life and dislikes and preferences, not being sorrowful over my sin, and being critical of others in my heart. 
What I want to emphasize here, in my response to this chapter, is that it does no one any good to be fake about this.  I can sit here and write nice flowery, sad-sounding words about how horrible it is that our sin separates us from God and that our world has basically shaken its fist at God and turned from Him altogether.  But if I were to do that, and not truly grieve in my heart, then I’m just committing a worse offense—hypocrisy.  What my prayer is right now is that God would truly, authentically make us weep over our sin.  NOT because it causes uncomfortable circumstances or even that it hurts other people, but that it hurts God and blasphemes His holiness.  I pray that God would take my heart and make it break for the things His breaks for.  I don’t want to be an Esau, I want to be like Jesus, like Paul, like Moses, who wept over the world’s condition before God.  I’m certainly not there yet, so I pray God would change my heart, that I can know this Prayer of Tears.