In just a few minutes I'll be joining a conference call with people from all across this country to unite our voices in praying for revival. I love this group, these people - most of whom I've never met, but all of whom I feel close to because of what I hear in their prayers. These are people who really understand the Church's urgent need for revival.

I read through the various revival psalms on a regular basis - 44, 67, 80, 102, 126, and others. Many of the situations described in those psalms fit the contemporary Church in this country: spiritual shallowness parading as genuine faith; compromises with worldliness in various ways; loss of effectiveness in persuading others; becoming a byword to our unbelieving neighbors; signs of decline. There is one recurrent condition in these psalms, however, that I don't see in the contemporary Church.

Tears.

We have not reached the point where we are aware of our lamentable condition, ashamed of our little faith, deeply sorrowed by our hypocrisy, and earnestly seeking the Lord for repentance. In Ezekiel 9 the Lord is preparing to judge His sinful people in Jerusalem. They were a people in need of revival but who would not admit it, and so kept pressing on in their frivolous, foolish, and foul religious practices, supposing that God would accept just any old thing from them. The were about to learn otherwise, as Nebuchadnezzar was massing his armies outside the city walls.

Before the judgment fell God sent a messenger around the city. Every person that man encountered who was weeping for Jerusalem and her plight, sorrowful and mourning for her transgressions and seeking the Lord with tears - every such person was marked on the forehead, and, as a result, spared through the judgment.

Where are the weeping and lamenting people of God today? Revival is the great need of the hour in the American Church, but true revival must begin with tears, as the psalms indicate. The time for tears has arrived, friends. But where are the people to weep them?

I'll be with some of them in just a few moments. Pray, won't you, that their ranks will increase?

T. M. Moore