Allowing God access to our Feelings and Emotions to Express our Tenderhearted God

In the book of Jeremiah we see both God’s tenderheartedness and His righteousness; our God is a tenderhearted God, but He is also righteous, and He wants to train and discipline us in our emotions to match Him.

In this book we see God revealed in a way that we don’t really see in any other book of the Bible – we see a God who is tenderhearted, a God who weeps, a God who has deep feelings and emotions, and a God who loves and hates, judges and saves, and raises and causes to fall.

Jehovah is the tenderhearted God, and Jeremiah the prophet was also tenderhearted; in being such a one, Jeremiah was absolutely one with God.

Therefore, God could use the prophet Jeremiah – who was an overcomer – to express Him, speak for Him, and represent Him, even in his weeping.

Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet, and this one became a duplication and expression of the weeping God, the God who has deep feelings and sentiments toward His people and who cares for them to the uttermost.

Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet not because he was sentimental and emotional in a natural way, but because through him God was revealed to be the weeping God, who had a human vessel to be expressed through.

Jeremiah’s vessel was open to God and he was able to express God even in his weeping.

Our God is a Tenderhearted God, Full of Compassion and Sympathy, yet He is absolutely Righteous

The book of Jeremiah has as its particular characteristic and standing God’s tenderheartedness plus God’s righteousness (Jer. 9:10-11; 23:56; 33:16).

Our God is tenderhearted but He’s also righteous; He must be righteous! We are not able to tell God, You must be merciful toward me! You must take it easy on me!

We have no ground to say such things; however, He must be righteous, for righteousness and justice is the foundation of God’s throne (Psa. 89:14).

No matter how much God loved Israel and Judah, even referring to them as His beloved one, His wife, and Him being the husband, He had to be righteous and respond to the terrible sins they committed, to their idolatry, and to their apostasy.

In every possible way the children of Israel had violated the covenant God made with them. Our God is a tenderhearted God, full of compassion and sympathy, yet He is absolutely righteous.

On one hand He is absolutely righteous and He deals with us and with things in righteousness, and on the other hand, he is tenderhearted.

We can compare this with a loving father who has to discipline his son because of his act of disobedience, even rebellion; however, as the father disciplines his son, inwardly he is weeping.

Such a discipline is not a mere anger-motivated discipline with no love, but rather, the father weeps for his son.

Jeremiah helps us to know God in such a way; according to this book, God’s love is a composition of His tender care, compassion, and sympathy; even as He is chastising His elect people Israel, He is still compassionate toward them (Lam. 3:22-23).

The words in Jer. 9:10-11 and 17-19 express Jehovah’s feeling concerning Israel’s suffering of His correction; although He was punishing them, He was still sympathetic toward them.

In these verses we see that not only was Jeremiah weeping, but also God was weeping; it was actually God weeping in his weeping, for as God was chastising His people, He was weeping for them in sympathy.

The words “us” and “our” in v. 18 indicate that Jehovah joined Himself to the suffering people and was one with them in their suffering; our God is grieving as He is chastising us, for He loves us, He feels with us and for us, and He is sympathetic toward us.

In Jeremiah we see how Jehovah Himself was weeping in sympathy with His people; on one hand He was absolutely righteous and had to judge them and chastise them, and on the other, He was weeping for them, being sympathetic toward them, for He is a tenderhearted God.

Oh, what a God we have!

Thank You Lord for revealing Yourself to us as both a righteous God and a tenderhearted God. According to Your righteousness, You have to judge sin, idolatry, and failures, but in Your tenderheartedness, You weep with us and for us, it grieves You when You chastise us, and You sympathise with us. We love You, Lord. We open to You. We want to be one with You. Thank You for Your loving care. Thank You for Your tenderheartedness. Thank You for Your righteousness. We love and worship You, our God who is both righteous and tenderhearted!

Opening our Emotions and Feelings to the Lord to be Restricted and Disciplined to Express His Emotions and Feelings

The book of Jeremiah can be considered as an autobiography in which Jeremiah tells us of his situation, his person, and his feeling; this book reveals Jeremiah’s tenderheartedness.

In this book we learn not only more about God but also about Jeremiah, how he was one with God, the price he paid for God, and how he opened up his inner being and the aspects of his inner life, and all this was recorded in the Bible.

Our God is tender, loving, compassionate, and righteous, and Jeremiah – a timid young man – was raised up by Go to be His mouthpiece to speak for Him and express Him (see Jer. 3:6-11; 4:3-31; 32:26-27).

God required Jeremiah to stand against his disposition and temperament; he had to speak to the people whom he loved and God loved, and whatever God put in his mouth, he spoke.

God called him even while he was in his mother’s womb, and when He appeared to him at the time appointed by God, God told him that Jeremiah would not get married, would not enter into the house of enjoyment, but he would have a lot of suffering.

Jehovah is the tenderhearted God, and in being tenderhearted, Jeremiah was absolutely one with God.

Because of this, God could use the prophet Jeremiah to express Him, speak for Him, and represent Him (Jer. 2:1-3:5; 4:19; 9:1, 10).

The part of our being that expresses God is not our spirit but our soul; the spirit is the organ for us to contact God, receive God, contain God, assimilate and digest God, but our soul is the organ of expression.

The fallen beings on earth express the self, what the self thinks, what the self feels, and what the self desires; the preferences and wants of the self are expressed through the fallen soul.

Jeremiah had a certain kind of a soul by nature, and in order for him to express God through His word, God had to have full access to his soul, especially to his emotions and feelings, so that whatever God felt, Jeremiah would express it through his soul.

Jeremiah expressed God largely in speaking; this requires the utmost discipline and training, so that what we say and how we say it, the tone, attitude, spirit, and flavor would be the same as God’s in His feelings and speaking.

Jehovah came in to correct His hypocritical worshippers, and Jeremiah reacted to Jehovah’s correction; the prophet’s reaction was very tender, sympathetic, and compassionate (see Jer. 8:18-19, 21-22; 9:12; 10:19-25).

Jeremiah loved God and the people of God; he had tender feelings toward his own people who suffered such judgement, even though righteously they merited it.

So Jeremiah suffered with God and with His people, and these both were going on in his being; whatever God said, wherever God sent him, he spoke, and he suffered and wept. Jeremiah wept on God’s behalf; his weeping expressed God’s weeping (Jer. 4:19; 9:1; 13:17).

In his weeping, Jeremiah represented God; we may even say that God wept within Jeremiah’s weeping, for in his weeping Jeremiah was one with God (Jer. 13:17).

If someone doesn’t weep, he can’t carry out God’s work; if we don’t allow God access to our inner feelings, our weeping, and our desires, we cannot serve God or carry out His work.

Because Jeremiah often wept, even wailed, he is called the weeping prophet (Lam. 1:16; 2:22; 3:48).

Although God was grieved and hurt because of His people, He found Jeremiah as a person on earth who had these feelings and could express them.

By nature Jeremiah had this kind of feelings, but the Lord had to train him not to use his natural feelings; God trained him, directed him, disciplined him, so that Jeremiah would represent God’s feelings.

When His Spirit came upon Jeremiah and put God’s feelings in Jeremiah’s spirit, the prophet could then express the sorrowful feeling of God.

Jeremiah was not merely a natural person who liked to weep; God put His sorrowful feeling in his spirit, and he expressed it through his faculty of emotion.

There’s a big difference between our soul being an organ and the soul being our person; man is a living soul, but because of the fall, the soul became permeated with Satan to become the self, and it became the fallen person of man.

But praise the Lord, the old man has been crucified, and we are to deny the self.

So we need the Lord to strengthen us into the inner man – the regenerated spirit becoming our inner man, so that Christ may make His home in all our heart and be expressed through us.

As we read the book of Jeremiah, we can sense that – although Jeremiah wept – his emotion was disciplined (Jer. 4:19; 9:1, 10; 13:17).

To what extent have our emotions been disciplined and trained by the Lord?

To what extent did we all allow God to have access to our emotions and feelings, so that He would express His feeling and intention through us in all things?

May the Lord’s hand follow His word not to judge us for not being unable to express Him that much, but to gain us, and may He gain a group of people who allow Him to have access to their inner being, discipline their emotions, and express Him in His feelings and emotions!

Jeremiah was such a one; his sorrowful and weeping emotions had been disciplined and restricted so that God could come to him and use him to express the sorrowful feelings that were in God’s heart.

Everyone whom God can use to minister the word has to allow God to have access to his inner feelings, to his emotions, and to his disposition; then, when God can infuse His feelings and emotions into us, we can express Him in what He feels and wants to convey.

When God through the breaking of the outer man gains such vessels, no matter what they are by their disposition or temperament, they will be able to have feelings that match the word of God, and they will express our tenderhearted God in His feelings and emotions.

Lord Jesus, we open our inner being to You; we give You access to our feelings, emotions, desires, and sentiments. Come in, Lord, and have a way to infuse Your feelings into us so that You may be expressed through us. May our emotions and feelings be disciplined and trained by You so that we may rightly express our tenderhearted God in our speaking, our attitude, and even in our tone. Father, strengthen us into our inner man so that Christ would make His home in our heart. We want to be absolutely one with God so that we may be used by God to express God, speak for God, and represent God even in our feelings, emotions, attitude, and tone. Dear Lord, we just open to You! Gain us as the persons that You need in such a way today!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1959, vol. 4, “Lessons on Prayer,” ch. 7, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 1, Jeremiah, the Tenderhearted Prophet of the Tenderhearted God.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Person, Person, Jesus is our Person, / Living now in us. / He’s our tastes, our attitudes and actions; / Oh, how glorious! / Our Person, Lord, Thou art / Make home in all our heart. / As life in every way / Be our Person, Lord, each day. (Hymns #1240)
  – Dig away, dig away, dig away, / All my troublesome emotions dig away! / Dig away, dig away, dig away, / All my troublesome emotions dig away! / All self love has to go / That His life may flow… Hallelujah! / Dig away, dig away, dig away, / All my troublesome emotions dig away! (Hymns #1214)
  – Lord, we want to live You / In the most intimate / And the closest contact, / Closest contact with You. / Acting according / To the index of Your eyes; / A person one with Christ, / Full of Christ. / And one who is saturated / with Christ / One who is so broken / And even terminated / In his natural life, / Softened and flexible / in his will, / Affectionate, yet restricted / in emotions, / Sober and considerate / in his mind, / And pure, genuine / in his spirit. (Song on, Lord, we want to live You)