“As for you, son of man, groan with the breaking heart and bitter grief groan before their eyes.”
– Ezekiel 21:6
This is God, telling Ezekiel to groan with a breaking heart and bitter grief before people, before God’s people. Just to go on, the next verse says, “When they say to you, why do you groan? You shall say, ‘Because of the news that is coming, every heart will melt, and all hands will be feeble. Every spirit will faint, and all knees will be weak as water. Behold, it’s coming, and it will be fulfilled,’ declares the Lord God.”
Basically, judgment is coming, so God is telling Ezekiel, “Groan before them,” like, see, this is a time for groaning, that there is a reason for broken hearts and bitter grief because if people do not turn and trust in God, repent of sin, then their destruction, their judgment is coming.
Our hearts should break for those who do not know Jesus because we know that judgment is coming.
Ezekiel 21:6 Makes Us Reflect On Our Own Hearts
So, I’m reading this, and I’m just driven to ask in my own life and in your life like, are you and I ever groaning with breaking hearts over people in our lives, friends, co-workers, neighbors, family members who are separated from God by their sin right now, and if not, turned and trusted in Jesus? There should be times when we are groaning with breaking hearts and bitter grief certainly before God, like calling out, crying out for their salvation and then to an extent, before our friends and neighbors and co-workers and family members to say to them with broken hearts, “Please turn and trust in Jesus.” So, do we weep and grieve and groan, to use this word from Ezekiel 21:6, for the loss around us, knowing that judgment is coming for all who do not trust in Jesus?
A Prayer Based on Ezekiel 21:6
God, we pray that you would help us to groan like this. Give us your heart, breaking hearts in this sense, for the loss around us, for those who are apart from you in their sin, who have not been reconciled to you through Jesus. God, we think of individual people right now. I just want to encourage us, like let’s just think of names and faces of family members and friends and neighbors and coworkers.
Right now, God, we have all these different names and faces, people in our minds. God, break our hearts for their souls, we pray. Break our hearts for their lives. Help us to grieve and groan for their salvation, for their repentance, god, and we pray that you help us. What does this look like in our relationships with them? God, help us to plead with them to trust in you, to plead with them to turn to you. We pray they would. God, we ask right now for your salvation for them. Please, God. Please save them.
God, Help Us to Share the Gospel
You, just reflecting on 2 Peter 3 yesterday, you love them. You don’t desire anyone to experience judgment for all to come to repentance. God, we pray you’re bringing about, God, please bring about the power of your spirit. Open their eyes. Help us to be faithful to share the gospel with them, to plead with them for them to trust in you. God, we pray for this kind of grieving and breaking hearts and groaning in us as your people.
God, we pray for this for the people right around us, for people far from us. We groan today for the Mughal people in India. 1.7 million of them. God, we grieve over the fact that none of them are followers of yours. None of them know the gospel. None of them know your love in Christ. God, change that, we pray. Please among all these Muslim Mughal people in India, please, oh God. We pray that you would change that.
God, break our hearts for the nations. Break our hearts for people right around us, that we might groan and grieve and plead and work to share the gospel with them and that you might show, oh God, your supernatural power in saving them. Please, oh God, we pray. Save them. All these names, faces coming to our minds and the Mughal people of India. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.