Do real men cry?

Have you ever seen a man cry?

What reaction or emotion is there when you see a man cry?

Do you feel ashamed by his actions?

Do real men cry?

Does crying make men soft or weak when they cry?

According to this world, it is an emotion seen shown by the weaker sex, woman.

I was raised in a generation where men never cry. It was seen as a weakness.

My dad gave us hidings when we were children and you did not dare to cry because it would make his anger flame up. We were also taught never to show emotions.

When men never cry or show their emotions, they can easily become hard and bitter. The tears that flow when you cry is a means used by the body to cleanse the eyes, but it is also the cleansing out of the soul. Tears is the emotional evidence to show that real feelings are being experienced, wether good or bad.

If I have learned anything in life, it is that everything in life must be well balanced. This includes laughing and crying. When we laugh, chemicals are released into our bodies that have healing properties. In the same way, crying brings about a release of tension.

I want to tell you my story or testimony of what happened to me after I gave my heart to Jesus.

After doing a compulsory army camp of three months, we were on our way back to base camp. I was driving a diesel-bunker and I asked Jesus into my life, not knowing the way to salvation.

I was seeking Jesus and for the first time, Jesus touched my life in a physical way.

I started weeping. Tears ran freely over my face as I cried unashamedly, for the first time I could remember. This strange manifestation was the first step in my healing process and of my repentance.

This was the first time I could feel real emotion and not just be what I thought others expected me to be, or feel what was expected of me. Sadness and shame mixed with the realization of a life of hopelessness without Jesus came over me.

I was a hard person and it took the power of the Holy Spirit to soften me and that is why I believe I was weeping.

Later, as I came before the Lord in the church (with true repentance) I came to the Lord with uncontrolled weeping, the tears wetting my shirt.

I was so ashamed of all my sins before the Lord. I realised how lost I was and what Yeshua did for my sake, to bring me to salvation. I realised that Jesus had to die for me and, for my sins.

I experienced the great love God has for me.

How is it possible?

I felt so unworthy of His love. Nobody told me this; I experienced it in my soul.

Romans 8:16: God's Spirit joins Himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children.

An uncontrollable joy come over me and I wanted to tell everyone what had happened to me. An unexplainable peace came over me and I was so happy, it felt as if I could jump out of my skin.

God gave me His Spirit and my spirit was aware (alive) in that moment. God made me new in the hidden Spiritual man. I became a reborn-child of God.

I was spiritually dead, till that second when His Spirit entered into me.

Now I am alive and free.

I became a citizen of the Kingdom of God. It is ok to weep; it does not make you a cry-baby, but shows your humanity and sincerity. It takes a real people not to care what others think of there crying but to be free before God.

I have experienced that people are very different from one another in their makeup and people come to the Lord differently.

I believe the Lord is looking at the heart of a person and if there is no remorse, how can there be real repentance, real salvation?

It is all about the heart and your attitude. You have to believe and as soon as you open up your heart, the Spirit comes in and convicts you of your sin and unrighteousness and softens your heart. If you do not show any emotions, remorse or start weeping because of your guilt and sin, have you really humbled yourself before the Lord and are you ready to take Jesus on as your saviour?

Some people repent because they are afraid of Hell and the wrath of God and they think that if they do the right thing (repentance) that they will be saved.

The danger in this is that after a few days you will return to your old ways and you will be worse than before because you will feel that you are a failure.

I want to share the next testimony with you.

At my workplace I was talking to a colleague and we were discussing the end times.

Another colleague, Elden, overheard the conversation and he started asking questions.

We invited him to Cell. (Cell is a small Christian gathering as the Early Church).

Here follows his testimony.

We had cell meetings at my workplace. We worked shifts and during the nighttimes or early mornings we would gather and read the Bible and pray for our company.

One morning we had a cell meeting and Elden, he had not yet given his heart to Jesus, read us a few verses out of the Bible.

We encourage people to read a few verses out of the Bible and in doing so encourage them to come back to cell. We would then discuss those verses.

This was the second time that he attended the cell meeting and I asked him during the first visit, if he would prepare a scripture for us, led by the Holy Spirit.

He borrowed a Bible, as he did not have one himself.

He read from Matthew 7:1-7 and verse 12.

He told us that we must not judge other people. It is amazing how the Holy Spirit worked in giving him this scripture. As I said he did not know the Bible at all.

After we had discussed the verses there was an altar call and he gave his heart to Jesus.

With tears of joy he accepted Jesus as his Lord.

The previous night I had given him some chapters of a Christian book, and he went through it. The next morning he bought himself two new Bibles. I did not know what an impact this book and the cell meetings would have in his life. He gave his heart to Jesus and was on fire for God.

There was a Christian colleague who always greeted him in the name of Jesus and testified about the end times from the book of Revelation, where it speaks about hell.

This played a vital role in his salvation. Afterwards he took out the following prayer that he had written and he read (prayed) it for us.

I want to share this precious prayer out of his heart with you, Remember, he did not know Jesus and this was his third time attending church.

You will notice that the prayer was totally given by the Holy Spirit, for he did not know to pray this. He only had the few chapters and what he had learned in the cell and the Holy Spirit.

Here is his prayer.

God I believe in you. You are my creator. I am a sinner. I have sinned in many points wilfully and unconsciously. I have fallen short. I have missed the mark. I am stained with sin. (Jesus I believe in you. You are the eternal Son of God. You are the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of this world, and now takes away my sin).

I believe You died on the cross, shedding your innocent blood, for my guilty soul.

I believe You were buried, on the third day You arose. You are alive forever more. I call You my Lord. I call You my Savoir. I give my life. I will love You; serve You the rest of my days. I belong to You, the good parts, the bad parts, and the sinful parts. All my plans, all my dreams, I give everything to You. Thy will be done in me. I believe I am saved not by good works, but by faith, by trust in You, in Jesus name I pray.

Amen. (Elden Matlala).

When you accept Jesus as your personal Savior and you endure till the end, you will hit the mark, heaven!

He will make you a new person.

Tears are secretions that clean and lubricate the eyes.

Lacrimation or lachrymation (from Latin lacrima, meaning "tear") is the production or shedding of tears.

Strong emotions such as sorrow, elation, awe and pleasure, as well as irritation of the eyes, laughing, and yawning may lead to an increased production of tears, or crying.

How does tear ducks work?

It is fascinating how tear ducts work, whose sole reason is to carry tears. They carry tears, secreted by the lacrimal glands (located beneath your upper eyelids) on to the surface of eyes and from the tear sac (located by the side of the nose) into the back of throat.

Blinking of the eyelids forces the tears into the small openings, punctum, located at the corner of the eyes (near the nose), the canaliculus and then flows into the lacrimal sac. The tear (lacrimal) sac connects to the nasal cavity with the nasolacrimal duct. In this way these ducts conjoins the eyes to the nose and keeps your eyes clean by draining the tears.

This is why you often get the taste of your eye drops. They are used under your eyelids, but, trickle down the throat as both of these organs are indirectly connected by ducts. On an average, up to 1.1 g of tears are produced daily.

As you grow older, the amount of tears secreted will gradually reduce.

It is not wrong to weep.

David wept; Psa 39:12 Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I [am] a stranger with thee, [and] a sojourner, as all my fathers [were].

The Saviour wept; Heb 5:7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;

Paul wept: Act 20:31 Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.

Nature prompts us to weep;

It cannot be wrong to weep if “our” eye “poureth out” its tears “unto God” Job_16:20;

Where in the Bible does it say God keeps you tears in a jar: is this true?

You number my wanderings;
Put my tears into Your bottle;
Are they not in Your book? Psalm 56:8

Isa 25:8 He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken [it].

Rev 21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Psa 126:5 They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

That is, if in our sorrow we look to God with submission and with earnest supplication.

My wife.

My wife always say that real men cry before God for their families, and that you could test real men by the way they drive their cars. Both these points expose the true character of a man.

Just as a real man will keep to the law and will be tolerant to other road users, so also will a real man will allow himself to be vulnerable to his beloved. To allow such intimacy of the soul, by allowing others to see into your pain, sorrow and fears, this is the evidence of total love and trust.

Are you a real man?