If you've ever had that experience you can understand it. I've known times when I felt the spirit of God come on me, and I just wept uncontrollably. It was not about something I had done, or a mistake, or a failure; it was about the condition of people, and how God felt about them. When you walk through the Bible, you find how the heart of God is to restore broken people. The heart of God is filled with compassion. I encourage you to read, and find how many times compassion caused Jesus to do things. You find a number of stories in the Bible - let me just throw a few out. There's a leper came to Jesus in his broken condition, his damaged condition. He was a burnt stone, burnt by this horrible loathsome disease, and rejected by people. But when he came to Jesus, Jesus was moved with compassion, and reached out and engaged him in his horror, in his sickness, and touched him, then healed him. If we're going to help people, you have to let the compassion of God move you to engage them in their sickness and pain, and not be disgusted and turned off by it.
You know another example is found in Luke 7, where there was a young man, and the young man had died. The mother's grieving, and the mother's a burnt stone. Her husband's gone, her son has gone, her life is gone, she's burnt; and He reached - He was moved with compassion, and brought life into that situation. God wants to move us with compassion, to bring life into people who are in a place of mourning and death. Jesus stopped, went over, and got involved with them. He touched the dead man, He touched that dead man. You don't touch dead things, they're unclean, but Jesus didn't have a care about that. He carried life to change it. God wants you and I to have His heart, to carry His life, and engage people who are broken. Jesus saw the multitudes. He was moved with compassion.
Now I want you to see this. It tells us very clearly in Matthew 9:35-36, the first few verses, that God's response to seeing multitudes of broken stones is to raise up labourers to minister to them. You can't just pray for God to do it all. God has chosen to work through people, and so God is looking for people who will have His compassion. It's not about having a good idea. Good ideas won't get you to last in the call of ministry. Good ideas don't cause you to overcome injustice. Good ideas don't cause you to overcome betrayal, or people who show lack of gratitude, when you've done all you can, and they just walk away. No, you have to have the compassion of God. This is what Nehemiah had; and Jesus, when He saw the multitudes who were desperately in need, this was His strategy: raise up people, make them living stones, and send them out in their positioning, in their rank and their order, to bring healing and wholeness. You're such a stone.
Let me say this: there is no believer in Christ who's not called to restore burnt stones. You which are spiritual, restore a person overtaken. If you call yourself spiritual, call yourself any kind of believer, then the burnt stones are our ministry. People are our ministry, people who've been burnt in the circumstances of life. It says: if you are spiritual, then restore people that have been burnt. It says: true religion is to visit the widows and the orphans in their affliction, to visit the burnt stones and comfort them. You cannot have a vibrant, vital spirit life and not minister to burnt stones. That's the heart of God is people, ruined cities, burnt stones, devastations of generations. God wants to heal and restore them. The Bible talks about Father; you see the Holy Ghost in the form of Nehemiah. You see Jesus' ministry, and you find the Father in the book where it talks about the prodigal son. The prodigal son begins to return. The Bible says - the Father - what does it say about him? It says: while he was a long way off; in other words, his heart was after the son. Is your heart after people who are lost and broken, back-slidden Christians? Do you care about them, or do you find a reason to find fault and judge them; oh, look what they're doing now. That's a judgement. Well I don't know how they could be doing that, they call themselves Christians - that's a judgement.