One night I was preaching in one of the suburbs of Chicago, and when I gave out the invitation an enormous man rose to his feet. He weighed 290 pounds. I thought to myself, “You have caught a big fish tonight.” After the meeting was over, I went down and sat beside him and talked to him. He said, “Let me tell you how I came to accept Christ tonight. I have been a churchgoer all my life, but I only went to criticize, and when men got up in the prayer meeting to talk I took out a little notebook which I kept, and wrote down what they said, and then kept tab on them during the week to see how their life agreed with their profession, so I came to say to myself, ‘All Christians are hypocrites.’ My heart became as hard as a stone. I was perfectly indifferent. Some months ago, I was taken very ill, and the doctors said I must die, but I was not at all afraid to die. I had become so hardened by the criticism of professors of religion that even death had no terrors for me. But one day a retired minister came and asked if he might pray for me. I said, ‘Yes, you can pray for me if you want to. I have no objection, if it will do you any good, it won’t hurt me any. Yes, pray if you want to, if you will enjoy it. It won’t disturb me.’ He knelt down beside my bed and began to pray, and I watched him out of the corner of my eyes. I was keeping tab on him to see if he was real. I thought I was dying but I was not a bit frightened. I was perfectly callous and hardened, but as I lay there watching him out of the corner of my eyes, I saw a tear rolling down his cheeks. I said to myself, ‘Here is this man, a perfect stranger to me, with no possible interest in me, and yet he is weeping over my sins and my lost condition.’ That broke my heart. That is why I am here tonight. That is why I got up and asked for prayers; that is why I have taken the Lord Jesus.”
I tell you, you will win more men and women by your tears than you will ever win by your arguments.