Desperation is a funny thing to pray for. It takes a certain amount of desperation for God to pray that you become more desperate for Him. And in so praying, you become more desperate, like a never-ending, positive feedback loop of despondency because of your total reliance on your Savior. Then again, having said that, maybe desperation isn't so funny.
Desperation should be the desire of every Christian: realizing that we need Christ to the abandonment of all else; acknowledging that it is by God's grace that we have life and breath. We should actively seek the Lord where he may be found and call upon him while he is near (Isaiah 55:6). Our souls should thirst for God, in the same manner that the deer pants for water (Psalm 42:1). Our desperation should bring us back to God when we start to think that we can somehow manage life without him.
Desperation screams that there is no other way, that nothing else matters but the One that you are desperate for. There is no hope without Him. And strangely enough, it is in our desperation for God that we find peace in our tumultuous present, and hope for the uncertain future. Desperation is our security.
Be blessed and shine desperately
I enjoyed reading your post. Desperation for God is sorely needed if we seek to live with passion for Christ.
ReplyDeletePaul could have boasted in the privileges that God allowed him to have. But God kept him humble in order that his character would not be corrupted by an inflated ego.
"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it (a 'thorn in my flesh') away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Cor 12:8-10)
Paul realized that God brought him through struggles so that the perfect power of Christ could keep him strong. May we realize that as we submit ourselves to the Lord Jesus, God's perfect love is creating a person that He needs us to be.
Exactly. Paul was definitely one of the people I had in mind as I focused on this word over the past week. One of the things that my friends and I do at the beginning of the week is read over the dictionary definition of each word. What strikes me about desperation is that the dictionary talks about having no hope, if you are desperate, and of desperation as a state of being in despair. And that's exactly what we are without God. Paul knew this when he wrote "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col 1:27). And in Romans 7 where he talks about the wretched man that he is, because of the inner conflict that is unresolvable without Christ.
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