We work very hard at preventing life from ever becoming desperate. We want things guaranteed, well-oiled, unimpeded, insulated and weightless. We like our friends close, our enemies distanced, our demands easily met and our abilities affirmed. We want to help people with their problems, not receive help with our own. Let us be strong! Let us be wise! Let us own all the answers and none of the troubles. Let us be…
anything
but
desperate
God does not always affirm these desires in us. As a matter of fact, He fights this craving of ease in us with all His omnipotence. He refuses prolonged lightness to His own children and sovereignly saddles us with weights much too great for us. Amazingly, He does this, not as a heartless tyrant, but as a compassionate and committed Father. As has been declared over the generations of the church-age, “God is not most interested in our happiness. He is interested in our holiness.” For you who are in a season of suffocation and strain, please cease to resist your call to brokenness and stop seeking to be strong. This prayer of desperation below is something which needs to be declared by you with certainty and urgency as you aim it straight at the heart of God:
“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” – 2 Chronicles 20:12 {ESV}
Very simple. Very straightforward. Very easily understood. The man who uttered this prayer on behalf of himself and the people of God was a king in Israel. He was outmatched, overwhelmed, underconfident, and out of options. The fact of the matter was that Jehoshaphat was not imagining things – he did not know what to do and had his back pressed to a wall. All of his choices had been removed, there was no human way out, the situation was threatening to eat him alive and he was…desperate. It was in the hour of his utmost desperation that God would act with undeniable strength. Read the account in 2 Chronicles 20 and make Jehoshaphat’s battle your very own. You have the same level of challenge. You have the same urgency of need. You have the same availability of God.
But do you have the same desperation?
I’ll not write much more today for fear of intruding upon the Holy Spirit’s territory. I would just ask you to seek to discover if you are really desperate. Frustrated is not the same as desperate. Frantic is not the same as desperate. Floundering is not the same as desperate. Have you given up in such a fashion that it merely admits that you cannot win on your own? Has this realization motivated you to turn with all expectancy to the God who listens, understands, rescues, empowers, and moves? I encourage you to stop stirring the whole matter around in your mind as you seek the presumed solution. Maybe there is not a solution up there in your head. Maybe there’s not one by the power of your hand. Perhaps the only answer is found in your trembling voice…on your knees…through your tears…before your God. That’s where I have found my answers in times like you are in.
Go there with all that you aren’t. Find, then and there, all that He has ever been. He will be that to you today.
Thank you!
As you well know, Jeff, I have been there and done that. It is not pleasant to be reduced to a mere human being. The route to being just a human being with no claims to anything but God Himself is scary, but the destination is worth it because He is waiting to embrace those who arrive at this place of inexplicable rest.