Desperate

How do you even begin to describe desperation?? It’s that yearning and longing so deeply for something that it’s all you can think about. Tonight I had so much severe pain throughout my back, ribs, abdomen and head. I was desperate for relief, for help!! Meds, heat pads, ice packs, nothing seemed to soothe the pain. I was watching a comedy TV series to try and distract my mind from the agonizing pain. But the pain was on the forefront of my mind and I was desperate for help.

When this happens I don’t have eloquent prayers, just “Jesus…help.” I can’t count how many times I prayed that tonight or convey how deeply I meant it. Desperation makes us ready to do almost anything to achieve what we are desperate for. An addict will do things they never thought they’d do to get their next fix. Desperation will make us do things we didn’t expect we’d do. We are desperate for love, approval, success, money, relief, comfort etc.

You see your friends change before your eyes into a different person in order to get what they want. It might be easy to spot with a drug addict, but an addict of any kind whether it be an “approval addict” or “success addict” will slooowly change into something they never wanted to be. Why? Because this silent force called “desperation” drives them.

I’ve been desperate for approval, success, relief, appreciation and other things. What I desired was all I could think about. Why is it we are desperate for many things, but not for Christ?? We might want the Lord but are we DESPERATE for Him??! We are often desperate for His help… I was desperate tonight for His help to end the pain in my body. But what about when His help is giving us the opposite of what we asked for…are we still desperate for His ways??

When you get to the point of desperation there is no room left for pride. You’re at the end of your rope. You’re flat on your face crying out for the thing you need, because the thing you’re yearning for is more important to you than your pride. If we had this type of desperation for Jesus, for a deeper relationship with Him, our lives would look so different.

Tonight I was desperate for God’s hand, for Him to give me what I wanted (relief from pain). I didn’t know why He wouldn’t ease the agony of this searing pain. Hours went by . My dad came in the room and prayed for me and soon after this the pain started easing up. “Thank you Jesus.” I was desperate for physical relief… but how much more important is desperation for spiritual relief, guidance, understanding?!

When I stop seeking God for the things I want fixed, broken relationships, finances, health, and I start seeking His face, my whole life outlook changes. My whole world gets brighter cause God starts changing my heart. He starts guiding me to walk in His ways, to desire what He desires. It’s freeing. I wish I could say I’m always in this place of seeking His face, but I’m not.

I often get distracted with what I want. It’s not wrong to ask God for the things we want, often those things are even good things. But I notice my whole world changes for the better when I seek God, not His hand. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, then all these things will be added unto you.” Matthew 26:9. I don’t think this scripture means that everything turns out the way we want if we seek God first. I think it means if we seek God and His ways first, then our outlook will be changed on everything else.

One of my favorite stories of Jesus is the paralyzed man and his friends who broke through a roof to get their disabled friend to Jesus They were DESPERATE to get their friend before Jesus. They were willing to break through a roof if that gave him a chance of being healed. What a scene that must have been as someone’s house was being destroyed, things falling around Jesus, pieces flying in the air. And then a paralyzed man being lowered through the roof!!!

After all this Jesus does not go up and just heal the guy. No, Jesus looks deeper into what the man really needed, forgiveness. Jesus looked at Him and did not see the physical struggle on the outside. He looked inward to the man’s spirit. What his spirit needed concerned Jesus more than the physical. So Jesus looks at the man and says “Son, your sins are forgiven.” I can only imagine what the man’s friends were thinking, “After all this work, we traveled far, we lifted this man, we destroyed someone’s house all to get him to you and you’re ignoring his obvious physical need???!!!”

We hear the phrase “God forgives you” a lot these days. But in Jesus’s day you had to obey the law, the Old Testament and sacrifice a lamb in order to receive God’s forgiveness. Only God had the right to forgive your sins, to erase the stain from your heart. So for this teacher to claim He was forgiving this paralyzed man of his sins was quite a scandal!! So much so that the Pharisees are freaking out!!! Jesus can see their countenance change as they are inwardly furious and outraged. He knows they’re thinking that Jesus is blaspheming since “only God can forgive sins.”

I love what Jesus did next… he looks at them and says “which is easier, to say ‘your sins are forgiven’ or ‘get up and walk’? But so that you may believe the son of man can forgive sins…” Jesus stops mid sentence, walks over to the paralyzed man and says “Get up and walk.” And the man stands up and walks!!!! Now everyone knows that Jesus, has the right to forgive sins, which means He is more than a teacher.

This paralyzed man is walking around as a physical reminder of Jesus’s right to forgive sins, and His supernatural power (that healed him physically and spiritually). Jesus did end up healing this guy, but not to end his physical struggle… instead to prove that He was God and had the authority to forgive this man of his sins. Jesus cared deeply about this man. He didn’t want to just put a band aid on the thing that was emotionally distressing him (his paralysis). Instead He wanted to heal the deep wounds in his spirit with forgiveness.

We often seek God for the physical needs, like the paralyzed man. Tonight I was seeking God to take away my physical pain. God looks at us, into our souls and can see what it is we really need (deeper than the physical stuff). He is there to give us what our spirit needs. Comfort, courage, forgiveness, peace. Sometimes what we need is God’s spirit to cleanse our mind from our nasty, mean, negative thoughts. Whatever it is we need God will give us.

We’re human and its good we go to God with our worries and our requests. I just want to be more desperate to chase after Jesus. I want to be so desperate for Him that I’ll give up anything to go deeper with Him. I want my desperation for the Lord to be that quiet, yet strong force that drives me. The thing that changes me to do things I never thought I’d do. Desperation for earthly desires can change us for the negative. But desperation for Jesus Christ will change us into something else, something humble, something wonderful.

Psalm 84: 2 “My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”

Matthew 6: 33 “ But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given you as well.”

Isaiah 26: 9 “My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you.” Mark 2:1-12 (Story of Jesus and the paralyzed man)