You can’t breath. Your face is flushed. Your mind is spinning a thousand thoughts a second. You’re shaking. You feel like you were just punched in the stomach. You’re desperate. You want this all to end. You want the pain in life to leave. You can’t handle it anymore. The world is out to get you. You lost the fight before the 12th round.
The fight in you is over and you are desperate. What you need you don’t know. How you should feel is a fleeting thought in your troubled mind. How to overcome? How to face the day? You’re lost.
Desperation: A feeling we are all familiar with. Whether you are desperate now (don’t lie now) or have been in the past, we all know that feeling of desperation. There are instances in our lives that cause us to feel desperate. Lose a loved one? Your marriage ended? Your kids got seriously injured?
These are just of a few things that can cause a desperate feeling of things you can’t control; that are so large they seem like a mountain you can’t climb. This desperation is overwhelming and takes over your thoughts and emotions—everything else is secondary to you, even Jesus.
When we get desperate, our priorities take a 180-degree turn. Our focus is turned on its head and we don’t know how to react. Our desperate responses to events in life do this to us. We face a situation and our imaginations take over. We think the worst of the worst. We imagine horrible outcomes. We see no way out.
This desperation can ruin our souls and take us away from our faith. You see, when desperation envelops our minds, our reactions can be devastating to our faith in Jesus. We ask things like “Why did God let this happen?” or “What kind of God would let me go through this?”
God didn’t do anything to you but He is there for you. Yet when we are desperate because of circumstances, we tend to want to blame someone and that someone is often God. Instead of turning against or blaming God Himself, maybe we should turn to Him in faith instead. (Easier said than done sometimes.)
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (Jeremiah 29:11).
I’m not saying that one should be jumping for joy about critical and trying times, but I’m saying maybe the focus should be on Christ and not against Him when situations take you over.
In desperate times we need to turn to Christ first. Turn those negative thoughts of despair into desperation for the Lord. When in the midst of the situation, it’s hard to see the forest from the trees. But it’s a mindset that needs to be practiced. If you rely on the Lord when faced with little trials in your life, you can still have that reliability in Christ in the big traumas of your life.
What if Satan grabbed a hold of you and tempted you to the point of sinning against your spouse through infidelity? Now that is a moment I can image feeling desperate about. You know you shouldn’t do it. You know it is bad. You know it is against the Word of God, but you are on the cusp of falling for this sin of infidelity. That is desperation.
The excuse that “It just happened” is the same as the excuse of someone who is holding a gun saying, “The gun just went off.” Baloney. When in this desperate situation, it’s up to you to pull the trigger or to put the gun down. But in the moment, you feel so desperate, you can’t think straight, and you get lost and end up giving in to sin. Boom! The gun goes off.
In this situation your desperation was such that you didn’t know what to do. Satan paralyzed you and he was able to get you to point that gun and fire it at infidelity. Now don’t get me wrong, you can’t just blame the devil for your wrongs and dust your shoulders off and move on like nothing happened. You are culpable in committing sin just as much a Satan tempted you. You fell and you knew it.
This of course can be for any situation, regarding any kind of sin. I’m talking about those massive ones that can ruin lives and change destinies for the worse. When these situations happen you become desperate for what to do. I say, and tell me if I’m wrong, but you need to be desperate for the Lord at all times to avert having the feeling of negative desperation.
By being desperate for Jesus, you can only but draw nearer to Him. You will want to seek Him, Jeremiah 29:13: “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”
What this means is not to be half-hearted about seeking Jesus. Why, even those who don’t know Jesus seek comfort from something. But when you really, really seek God with all your heart will you find Him. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t fill the glass halfway. It’s either all or nothing. It’s holding the cards dealt to you or folding. You can’t look up and down at the same time.
You can’t live in a grey area with Christ. You’re either in or you’re out, period. You can’t have the light while living in darkness. You seek Him, you find Him, and the peace of the Lord will be with you.
“Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means. The Lord be with you all” (2 Thessalonians 3:16).
Having peace from the Lord is an “Ahh” moment we all are familiar with. Holding on to that moment of peace can be hard sometimes, especially when we are feeling pretty darn desperate about something in our lives.
Having peace in Christ in desperate times is like having a cold iced sweet tea on a hot humid day; so refreshing that you savor each swallow. We can have this refreshment in Christ. Peace is freely offered to us as stated in the verse above. It is there for the taking. We can wrap our hands around it. It is tangible for us. It is like a ripe fruit ready to be picked and eaten. All we have to do is take it.
In my opinion, and from experience, people don’t take this opportunity for peace because they don’t feel they deserve it. Whether it is rooted in some past sin, lack of belief, fear of disappointment, etc., some don’t ask for peace and so they don’t get it.
People who don’t have peace wander aimlessly around like kids lost in a crowd. They circle and circle and end up really going nowhere at all but in random directions. Having peace will open up that crowd of people and show you the way home. Peace will settle your heart down and let you know everything will be all right.
How do I know this? Because it’s a promise from God. God is peace and freely gives it to us by all means available. We just need to be willing, ready, and to desire for peace to enter our hearts. When peace enters our hearts, what is there to feel desperate about?
What negative thing in life can’t be overcome? What sin can defeat us? Nothing, if we have the peace of Christ in our hearts.
When you feel desperate because of some situation in your life, don’t let it pull you back from Christ; let it draw you nearer to Him. When you are at the end of your rope, peace will bring you back. When you can’t seem to go on anymore, when things seem hopeless to you, hold on because God is there waiting for you to call on Him for comfort.