I love this word. to me, it means “I feel an overwhelming sense of what I can’t do and don’t know”. Right now it’s driving me to my knees, pulling a cry from my soul “Oh, God. Help Me.” This desperation comes when the need is immense, the vision vast, the task tremendous.
Immense, vast and tremendous can only come from God. I don’t have it in me to think it up.
Desperation is a good thing. To get it we must be willing to feel disqualified, unable and insignificant.
It is the appropriate response to an accurate view of reality. We really do need Him. We really do not know enough. We cannot do it alone. If we don’t have desperation, then our need, our vision, our task, is too small. Our God is too small.
And we are too big. And we are asleep. Sleeping giants.
A tremendous need revealed by God will shake us out of comfort. It will open our eyes and provoke our comatose hearts. It will dangle our empty pants-pockets over the precipice of lack, completely obliterating self-sufficiency.
Desperation awakens every sense of the soul. The mind on high alert, looking for invisible resources, the will intentionally obedient, the emotions celebrating victory… even in the woe of waiting.
Our spirit cannot sleep in these conditions. It continually cries out “Oh, God, if you do not come through there will be no progress, no answer, no fulfillment, no purpose in life whatever.” This prayer is the loop that plays non-stop in the undercurrent of our bursting hearts.
To find this desperate place, this wide-awake place, this alive-inside place, we are invited to take a risk. Ask for MORE when less is more comfortable.
When we do, I think we will discover that this desperate life IS life.
Life WITH.
(Thank you, Greg Walton, for sharing your love of discomfort with me on the way to Engineer’s Pass.)