Webster defines desperate as: "Having lost hope; Suffering extreme need; Extreme intensity."
Everyday we see people in desperate need. A family losing their home will desperately plead with a landowner for extra time to pay their bills. A mother of a dying child will desperately find the best hospitals and doctors around for her baby. Desperation is a common emotion in the human body. We have all experienced it. Try to think back to a time when you were desperate for something. Maybe you were desperate for food after not eating for awhile. Maybe you were like the image I just described: in danger of losing your home, or having a sick child. Maybe you were desperate to come up with funds to go to school. Whatever your case may be, think of a time that you were desperate.
Have you ever been desperate for God to do something in your life, or in someone else's life? Maybe for a healing, or a miracle of some kind. You had lost all hope of having enough money to pay the bills, or given up on the doctors saving your loved one, so you desperately cried out to God. Have you ever been in this situation?
Here's a tough one, when is the last time that you got on your face a desperately cried out to God, not for him to do anything in your life, but you just desperately cried out for Him. Desperate to be closer to Him. Desperate to know him on a deeper level. Desperate to have a greater relationship with Him. Can you remember the last time you did this? Can you remember the last time that you were desperate for a greater relationship with Jesus. The last time that you knew that you were "hopeless" without God becoming greater in your life, so you called out in desperation. The last time you cried out to God with suffering from lack of growth, from suffering great need of Jesus in your life. Can you remember the last time you did this? Can you remember the last time you cried out with such intensity and with such a burden to want to know God more, that you were desperate for more of Him?
If only we had the desperation to follow Jesus, and to know him more that the men and women did in the days that He walked among us. We see stories of men leaving home and family, not even looking back, to pursue after Jesus and to grow in Him. We see stories of people desperately pushing through crowds, lowering people through roofs, quitting jobs, etc. in the desperate need for Jesus. All throughout the world, there are people that all they have is Jesus. They understand what it means to desperately long to know Jesus more. In some countries, believers will walk miles just to attend their underground church so that they can hear the Word of God. Bible's are forbidden in some countries! These believers will walk for hours just to worship their savior together as one body even though it is illegal, and punishable by death. They are desperate for more of Jesus. One people group in particular will bind believers up, and toss them into a body of water with a rock tied to their ankle; once the believer has been underwater long enough to cause un-conscieneness, they will pull him up, revive him, and ask if he wants to continue to serve Jesus. When the believer says yes, they will throw him back in. When he has been underwater long enough to pass out, they pull him up, revive him, and ask him the same question. When the answer is yes, they repeat the process again. Once again asking the same question, when he answers that he still believes in Jesus, they will shun the believer from the village for the rest of his life. The believer is forced to never see his family, friends, loved ones ever again. These believers are desperate for Jesus, even in the face of persecution.
So I leave you with this one question: What persecution is keeping you from desperately crying out to God for more of him?
"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God."
Psalm 42:1
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