The Secret of Desperation

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or many years I was very disciplined in my devotional life, determined to spend time daily in the word and prayer. I would read through the entire Bible in a different trans-

lation every year. I would worship the Lord in song and would pray through a long list of people. However, I never discovered the highest joys of the secret place until the Lord took me on an unplanned journey. He allowed a calamity to hit my life that traumatized me. My life careened out of control, and my very survival (spiritually) was at stake. Frantically, I began to claw and push my way into God’s heart, scouring the Bible cover to cover to understand His ways. It felt like I was fighting for air like a drowning man. To put it simply, I had been made desperate. It was in this desperate pursuit of God that the secret place began to blossom for me like a desert flower. What made the difference in my own journey? In one word, it was desperation.

Desperation will turn you into a different person. A drowning man has only one thought on his mind—how to get air. Nothing else matters to him. Life’s priorities become very simple. The hemorrhaging woman of Mark 5:25 was willing to press her way through the crowd because the only thing that mattered was touching Jesus. Desperation produces tunnel vision. When God

Secrets of the Secret Place

chased away the Syrian army from the city of Samaria, the Isra- elites in Samaria had become so desperate from hunger during the siege that they trampled to death the officer at the gate in their rush for food (see 2 Kings 6-7).

When you are made desperate for God, your pursuit of God takes on a different quality. When it’s personal survival that’s at stake, you begin to seek Jesus in a different way. You get a look in your eye that appears half-crazed to others. You’re willing to go anywhere or do anything. No pricetag is too high. You look at other people and think, “I love you, I respect you, I think you’re a very nice person—but if you don’t get out of my way I’m going to run you over. Because I have got to touch Jesus!”

Banal sources of entertainment, such as television and movies, have to go. Invitations to parties are spurned. Others start to pull away because you’re not as much fun as you used to be. But it’s irrelevant to you because you’re desperate for God. Nothing else matters right now except touching the hem of Jesus’ garment. Desperate people don’t struggle with the same distractions and hindrances as the general population. A desperate person would never say, “I struggle to find time for the secret place.” Or, “I get easily distracted by everyday demands.” Such petty distrac- tions could never hinder someone who is desperate. The normal hindrances of life don’t even faze a desperate one because of the single-focused intensity of the pursuit.

When you begin to seek God with this kind of desperation, powerful spiritual winds begin to blow around your life. You’re setting off a storm! Things begin to change inside you at an unprecedented rate. Angelic activity (both good and evil) sur- rounding your life becomes intense, even though you may not be aware of it. You gain the attention of heaven and hell. Issues that simmered on low for many years suddenly come to a head, screaming for resolve. You find yourself surrounded by suspicion and reproach. God has you in His accelerated class, and the speed of change and transition surrounding your life is dizzying.

And what’s happening on the inside? You’re coming alive to the word of God! His word is feeding and sustaining you. New insights are electrifying and carrying you. The closeness of His

The Secret of Desperation

presence begins to intoxicate you. The revelation of His love for you is redefining your relationship with Him. The understanding of His heart and purposes is giving you a whole new perspective on the kingdom of God. You’re becoming addicted to the glories of the secret place!

Someone reading these words is thinking right now, “Lord, how do I touch what Bob is talking about right here?” I can only speak from personal experience. There was nothing I could do to touch this desperation. I needed God’s intervention. I needed Him to make me desperate. I called on Him, and He answered me. It all begins and ends in the heart of God. “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

I’m inviting you to pray a crazy prayer—a dangerous prayer. “Lord, make me desperate for You!” If you will cry out to Him from the depths of your heart, He will hear you. He knows exactly where you’re at, He knows how much you can bear, and He is able to craft an answer to that prayer that will produce a great cry of desperation within your soul. He knows how to make us hungry!

You need not fear the consequences of this prayer of holy consecration. “Perfect love casts out fear.” Perfect love knows that anything coming from God’s hand is for our good and benefit, so perfect love fears nothing that God would give in order to extract a greater devotion and consecration from us. Let Him perfect you in His love so that you might throw wide your arms and embrace His good, acceptable, and perfect will.

When we enter a season of distress, our first response is to cry out for relief. However, God does not always bring immediate relief because He destines the distress to produce desperation within us. This truth reminds me of a recent dialogue with a friend, Cindy Nelson. Cindy suffered in her body for many years but then was sovereignly healed. She is intensely grateful to God for her healing, and now ministers to people who live with chronic pain. However, her observations about her secret life with God since her healing were very intriguing to me. She has given me permission to reproduce her email exactly as she wrote it to me:

Secrets of the Secret Place

“Just recently I realized that I lost the desperation that I used to seek God with before God healed me. I remember depending on every word, every breath from God to sustain me. I stormed the gates of heaven to hear from Him. To hear hope, strength, peace, something that would assure me of His presence and keep me going. My need was so great and I realized that He alone could meet my needs. I still know this but I have become less dependent upon Him. I recently had to repent. I don’t necessarily want another tragedy in my life to draw me back to that desperation, (I certainly know better.) But I know dif- ficult times reveal one’s dependence on God. In some respects I think my quiet times with God were richer than compared to now. It is different. Less intense is really the only way I can describe it.”

I have read the stories of believers who were imprisoned for many years for their faith who, after their release, wept over the loss of the intimacy with God that they once had while in prison. The Lord was so close to them in prison, and now in their free- dom everything was different. They missed the former intimacy so much that some of them longed to return to prison! While none of us asks God for hardship, we can’t deny the fact that hardship produces desperation, which in turn produces intense intimacy.

I am not saying hardship is the only pathway to desperation. God has many ways to answer our prayers. But I am saying that one of the greatest secrets to unlocking the inner life with God is through desperation. The wise will seek Him with desperate longing. Here is to be found the path of life.

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Дата добавления: 2015-10-23