Gift of Desperation - Just saying it gives me that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach...
and yet when you understand you'll find it's a treasure chest of fine jewels!
That is - being desperate for God, clinging to Christ, moved by the Holy Spirit. I need to wake up each morning letting God know and reminding myself how desperate I am for Him. I don't want to waste one moment without Him. Forever I want to be thankful that He is right there all the time. I want to walk in the fullness of His presence in my life. Living in the reality that nothing I can ever do or not do will ever be able to separate me from His love. (see Romans 8:38-39)
It's too easy for us to look at our past or the thing we did a minute ago and get stuck in a pit of regret. We all seek freedom it's a desire we all have, but how many times do we look to ourselves or something or someone else as our source of freedom? Only God can bring us true freedom, a freedom that lasts.
Romans 6:16-18 NIV states, "Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey - whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."
I like the way The Message reads this passage, "You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you've let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you've started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!"
We all have our "Lower Story" but God has an "Upper Story" and to find out what that is and walk in it we must come to a place where we are desperate for God. Our freedom is gained only when we lay our lives at the feet of Christ, realize the chains that have held us captive are only broken by the blood of Christ, receive the forgiveness that only He can give and live our life in the fullness of His Spirit which comes when we receive the gift of desperation.
Our freedom is free for us but cost Jesus His life!
Every experience God gives
us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future
that only He can see.
Corrie ten Boom
