Week Thirty-Eight - Desperation

Beside the Well

I’m one of those people who try to do things right.  I don’t like to think I am failing or not keeping up with my responsibilities.  I put too much pressure on myself, but that’s the way things work for me!

It creates subconscious anxiety that can overwhelm me and occasionally cast me into a pit of despair and desperation.  I’m not a manic-depressive, but I am aware of my tendency to take on too much and expect more of myself than is humanly possible.

I came across a verse in Isaiah that cried out to me the other day.  “O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me”(Isaiah 38:14).  Isn’t that beautiful?  Not being oppressed, but that the Lord would undertake for me.  The word undertake means to put up a security or make a guarantee. (Strongs 6148) 

When I am overwhelmed, He promises to lift me up; to undergird my soul.  He steps in and strengthens my humanity to accomplish things I would otherwise never achieve.

And that humanity thing—we are stuck with it for now!  We are desperately human!

Dan DeWitt, in his book Life in the Wild, wrote, “Experience exposes our inner decay…you see, you probably know deep down that you can’t fix you…he (God) is the only one who can make you right.  But it’s not a quick one-time fix.  And to be brutally honest, it will kill you.  But the “you” that will die in the process is not the person you were meant to be. It's the rebel who resists God’s ways to your shame.  You will discover that, in the depth of the old you, something lovely will emerge. Not perfect, in any earthly sense, but something that’s in the process of being restored and one day will be fully returned to its original purpose.  At times it may feel as if the cure of worse than the disease.  But it will only feel this way temporarily…you’ve tried pretty hard to help yourself.  And it really hasn’t worked yet.  You have a sinking suspicion that it never will.”

Now that’s desperation.  But I love the truth that God is always working to re-create His image in our lives. He undertakes.  He promises that one day we will be in His likeness, and the death of His Son has secured our guarantee.

We live in a desperately fallen world, but we do not have to live in desperation. We can live with the security given by salvation, and the promise of God’s undertaking when we feel desperate.