I think, oftentimes, that we’re desperate.
Desperate for what…?
It depends.
I’d venture to say that it most commonly falls within the realm of companionship. It’s pretty funny to see the statistics on my blog and how much more they increase when a topic has to do with love, dating, sex, relationships, etc. etc. We’re desperate.
We’re desperate to know the answers.
We’re desperate to know how to make a relationship work, how to act within a relationship, what boundaries to set, how to love well, how to get someone to love us in return. We’re desperate to be desirable to the opposite sex, we’re desperate to not be lonely any longer, we’re desperate for all of our ‘dreams’ to come true. We’re desperate.
We feel hopeless and it leads to despair.
Our minds are raided and we’re left thinking that we’ll never meet anyone for 5 million different reasons. We’re left thinking that we are too messed up to ever be in a relationship. We’re left thinking that no one would ever want us. We’re left thinking that our lives could never look different.
This is what matters to most of us, more than anything else.
Sometimes I think we lie when we say it’s not.
We want to find love.
It’s why we watch the movies we watch, it why we make the decisions that we make. It’s why, when we are finally in a relationship, our world often gets completely wrapped up in it and we forget that other people also exist.
I’ve watched people lose themselves in relationships, I’ve watched them be all consumed… and then I’ve watched them be completely devastated when said relationship doesn’t work out.
Because we are desperate, we believe that these relationships (when successful) will fill the void.
But what if our desperation is misplaced? What if, no matter how perfect your relationships might be, you’re still lonely, or insecure, or desperate for more?
There’s a worship song that most of us have been singing for years and I get frustrated by it. Aside from the repetition and the slowness of it, I don’t think we really grasp what it means to be desperate for the Lord…. because we’re too focused on being desperate for things of this world.
Desperate: feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with.
We know how to be desperate with our loneliness… but do we know how to be desperate for Jesus? Truly desperate? And I realize it’s probably not a learned thing, but more of a realization that He is what matters and that without Him, we truly are hopeless. Or, do we find glimmers of hope in other things… like the possibility of a date?
I’m guilty.
There are moments when I truly realize my depravity, but I’d say the large majority of the time, my desperation is geared toward everything but my need for Jesus.
I had a friend tell me once that he wanted to be desperate for Jesus- to know what they really meant. I understand that now. I want it to. I need to know how much I need Him… all the time. I need to stop being desperate for other things.
What are you desperate for?
Truly and honestly….?
Be willing to go there with yourself.
And maybe you’re in a place of realizing how desperate you are of the saving grace of Jesus Christ, but if you’re not… maybe you want to go there with me now.
May we be a people who don’t easily forget just how truly desperate we are for Him, and may our hope stem from Him and the life that He offers. May everything else not be the things that we hope for or hope in… but just things we get to experience/enjoy on this side of eternity.