Are You Desperate?

Mk 2:1-12
Mk 5:25-34

 Contained in these passages are the stories of two very desperate people. In the first passage is the story of a man that had been born paralyzed, and in the second passage is a story of a woman who had been dealing with a medical condition, for which the doctors had no cure, for many years. There is absolutely no doubt these people were desperate.

 People become desperate when they reach a point where all hope of resolving their situation on their own is gone, and they are forced to seek a solution outside of themselves. At this point they are willing to try just about anything. They no longer care what anyone thinks or says, they are willing to be ridiculed if it brings them peace. They will go where they never thought they would go, they won’t let anything get in their way, they’re desperate and they are ready to take desperate measures.
Desperation is the condition that exists when a recognized need is present and we have no way of meeting it on our own.

God’s people are needy, every last one of us, but many are stubborn, and few are willing to acknowledge their need. Desperation only comes when there is a recognized need that is beyond our own ability to meet.

 WEBSTER'S DEF. OF DESPERATE: feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad, as to be impossible to deal with:

Contrary to the way we view things, desperation is not a bad thing. The world has taught us that the last thing we want to be is desperate. It is looked upon as a sign of weakness to ask for help. But from God’s perspective, desperate people are those who are willing to acknowledge that there are some circumstances that only God can rescue us from, and so we need Him. There are many promises contained in the pages of His Word that only come to those who are desperate.

 I believe the will of God tonight is that every one of us should reach some measure of desperation. I believe His message to us all is that we have been examined by the great physician and diagnosed, “wanting.”

 
When I see in the pages of His Word the life that is available to us, and then I see in my own life, in other believer’s lives and in the church, the low level of spiritual life and the absence of spiritual power, it creates a sense of emptiness in me, a recognition that we are many times falling short of the glory that has been prepared for us. It stirs in me a sense of desperation.

 I am desperate tonight because I recognize the need for spiritual power to reach the lost, to heal the sick, and to help set free those in bondage - because I know that only God can give us what we’re lacking.

The desperate will receive their blessing from God because: they absolutely will not be kept from the presence of their healer by physical boundaries! They are willing to rip off a roof to obtain an audience with the Lord, they’ll push their way through the crowd, and they won’t be offended – (even the dogs eat the crumbs). Desperate people happily let go of their dignity for an opportunity to be touched by deity.