Are you feeling a desperation—a hopelessness—that nothing will ever change?
Do you feel like you’ve lost something—some part of yourself? Maybe the good part—the best part—from where you first began? The joy, peace, strength, hope and innocence you once had—now worn away, or slipped away? Or even stolen away?
Do you feel like you’ve been fighting some uphill battle, where you seem to sink a little lower each passing day?
If that’s you, at this moment, then I’m talking to the right person.
Sometimes we can find ourselves in places we never dreamed we would be. We realize one day that the road we’ve been traveling along (or stumbling along) has led us right up to a pit.
We usually don’t recognize the danger, until it’s right in front of us. We are all susceptible, but especially so if we haven’t been paying attention.
Sin is always the great “blinder”. Our enemy tricks us into taking foolish chances with life, then knocks us down for doing so.
But sometimes, despite our best efforts, things can become completely out of control. Through no fault of our own, circumstances can toss us into a raging sea of trouble.
Hopelessness and despair can overwhelm us. Seemingly, nothing makes sense—and no one can help.
But there is One who is able to save us—each and every one of us. From the most unreachable places.
He rescues the ruined—the helpless, and the fallen. And nothing in your life ever takes Him by surprise, because He knew where you were headed all along.
And all along the way, He has felt your pain. Your shame. Your disappointments. He knows them well. He knows your hopelessness and despair. He feels your heart, every time it shatters.
But God is not offering you any pity parties. No, quite the opposite. He’s asking you to believe that your life still has a purpose.
It’s a purpose that is not all about yourself, or for yourself. It’s a purpose that doesn’t come from within yourself.
He knows that you need to be saved from yourself. And don’t you?
You need to be rescued, and this is going to take something that comes from way beyond yourself. It’s going to require the power of God—who knew you, long before you knew yourself.
So, now that you find yourself—failing and fragile, in this place—you must find the courage to help yourself. This is a place where you know you won’t survive if you stay. This place of no way out, and no way back.
This place where you might be tempted to imagine that death might be a better choice than living.
It might amaze you to discover, right here in this place, that God has placed you in a position of choosing Him.
When all directions you’ve taken fail, He comes and invites you to turn back, from the brink of certain destruction.
You certainly didn’t see this coming, and that’s okay. He’s had His eye on you. And He’s always seen you coming, from the very farthest way off.
“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20)
So far, you’ve managed to hang on to the edge. I’m relieved that you have, yet I’m deeply concerned for your future.
But this isn’t about me. This is all between you and the God who created you.
He’s the only One big enough to turn you around. You know that. But are you still ignoring Him? Or, are you running from Him?
You have to stop.
Just stop. Because you need Him.
Some of what has happened to you may have been your own doing—your own decisions along life’s way. Or some of it may have been simply the unpredictable nature of life. Either way, you need Him.
Whatever you are facing, He will handle it with you. He will defend you. And He will fight for you.
But you’ve got to get on the road. The radical road.
There’s a great story in the Bible, in the book of 2nd Kings. It’s a perfect example of what God can do, in the lives of those desperate enough to take a new direction. Those who dare to believe there might be a way out of the pit they find themselves in.
Chapter 6 sets the scene, as the king of ancient Syria takes his whole army, and surrounds the city of Samaria, in Israel. A strategy of war in those days was to keep the city under siege until the people would starve, and eventually be forced to surrender.
This account in the Bible doesn’t give us a specific span of time that elapsed, as all of the food ran out. Instead, it describes the high prices offered for such retched delicacies as donkey heads, and pigeon poop—things people would normally never fathom eating.
But this situation was critical. Many people were starving to death. And—to the horror of the king of Samaria—some had actually begun to eat their own children. When he heard this, he tore his clothes in grief, anger and dread.
He must have wondered, “Where is God—now, when we need Him?”
Outside of the city, the Syrians camped out and waited. No doubt, it wouldn’t be long until the Samaritans surrendered. Such is the cruelty of war.
But this isn’t the end of the story. Because God was there. He had been there all along.
He spoke to His prophet, Elijah, who quickly reported to the King what God had told him. By a certain time tomorrow, food—real food—would be selling dirt cheap, right at the city gates.
When word got around to the weak and starved people, it must have been difficult to believe. But when God says that He is going to do something, that is what He does.
Reading on through Chapter 7, within this account, an amazing little drama is being played out. It involves four misfits—four lonely lepers, sitting in the dirt—in the shade of those city gates.
In this time and culture, lepers were outcasts of society. Nobodies. Doomed to live out their lives, in separation and shame—and to die alone. Surely, at this critical time, no one was paying any attention to them.
But the forgotten of this world are never far from God’s view.
He sees what no one else sees. He hears what no one else hears. He hears the cries of hearts.
He sees the faith that comes out of desperation.
Desperation. When life seems out of control. When there seems to be no way out, no way back, and no clear path forward.
The agony of waiting for relief that never comes. Life and death seem to hang in the balance. Until finally, there’s a knowing in our deepest depths.
It evokes a stark realization of what truly matters, and what doesn’t matter at all. And for many of us, of how little we actually have to lose.
For these four lepers, it probably took some time. Weeks, or maybe longer. Then they took a good long look at each other.
They had looked each other in the face before. Each one was like a mirror to the one looking. That shared expression of pain, and sickness. Those eyes full of weakness, and sorrow. Those questions of “why me?”
But this time, those questions had long ago left their minds. Because by now, it almost didn’t matter.
We are getting a glimpse of what happens to individuals who are bound collectively by a common thread. If they had a normal, pleasant life, these four people may not have crossed paths for a moment. Now they were thrust together by what seemed to be some cruel mishap of nature.
But what they didn’t yet know, was that they were about to be used by God. Through their shared misfortune, their lives had come together for God’s purposes to be made manifest.
To us, it can seem unfair. But this is how God works. And He knows what He is doing.
When we study the ways of Almighty God, we see a pattern—a pattern of His goodness, and His purpose—woven into the perplexing tapestry of life’s circumstances.
He takes the weak ones—the less ones, the discarded and disillusioned ones—and makes them vehicles of the miraculous. Why?
Because He wants us to understand, and know. To remind all of humankind that only the Almighty God of Heaven and Earth—who knows and loves every one of us so much—could work His will through our weaknesses.
He wants us to realize and recognize that He experienced the very same thing—working His will through His becoming weak, through the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
As we identify with Him, and as we turn our lives over to Him, He gets to work.
He takes the broken pieces of our lives, and sends them to His “faith factory”—building fearful hearts into hearts of courage—to do great and marvelous things they could otherwise have never done.
“…My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness…” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
God takes the weak and shows Himself strong. This is where some of His very best work is done.
So our four lepers looked at each other—at the end of yet another long, miserable day of hopelessness. But this day would be different.
Today would be their day of decision. Today would be their day to find courage, where there once was none. Today they would make a choice, which would decide the fate of the whole city.
They stared at each other. They had come to the end of themselves, and realized there was nothing left to lose. Until the question arose within them:
…”Why sit here until we die?” (2 Kings 7:3)
They weighed their options—which were few. It was no good to go into the city—there was nothing to save them there. But continuing to sit at the gates also meant inevitable death.
They had nothing left to lose. They made their decision.
They would take the radical road.
As insane as it would sound to any normal person, they would get up, and walk right into the enemy’s camp. Maybe they would live, maybe they would die.
It didn’t matter anymore.
Desperation is like that. It gets us moving in new directions.
We always have a choice. We can continue to just sit where we are. Or we can come up with our own stupid direction to go in.
Or—by His prompting and leading—we can choose to go in God’s direction.
These four lepers cast off their self pity, and got up. Together—in the face of death—they walked down that lonely road to an uncertain future.
They had no idea what Almighty God had already purposed for them to achieve, just by choosing a new direction for their lives.
They had no idea that they possessed a weapon.
“…in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37)
Desperation—mixed with faith—is a weapon. It is probably one of the most powerful weapons God has devised.
It’s when we are backed into a corner of circumstances, and finally make the decision to take that road.
The radical road.
It’s a path traveled only by those who have the desire and the courage to be led down it’s unsafe, uncertain course.
Desperation, mixed with faith—and God moves. The enemy fears, and falls before it’s power.
As they stumbled along through the dimness of twilight, God caused the footsteps of these weak and emaciated lepers to sound like mighty, rushing armies, charging toward the Syrian camp.
To the ears of those Syrian soldiers, they were outnumbered. In terror and confusion, they quickly fled into the darkness.
And when the lepers arrived at their camp, they were stunned at what they found. Not a single soul was in sight.
But, to their delight and disbelief, everything else was left behind in the panic—horses, tents, gold and silver, clothing, weapons—and food! Enough food to feed an army!
At the gate, the food was distributed to the entire city—just as the prophet Elijah had said.
The starving people of Samaria were saved, by some of the most unlikely heroes imaginable. A small band of outcasts, who—in the midst of their pain—were used in a plan of action. With a strength and a purpose that only God alone could give.
God had inserted Himself into an impossible situation, to manifest unlimited possibility.
And it all started with that question. Maybe you have arrived at that question too.
“Why am I just sitting here, until I die?”
Death is real, and it can take many forms, even while a person is still physically alive: Darkness. Sorrow. Shame. Self-hate. Hopelessness. Defeat. Continuing to do nothing is certain “death.”
But if you finally find the courage to get up off the ground, and ask for God’s help, He can begin to take the impossible situation of your life, and fulfill His purpose through it.
When that radical road—that goes against all normal reasoning—is taken, God Himself will walk with you. And lead you.
But only if you make that choice, and ask, and believe.
One of the worst lies of the enemy you can fall for, is that you have no choices to make. You do have a choice.
There is a reason that you are here, in your mess. A good reason. A destiny.
God is here, right in the middle of your mess. And He is waiting for you to make your decision.
To reach out to Him, to find Him, and to trust Him. To ask Him to lead the way.
Whether or not you can see it, and whether or not you choose to believe it—the outcome of other’s lives depends on your decision.
God wanted you here, because He planned to meet you here. When you reach for Him, you’ll find His hand already reaching out to you. He’s been reaching out this whole time.
He wouldn’t be here if He didn’t think you were worth saving. He wouldn’t reach out if He didn’t believe in you—and the life you have yet to find.
But you have to start by believing in Him, and trusting Him to take you where you could never go by yourself. To make you the person you were meant to be, only by being His. His.
You could decide to ignore the help that He wants to give you. For a little while more, you still have time. But it’s borrowed time.
Time is never really ours to spend doing what seems right, or to waste or throw away. Time is loaned to us. Sooner or later, we run out of time.
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12)
If you ignore God, you will never know who you might have been—or where you might have gone, or what you might have accomplished—just by walking down that road with Him.
The God of all Creation—through the life and death of Jesus Christ—planned for you to win. He wants you to win.
Do you have the faith? Combine it with your desperation. Go ahead, and take a chance. Find Him. Hold on to Him.
Get up, and walk the radical road. Do this today.
- Give up on your own ways of doing things. Ask the Lord Jesus Christ to save you from your sin, your own decisions, and yourself.
- Get up and get ready to walk. Ask God for faith, and for courage. Ask Him to lead you.
- Let go of yourself, and your life. Take hold of Jesus Christ. Give Him all of your nothing, in exchange for all of His everything.
- Give in to His desire for your life, and to wherever He leads you. Be submitted to His authority, instruction and direction.
If you’re the kind of person I think you are, you are finding new courage, and new hope. You are about to take your first real steps in God’s direction.
Don’t fear the steps that are ahead of you. You will never walk alone.
Because you’ve chosen the radical road. The road of desperation, and faith. The road of risk. The road of uncertainty.
The road of surrender. The road of destiny. The road of purpose. The road of eternity.
The road of Love. The road of Jesus.
And sitting until you die just isn’t an option.