What if I told you that you are not alone? That most of us walk around secretly desperate for something. Desperation comes in many forms. Some are desperate for love. Some for money, drugs, alcohol, sex, a sense of worth or belonging. Desperate to be noticed, to feel wanted. Some of us are desperate for safety, peace. This list of desperation could go on for miles and miles and miles.
I have spent many years thinking that I was alone in my feelings and situations, but the truth is, I’m not and neither are you. When I began confiding in friends about my feelings and situations, ALL of them connected with me on one level or another.
As humans, we tend to hide in shame much like Adam and Eve when they had eaten the forbidden fruit. We hide from God. We hide from friends and family. We even hide from our selves. We hang our heads in shame, quite literally. We beat ourselves up for having such feelings, emotions, or being in such situations. This is a tactic from the Devil. He wants us to believe we are alone. Why? Because if he can alienate you, he can work on you. He can fuel those thoughts and desires.
TRUTH NUGGET: We are ALL sinners.
This message is not just for those we would call “sinners” living outside God’s will. This message is for you. Yeah you….church goer, Christ lover. We ALL have a war waged for our souls and you better believe that.
What amazes me is we all have these secret areas in our lives and we act like they don’t exist. Somewhere, there is a leader of the church battling depression. Your praise and worship singer has days she can barely breathe due to her anxiety. Kids, that really popular kid that is always all smiles, may very well go home to abuse. You know someone in your life who has a lust issue. You may not know they have it, but they do. Maybe there is a drug addict or alcoholic. If you were to open up and those around you were to be honest, none of us are so different. Whether the situations are past or present, someone near you has been thru it or is going thru it.
I believe God uses our past and our situations to help guide others going thru those same things. We sat at a Bible study and one of the women opened up about her past. As we listened, it occurred to me that her story was nearly the same as my own. The first few times, I didn’t say anything. In fact, I hung my head in shame as she told “our” secrets for the whole room to hear. As if they could hear her story and somehow magically they would know that these same events had happened to me in my life. Good grief. The last time she talked about it I told her that our stories were quite similar. We now are sharing in our brokeness and praying for one another. There is power in that.
So I say all of my above crazy ramblings to say this. We are all secretly desperate, but the reality is that we are not desperate for the things we think we are seeking. The reality is that we are all broken people living in a broken world, desperate for God. God. Not money, sex, drugs, alcohol, acceptance, love…..none of it. We are desperate for God. You and I are desperate for God. As I am typing, he is repeating it over and over in my head. Every one of us are secretly desperate. We are seeking the wrong things to fill that secret desperation. IT’S. GOD. Stop searching in anything outside of that.
God, you have been speaking to me for two days on this subject and I pray that I have relayed your message in a way that touches someone. Even if it’s just one. I pray my words won’t fall on blind eyes. I don’t usually do this, but Lord, if the person or persons this is meant to reach hasn’t accepted you as their Lord and Savior and asked you to forgive them of their sins, I pray they do so now. I pray they take their secret desperation to you and let you fill the holes that only you can. God, I pray right now that you take my secret desperations and fill me with you. Let the chains of desperation for the wrong things fall to the floor and shatter like glass. Instead wrap me in your arms and let my desperation be only for you. To serve you, to love like you, to please you. I love you God and I ask these things in Jesus name.
itsagodthang 