Desperation Before God is a Key

[Dale Hardy]

In today's post we are going to look at the idea that desperation before God in prayer is quite important. (Today's devotional is drawn from Psalm 13:3)

David was being chased by Saul here and he was in dire circumstances, Saul wanted to kill him. (We have all been in tough circumstances. Maybe some of you are right now. Then this post is for you.) So read on and see what David learned from God.

First, he says to the Lord says look at me. When life is hard, it feels like God is far away. In life's struggles we want to scream (!) for God to look our way. We ask, why oh why is He allowing this to happen to me? We also ask questions like: Why can't I ever seem to get ahead? Why can't I be healed? Why do I have to face so much criticism? Why do so many bad things happen to me. In short we find ourselves in desperation trying to get God's attention to do something for us.

These are all good and legitimate questions. But they are not the best questions to ask of God. Instead ask these two questions in your desperation (what do you have to lose): 

a. God will you show yourself in this? He will!

b. What is that you want me to learn in this? A difficult question that can only be answered for those who want the answer. Ten years ago I started having difficulty walking or even shaking hands. I was pretty close to being disabled with Gout and Osteoarthritis. When I finally got around to asking Him what I needed learn from this because I was miserable. I then became desperate and now know why. He was wanting me to learn about prayer and begin teach others about prayer.

Second, he says, answer me, my God. Can you hear him shouting this loudly. You feel like that sometimes don't you? You want to shout at God to answer you. Well, go ahead and SHOUT because it will help you be honest and express a really deep set of needs to God. When you do this, your level of desperation is really high and you are willing to acknowledge His sovereignty. In other words you say He is in charge of your life and not yourself. Then you will begin to see some answers.

Third, he says, tell me or I will die. This concludes the trilogy of heart-wrenching questions that David asks. To be totally honest with each other, we have in our heart of hearts at one time wished we could die and be done with our lives. Somehow you knew in yourself that that was a wrong decision. So hung on. Good! Now hang on a little longer. The next two posts will continue to speak about this.

In the next post: Part 2 of Desperation before God is a Key. The following post will be: Things to Do when Life Sucks (to my friends who will be bothered by that word, let me say it's a descriptive word about what life is like sometimes, not an innuendo.)