Right Kind of Desperate

Wounded, tired, grief stricken and trudging through the battle field fighting and feeling like I’m failing to carry on. Begging God to take the weight from me. So desperate to have the life that is only known through relationship with God but fighting to get there. That’s the imagery I get of the psalmist who wrote Psalm 42. Or maybe when I read it, the words just so closely resemble me. The psalmist here was experiencing exile, so it is fair to recognize them as someone who has lost quite a bit and based on their words you can tell they are fighting to continue. The psalm shows a person who in the midst of the brutal warfare they recognize their desperation for God and they recognize the choice they get to have to hope again even in the midst of what feels downright awful and unbearable. We all have had those moments where life has felt downright awful.

God revealed in a new way to me Psalm 42 back at the beginning of covid when I was still in the midst of dealing with some grief, was struggling, tired and then everything around us shut down. We can get so tired don’t we? We begin to become desperate. Desperate for a vacation, for a break, for quiet, for a fix, for freedom, for relief, for love; it overwhelms us to the point where it motivates us. We stop living from a place of freedom and peace, where God has called us, and we begin living out of place of desperation for all the wrong things. Our motivation must be the Kingdom of God. When we recognize that we are becoming desperate we must ask ourselves what am I actually desperate for and we must ask the Lord to make us desperate for Him. We must push forward always recognizing our great need of the living God. The only One who can provide relief to our longing souls.

Here are some key points about this passage that I want you to see and remember. The psalmist reminds himself consistently throughout the psalm who God is. He is our salvation (v5), He is with us (v7-8), He is steadfast in His love (v8), He is our rock (v9), He is our hope (v11), He is our God (v11). The Psalmist never loses sight of who God is and what He is capable of even when his enemies are saying “where is your God?” (v10). The psalmist is brutally honest about how he is feeling. He hides nothing from God. Bring it to the Light, friends. What you are feeling God can handle and what we bring to the Light the darkness cannot follow. Be brutally honest with your God, but like the psalmist don’t forget to return to praise. He never looses sight of what God is capable of and because of that he is able to speak to his soul and say “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” He challenges the feelings of despair with the truth of the character of God. And God wins every time. No matter the circumstance, the desperation, the longing, the suffering, we begin and end with praise and recognition of who our God is and in the midst we share our heart with Him.

I ask you, friend, what is your soul longing for? Are you longing for the things of this earth that will pass away and are beyond your control or are you longing for the presence of the Living God? Do we long to be in the presence of God the way this psalmist describes? He was in exile from the sanctuary he served God in and was in distress about being cast away from there and being taunted by it. Do we grieve the same when we are not where God has called us to be? Do we ache to be back where God is the way the psalmist aches to be back with God. We should be so desperate to be in His presence, no matter the suffering we are in the midst of.

Keep yourselves focused on God and who He is in the midst of whatever you are going through. Praise Him in all things. Friend, I pray that whatever you are longing for would be trumped by a new sense of desperation for the presence of the living God. As a friend recently said in a devotional, “We must learn to linger longer.” So let’s linger longer with Jesus and receive the rest our souls need.