What Your Despair is Doing

Do you not see what your despair is doing? When that great struggle within you rises up again, and those hard decisions come pressing, and you despair from it all. Do you not see it? How your despair is softening you so that you seek for more, and hunger and thirst for more - the more of God.

Do you not see it? How your despair is bringing you directly to the feet of the Comforter. When otherwise you wouldn’t have gone, you wouldn’t have run, you wouldn’t have come, to Him. But now you do. And you will be comforted. Yes, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4).

When every overwhelming, too-much detail of life causes you to cry out, “I can’t do this, only You can, LORD! I need You,” blessed are you. Yes, blessed are you. You have taken your eyes off of circumstance. You have given up on expecting from others. You have despaired of your struggle from within and every difficult decision that comes your way. And you have run to the Father.

Only despair will do it. Only despair paves the way for your learning to come and abide. Only despair. Where your inability leads you to your knees before God Almighty. Where the overwhelmingness of your self-centeredness and pride lead you to the Cross, every time, where you know only Christ is enough to remove the wretched evil within you.

Only despair does it. And it is good, so good.

How else will one seek for the more of Christ (Matthew 6:33), unless the lesser of this world proves futile?

How else will one stop striving and trying to work so hard (Jeremiah 6:16), unless the works of their hands no longer have their enticing hold?

How else will the poor be chosen to inherit the kingdom (Matthew 5:3), unless God sees their poverty?

How else but by despair?

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“Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?” - James 2:5 ESV

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”- Matthew 5:3 ESV