In Our Despair We Cry Out to _____

It's a multiple choice answer for this fill-in-the-blank statement: In our despair we cry out to ____. Some answers might be:
1.) God
2.) Hobbies
3.) Alcohol
4.) The Apostle Paul
5.) Our pastor or priest
6.) Our birth parent(s)
7.) Ourselves and our plans

It presupposes you have been in despair. Have you despaired of your situation?

It seems absurd, doesn't it? Calling on some of these things while in the midst of despair? But maybe not...it depends on what the source of your despair is and also what you want your deliverance to look like. Or perhaps who you want to be in control. Maybe with just a few more resources, you think, you could get this situation in hand and everything would be just fine. If the source of despair is your marriage, perhaps your search for a solution is better information through books or in the person of a counselor. If your problem stems from employment maybe you will look for retraining or a new job. Those are, if used appropriately, legitimate ways to improve our situation. Faced with the same distresses, some of us will seek alleviation through illegitimate means. Alcohol, drugs, food, pornography, relationships, sex; all of these can be things reached for in an effort to medicate the pain that accompanies despair. They don't improve the situation, in fact they make things worse and you end up with the original problem plus those that stem from the efforts to fix it on our own.

The source of all despair is ultimately rooted in sin. Adam and Eve knew nothing of despair until they chose to disregard the Lord's admonition not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From that point forward, the reality of man would include a sinful nature and sinful choices. Accompanying sin is the despair of the predicament. All too ofter we seek to salve the symptoms of our sin. 12 step programs, in-patient care, counseling, self-help materials, all of these things to address the ache of our heart or the symptoms of habits trying to fill that ache. Everywhere we turn in our own life we may find this despair and our attempts to fix it. But there is no "fixing" it, not with those things. Those tools may be coupled with some measure of self-discipline to provide some alleviation of the symptoms.

Despite all of these efforts the sin will remain. Nothing we can do will address the source of sin and its accompanying despair. So what do we do? We cry out to God in our despair. Why? Not just so that we may be delivered from our despair, although that is certainly part of it. But if that was the only reason it would not address the source.

When God rouses us from spiritual death (See Eph. 2:5) to life we realize our sin has separated us from God and we cry out to have that relationship restored and our sin forgiven. We long for the promise of God that He will forgive our sin and count us as righteous because Jesus paid the penalty for our sin. He promises to forgive the sin of those who call upon His name (that is to believe or trust in His sufficiency to save us from our sin, not simply that He was a real person) and who leave their sin behind.

We can't say with integrity that we wish to call upon / trust / have faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior if we are unwilling to simultaneously leave our sin. We set our sins aside and instead embrace Jesus becoming His beloved, His bride, His co-heir. But we can't embrace Him and become a child of God if we continue to hold onto our sin. He is not Lord if we continue down pathways that are not pleasing to Him. "Lord" is not just a word we plug into the name we give to Jesus. It is a reality that He is the owner of everything and as holder of the title deed to the universe and all therein we are obligated to render ourselves to Christ. It is this rebellion that is at the center of our sinful condition, so how can we go forward claiming to be a child of God, the bride of Christ, if we continue on in rebellion? We can't.

But if we are genuinely the saved of Christ the source of our despair is gone. So does that mean that despair will never be part of our Christian experience? Does anyone who experiences despair have cause to question the genuineness of their salvation? No, I believe a solid review of the Bible shows that those who desire to follow God and have been born again do still experience despair (see for example Paul's statement at 2 Cor. 1:8)