In Your Desperation

 

⁴⁷ When the woman realized she couldn’t hide any longer, she came and fell trembling at Jesus’ feet. Before the entire crowd she declared, “I was desperate to touch you, Jesus, for I knew if I could just touch even the fringe of your garment^[a] I would be healed.” – Luke 8:46-48 (TPT)

We must have experienced some desperations in some stage of our lives. Do you remember when the last one you felt so desperate in your situation and you cried out loud to God to rescue you? The feeling was as if you are at the edge of the cliffs and you had nowhere to go and you know that He is the only one who can help you.

There are differences when you send a prayer request to God for your problems with when you are crying out loud to God in your desperation. God can sense our desperation. He can differentiate it and He will not ignore our desperation. When I am in desperation, I become highly anxious that I can only cry to God because I don’t even know how to express my feeling in words.

I have experienced few times where I was in great fear feeling helpless and in my desperation I cried to God and He answered me. I suddenly felt a great peace right after He said few words to me. Let me share the two of them.

When I was in my mid 20s I had a problem with arthritis. Normally it attacked every 18 months. When it flared up the arthritis attacked one of my knee and it became swollen. I couldn’t walk when it was very swollen. When the attack came it took about 2 months to ease down and disappear. It kept happening until I had my first child. In 2011 just a week before our overseas family holiday in Asia, suddenly I got the arthritis attack which I didn’t anticipated. I forgot that it has been 18 months. I was literally unable to walk and was in pain. I was panicking and booked my specialist right away.

He then injected my knee to give temporary relief. But I knew that it was only a matter of days settle down (max 5 days) before it came back again until the 2 months period ended. Knowing that I would go overseas, the doctor then prescribed me a very strong medicine to stop the swollen if it came back but he also mentioned to me that if he was me he would rather stay in the hotel room during the trip than taking those medicine. In other words, he didn’t actually want me to take those pills unless I really needed it.

Just a couple of days before we left for our holiday, when I was ironing the clothes, I couldn’t hold my tears and felt under stress. I prayed in tongue and in my desperation I cried to God that I was very scared. I was scared that I couldn’t walk during my trip. How could I carry little Faith my daughter, the luggage, and everything if I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t cancel the trip either because it was only few days to go.

Some of you might think my problem was not that huge at all compared to others but at that time I already felt so desperate. God didn’t say to me “Wait, this is not worth of crying. This problem is so small, I don’t have to response you immediately.” But God saw and felt my desperation. He felt that I was in sorrow and crying for His help. Then on instant moment, suddenly there was a big voice in my heart speaking loudly saying ‘Have confident in me.” I was surprised to hear that voice. I was quiet for a moment, then the voice came again, “Have confident in me.” Those short words really calmed me down. I knew it was God and I knew He wanted to say to me, “Calm down, everything is going to be ok during the trip.” And it was true. Miraculously my knee was never swollen during the trip and I could enjoy my family trip together. Praise be to God.

Another story was when I was about to give birth to my second child, Hanniel. Traumatised by the first birth, approaching to the coming of Hanniel’s birth, I was very anxious and scared. The last days before I gave birth, I experienced a lot of panic attack. I prayed to God every day that He would help me with this birth. But even after finished praying I still couldn’t get my peace. Until the night before I gave birth (I didn’t know that the next day I would have given birth to Hanniel), in my desperation I cried to God to take away the pain because I still remembered the pain when I had Faith and I didn’t think I could bear the same pain again. After few moments of crying in desperation, suddenly I heard a voice spoken to me “I will be with you.” I knew it was He who said that to me, but I was still replying to Him, “I know you will be with me, Lord Jesus, but I need you to take away my pain.” There was no voice after that. It was silent though I was expecting more words from Him. I didn’t know what He meant by that but I was a bit calm knowing that He has answered me.

Hanniel’s birth was a miracle. The next day after my prayer, I had small contraction from morning until afternoon. I then decided to go to hospital to get it checked. When nurses checked, she said that the contraction was nothing, it didn’t mean anything. However she checked anyway the opening and to her surprise it was already 4 cm dilation. An hour later I was still waiting on the birthing unit, contraction was gone but when the nurse checked again my opening it was already 7 cm. Less than an hour after that doctor already came and I was ready to give birth. I started to have contraction back again but really it was just to help me to push the baby out. The contraction itself was not pain and only 4 pushes, Hanniel was finally out. I couldn’t thank God enough for what He has done for me. He was really there for me in the birthing unit and helped me to deliver Hanniel out.

I learned that no matter what the problem is, when you send the signal to God that you are very desperate, I am sure He will listen and will come to rescue or answer you.

The problem is, we do not always feel desperate. Sometimes the problem might be even bigger than what I just shared. But if we are not desperate enough, it seems like it will take a while for God to rescue us. I need to learn to be desperate again for Him. There are many things that I still need for breakthrough in my life, yet He can feel the level of my desperation. I need to be desperate enough so He can speak to me of what I should do so I can receive these breakthroughs.

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you understand how important to be desperate with God.