"An End to Despair"

Have you ever known the darkness of despair?  In Pilgrim’s Progress it’s referred to as the “the slough of despond.”  Have you ever thought life a bit absurd?  Have you ever felt yourself to be on a “dead-end express” traveling at a frightful pace going nowhere?  Have you ever thought, “I just can’t face tomorrow?”  Of course, that at least speaks of a good case of depression, which, if seriously persisted in, could lead to suicide.  But hang on.

But first, let me tell you what doesn’t help—being admonished to look deeper into “self” for some royal, untapped resource.  That’s fruitless because much of despair can come from looking within.  As if almost on cue, Dwight L. Moody, a great evangelist of another day said, “I’m my own worst enemy.”

If the answer’s not within, then where?  Keep in mind Robin Williams who was about the business of making everybody laugh, when inwardly he was trying to make sense of life—and couldn’t.  You must radically shift your focus from self to God.  Why?  You’ve tried to “work it out” on your own and it hasn’t and doesn’t’ work. 

It’s all or nothing.  You have to declare ego-bankruptcy—there is no other way.  You can’t find the solution to inner despair partly in self and partly in God.  Listen to a spiritual leader, the Apostle Paul, on this subject, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.  For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Romans 7:18, 19).  In this Scripture “flesh” refers to the “self” (the I, me, my, mine principle) and not to the body.  In sum, you must have absolutely no confidence in self.

Therefore, seen rightly, when you are in greatest despair you’re on the possible threshold of coming face to face with God.  That’s because turning from self, one can then fully seek God.  Try it.  Cry out to God with all your heart, fully seeking Him.  If so, then you can prove true what the prophet Jeremiah said to Israel (speaking for God) after seventy years of judgment in Babylon, a terribly low point in Israel’s history:  “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.  Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.  And you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:11-13).

Having found Him, you abide continually in Him and so bid despair goodbye.