DESPERATION OPENS A HEART TO RECEIVE  12/23/09

Today I had a conversation with someone who has a spouse that is overcoming cancer.  I felt quickened to share a portion of what I said to this person:

When we are living with someone who is battling long-term illness, the tendency is to want to bury your own pain in escape, rather than feel the real load of our loved one.  I did this for years until I got sick too.  What I learned, is that our sufferings truly are seasons for melting our hard Spock like hearts and giving us tender hearts of compassion.

In the very deepest part, inside of us, in our deepest agonized pain, .... is a primeval scream of desperation for God's deliverance and love.  When you find that place and pour it all out to Him, instead of keeping it frozen through evil substitutes, you will find His truest connection and healing.  This is not something that can be cooked up.  It is something that in your darkest hours, when you want to turn to substitutes, you instead scream out to Him… it is in that highest temptation of flesh vs your faith that the agony will manifest and you make a deliberate force of your will to turn to God instead.  It is then, in that choice, and that screaming need that He will be there, and you will have broken through a door of invitation to join Him in consecrated intimacy.

People emotions are just emotion and they come and go.  However, when a heart becomes deeply desperate, there is nothing that can hold it back.  It is in the peak of that desperation that IF we turn to God, we finally make that intense connection we have needed to find deliverance. 

Those moments of connections have to be 2-way.  Sometimes, we simply can’t receive what He has to give until we open our hearts through desperate need.  Sometimes, our hearts are not open without that need.

There are times when I don’t hear from Him and I get dryer and dryer and think I am going to die.  My prayers start whimpering, and then finally I am desperate for Him.  Then we finally connect and He says what He has to say... I LISTEN, I RECEIVE. 

Love must be reciprocal for it to have satisfaction and fulfilling value.  Sometimes the only way we can break through to RECEIVE is to become desperate.

Luke 11:5-13 NLT

Then, teaching them more about prayer, he used this illustration: "Suppose you went to a friend's house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You would say to him,  'A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat.'  He would call out from his bedroom, 'Don't bother me. The door is locked for the night, and we are all in bed. I can't help you this time.'  But I tell you this — though he won't do it as a friend, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you what you want so his reputation won't be damaged.  

"And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you  will be given what you ask for. Keep on looking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened.  For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And the door is opened to everyone who knocks. 

"You fathers — if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead?  Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not!  If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him."