CATALYST LITERATURE

I’ve come across many inspiring stories today, of people being desperate. Desperate for one thing: to pursue the only ONE worth pursuing, Jesus. It’s great to hear and read such stories. It just helps me cry out to be desperate for HIM, the only one worthy.

Desperation. I don’t know how Merriam Webster defines it, but this is how I define it: an insatiable hunger, an unsatisfied longing, a struggle to reach out to the only thing that can bring hope, an all consuming desire. Heavy? Yes. Because it is.

Paul wrote the following to the saints in Philippi, urging them to continue on. Continue on in the context of God’s grace, to put every effort unto knowing God and doing His will.

“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” Philippians 3:7-9

Paul has been through a lot. He has been a murderer and persecutor, thinking that he was doing it all for the glory of God. Yet, God in His mercy has chosen Paul to be His messenger to the Gentiles—non-Hebrews—us. If it weren’t for God’s work through Paul, our race wouldn’t even hear the Gospel.

I am sure Paul experienced ALL the convenience during his day. He was a Pharisee, which to this day is something equivalent to the most respectable group in society. He had the privilege of being invited always to parties, social events open only to the rich and famous. He had the honor to be a VIP whenever the king has a banquet for the people of Judea. He was known by everyone…and mothers want their kids to be like him, a very good man, someone who will surely end up in heaven when he dies.
Yet the moment he encountered God while on the way to Damascus, his whole perspective changed. His experience changed. He no longer enjoyed the privileges he had as a Pharisee. In its place he experienced persecution, rejection, countless floggings to the point that he was almost at the point of dying. But, he delighted in it. If that’s not crazy, I don’t know what to call it.

In fact, Paul continued on in his letter: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3:10-11

Something isn’t right! How can a man like Paul want to suffer? Why will a former Pharisee trade his privileges for a life given up for Christ? Simple. He has tasted and seen that the Lord is good. And because of that single encounter with God, he has seen that living for Jesus is the only life worth living for. His eyes have been opened to the eternal, not the temporal.

If ice-cream was around during Paul’s time, I’m sure he would like to have it every day. With the kind of climate they experience in Israel, ice-cream will surely be a hit! But in comparison to the delight Paul might have—and we all have when we get ice cream—the delight he gets from God is more. Unimaginable. Out of this world. Supreme.

So great to the point that he craves for more. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:12-14

He is desperate for one thing. To take hold of what Christ did for him. Unfortunately, he never will. We never will. Yet that fact didn’t stop Paul from straining towards that anyway. If we will probe through the mind of Paul, he’d surely say something like this: “Why should I stop wanting to get that thing that is just so good?”

Let us go back to the ice cream illustration. If you will know that you will never get to the point of being satisfied by ice cream, will that stop you from wanting it? Nope. Because ice cream just tastes so good, you’d go after it! You’d do everything just to have it! You’d buy it, wherever, whatever the price! That’s if you’ve tasted ice cream.

It’s the same thing when you’ve truly encountered God. You’d just be so desperate to have more. You will have an insatiable hunger to know and do the ways of God. You will have an unsatisfied longing whenever you read His Word, because you know deep inside that it is nothing in comparison to what you will have the moment you will be in your glorified body. You will struggle to reach out to God, even though You know God is the ONE reaching out to you. You will just have a desire so consuming, it burns and you want it out and be spread to others.

Reading all this, you may get the feeling that it’s just so hard. “Gee, I don’t think I will reach that point in my life.” Let me ask you one thing, have you really encountered God the moment you thought you got saved? If you think and believe you did, then it’s about time to ask God to birth in you desperation. But if you are not sure, then it’s about time that you should be desperate that you encounter God.

How desperate are you?

Or better yet, how aware are you that God wants and is desperate to have you be desperate for Him? Let’s look at the account of the bleeding woman in Mark 5:25-34. After the woman touched Jesus’ cloak, Jesus felt power left him and then he turned to the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” The disciples pointed out to him that there are just a lot of people mobbing him that it’s impossible to pin point who touched him. Yet Jesus “KEPT LOOKING AROUND TO SEE WHO HAD DONE IT” (Mark 5:32)

Jesus was DESPERATE to know who touched him. And after the woman spoke up, he added more to the healing. He freed her from all suffering.

Now, shouldn’t that be enough reason to be desperate, knowing that the object of our desperation has been desperate all along?