Despair

Many times in our lives we get to the point of wondering if God has forsaken us, has God not heard my prayers? But when it is especially desperate it is just when God is getting ready to bring a miracle. For surely Living by faith is living on the edge of disaster in the midst of a miracle. I have seen this many many times when people are living this life of struggle and prayer. We look and wonder how is this going to work? How is this going to make sense? How will I do this? But as we continue to strive and struggle and bring forth our prayers to God, He indeed answers and comes through to rescue, empower and heal. That is why it is so important that we do not throw in the towel. In our lives as Christians, the enemy is especially designing to get our souls into despair. The very act of which denies the love of God found in the sacrifice of His great Son.

As an example lets say you struggle with anger and you genuinely decide you are going to overcome the chaos it brings to your life and to those around you. You ask God to forgive you and help you and you set your heart and will to not go there. The enemy is quick to bring the very circumstances that will trigger the rage within. Perhaps you handle it well and feel you have finally made progress and feel pretty good about yourself. You may even thank God for hearing you.

That of course that is when the enemy brings about another circumstance that not only triggers your anger but whispers into your thoughts that you have every right to be angry and offended. Tells you that you are not to be a rug under someone's feet and that person or persons need to be set straight.  As you dwell on the thoughts they take on power and energy and before you know it there you are!

Now the very one who encouraged you and wickedly worked to empower your thoughts and emotions to anger now ruthlessly belittles and condemns you for it. He tells you you cannot be much of a Christian. God is not hearing your prayers! He is obviously angry with you and you do not deserve His forgiveness. You are stupid and will never get it right! His plan was not just to get you to
fall into anger but even more to get you to fall into the sin of despair.

We must remember Judas and Peter. Both denied The Lord. They both turned against Christ. Peter denied Jesus three times to the point of actually cursing and swearing that he did not even know Him. Just then He looked into the loving eyes of Jesus as He was taken from judgment hall to judgment hall...with the gaze of Christ upon him, he remembers those words, "Before the cock crows twice you will deny me three times". At that point Peter went away weeping bitterly in anguish of soul and repenting. Jesus, Himself declared his unconditional forgiveness a few hours later as He hung on the cross, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do."

 Judas on the other hand ended up selling Jesus for 30 pieces of silver and in the end tried to turn the coins back into the temple. Judas tried to undo what he had done in the weakness of his sinful fleshly will and instead of repenting and throwing himself on Gods great unending mercy he gave into despair.

He said in his heart, "There is no hope for me," and cut himself off from the mercy of God. Instead of repenting he despaired and hung himself. Who committed the greater sin? The one who denied the Christ and humbled himself in deep, heartfelt sorrow and repentance or the one who gave into the sin of despair. This is the ultimate thing we MUST understand: the crafty one, the insidious one, the very enemy our souls is the Only one beside yourself who condemns you. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn it but to rescue and save it.

This is the ultimate thing we MUST understand: the crafty one, the insidious one, the very enemy of our soul and of our Lord ... the serpent...is continuously designing and wickedly tricking us into despair because that is the state where we cut ourselves off from the grace of God. It is ultimately the sin of pride that denies the Sacrifice of God's adorable and perfect Son as being sufficient to cover MY sin and weakness.

John 3:14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son Of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life."

As God's children were walking through the desert they had a weird experience in that all of a sudden snakes came out of everywhere and attacked Israel. As a result they were dying of snake bites and Moses could have rallied the men to kill the snakes by the power and strength of their flesh and will.

But instead Moses cried out, "Lord what do I do"?

God told Moses to fashion a snake out of bronze and attach it to a pole and then lift it up over the children. He declared to Moses that all who look up to the bronze serpent shall live. When they did they were rescued from the bite do the serpent.

The scripture explains that the serpent on the pole represented the Holy One of Israel, the One who knew no sin being made a sin offering on our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. II Corinthians 5:21

Once again we hear the enemy saying, "If you are the Son of God take yourself down from that Cross."  But the Lamb of God instead prayed,"Father forgive them they know not what they do."
As a result He experienced the judgment, the separation from God, as the sins of the entire world were laid upon Him, just as Israel's sins were laid upon the bronze serpent in the wilderness. And now whoever and whenever one will look to Him they will live and not perish in their sins but find peace with God and everlasting life.

All the people who looked at Jesus hanging on the Cross thought He was forsaken and rejected of God except for His mother, John the disciple, the good thief and a few women. The rest did not look at The Lord Jesus Christ with faith but with mockery. But for those who looked with faith all of a sudden the poison of the serpents bite was transferred away from them.

The antidote for that which we have experienced in this world; the poison that has infected our souls is none other than that which takes place on the Cross of Jesus Christ. We can experience that antidote when we partake of the body and the blood of Jesus. As a result it is like the hyssop of the high priest in the Old Testament where  the people were sprinkled with the blood of the lambs and the goats.

But in this case it is no other than the blood of the Lamb Himself, the chalice itself that comes to us in the words of Isaiah, the prophet, "Lo this has touched your lips and purged away your sins."

And so we hear these words,

John 3:14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son Of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life."16"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17"For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.…

Since we know the  devil is coming to tempt us to despair and to throw in the towel we must ask ourselves a very logical question, if God simply wanted me to go to hell why did He send down His only begotten Son? If the whole process was to help us to be saved surely the balance is tipped on the side of salvation and not the side of separation.

The point is that when you are in the middle of a battle and despair is raging and you are feeling so hopeless remember that God is for you, He wants you to be saved. He wants you to experience His mercy. This is why He came down and why He gave us the examples in the Old Testament. This is why He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world. This is why He gives to us His Body and His Blood; this is why He gives to us the sacrament of Confession so that by faith and experiencing the mercies of God we might rise up and shake off the tempter, shake off the darkness, shake off the poison of the serpents bite and rise up in healing and go forth into this world.

As a result you become someone who begins to conquer the devil. In the writings of the holy Apostle John, he talks about three groups of Christians:

I John 3:12, "I am writing to you dear children because your sins have been forgiven through Christ. I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have
overcome the evil one."

Three different stages of spiritual life.

1. At the stage of children we especially come to know that our sins have been forgiven. If you forget the reality that your sins have been forgiven you will fall into despair. If you know that Christ has come to forgive us our sins AND  to cleanse us from all unrighteousness

2. Then you gain the strength that you need to become strong. Have God's word, His Logos, His word abiding in you then you become over comers of the tricks and schemes of the enemy and are called by John, Young men.

3. Little by little as we climb this ladder and we continue to grow in the faith and knowledge of Jesus we come to that finale stage where John says, "I write to you Fathers because you know Him who has been from the beginning."

Those at that stage the Holy Fathers refer to as Theosis, like God; they experience so much of God's presence that they are flowing in and out of God's Spirit.

Wherever you find yourself on this ladder know that God is for us. He came into this world to save us. Let us fight most earnestly against depression and despair that would trick us into separation from God but rather let us remember that God is for me. He is not against me. Rise up children of God to be forgiven; rise up to encourage each other not to stay down when you have fallen but get up quickly because God is merciful. Rise up and live. Look at The Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain, and know that was for you and for me so that we can know and experience this mercy that flows to us and through us in the body and the blood of Jesus.

May you and I be ones who look up out of this realm of wicked condemnation and desperation to the Cross and the Blood of Christ Jesus not in mockery and unbelief but in the faith of the Son of God imparted to us. May we see Him and in so doing see ourselves dead to sin and alive unto God.