Hello everyone! Sorry it has been so long since my last post it has been crazy the last couple of months. My family and I just moved into a house and I am going to be working two jobs starting next week so it has been pretty hectic. I figured I could find some time and squeeze in a blog post because I don’t know how long it will be before I get the chance to get another one up. So this post is about desperation in our quest to find God’s face. We need to have a desperate attitude when we are crying out to him instead of our plain old boring monotone prayers that a lot of Christians do on a regular basis. So we are going to Matthew 15:21-28 and read a story about Jesus and a woman that wouldn’t give up.
Matthew 15:21-28 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.” Jesus did not answer a word, so his disciple came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord help me!” She said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes Lord,” She said, “But even the dogs eat crumbs that fall from the masters table.” Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
You know it is not very easy to change God’s mind. While Jesus was on the earth, very rarely did he diverge from decisions once his mind was made up. When he made a decision is was concrete, there was no argument to the fact. But every once in awhile when certain individuals cried out in desperation they caught his attention. So what does it take to get the Lord to stop in the direction he was going and change course towards something else. Simply, desperation. Desperation for a touch from him, a constant nagging if you will. This woman cried out to him following him for God knows how long it doesn’t really go into a specific time or distance, whether it was a mile or seven miles, but the thing is she grabbed onto her hearts desperate want and cry, this being her daughter and kept pursuing a solution to her problem.
Jesus tried to ignore her! He heard her crying out and said nothing! His disciples being the people persons that they were finally said, “Gosh Jesus just hear the lady out! She is getting on our nerves.” Jesus in turn said, “No, I have only been called to Israel.” He was basically saying, this woman is an unbeliever and I can’t help her. But it says even after the Lord say’s this, even after she had been following him for miles and now it seemed as if it were all for nothing, even though she could have turned around and went back home, she fell to her knees and cried out “Lord help me!”
Have you been on your knees lately? You can stand, shout, pray and speak all you want but there is something about a humble and contrite spirit that the Lord loves. There is something about falling down before the maker of Heaven and crying out in desperation, “Lord help” that catches his attention. When you as a person finally realize that you are nothing but dirt in the palm of your creator when you realize that without him you wouldn’t even be a thought, something inside of yo changes and He takes notice. When you have a desperation inside of you, it is enough to make God say, “What do we have here?”
Jesus goes even further in the story, probably testing to see how desperate she really was. He says, “It’s not right to throw the children’s bread to the dogs.” Whoa, talk about a slap in the face. Here he is pretty much insulting her, saying she I not worthy of what he has to offer, pushing her, testing her faith. Most of us would be offended in this day and age we would be like, “Excuse me?” But she didn’t move instead she stayed on her knees and replied, “Yes Lord, but even dogs eat the crumbs from the Masters table.” Crumbs. Desperation. She was begging for mere crumbs. You see this woman had been raised in a secular country, she had been raised worshipping idols and was schooled in the ways of the world but something inside of her, even though she as part of a secular community, recognized Jesus for what he was.
The Son of God, God sent in flesh. Something inside of her that was placed there by God at the moment of her birth, at the sight of the Messiah and Most High, something inside of her screamed, “He’s got what I want, he has what I need, he is the solution to my problem, if I grab a hold of him, if I press in grabbing for what he has, he is sure to offer it to me. I am desperate and this is my only option. I am not leaving him without getting what I need.”
How many options do we go through before we get desperate? Us as Christians should have no problem coming to him with our needs and wants but is he our one and only option? Do we come running to him right away when we recognize the problem or do we come to him after we have exhausted everything else we have? What is your problem? Jesus lives inside every one of us and we should have instant access to whatever he has to give us. The world should see the Kingdom of God in us just as this woman saw it in Jesus. They should be crying out saying we want what you have. I have tried drugs, I have tried sex, I have tried booze but what you have seems to be working. I want what you have. And that’s when we say its not what I have it’s who I have. His name is Jesus and he has everything that you could ever want and he is waiting for you with open arms.
This passage covers two topics, it can be about our attitude of desperation and are we desperate enough to warrant God’s attention and are we living a life of purity and holiness and walking in the kingdom to such a degree that when we are in the world, the world takes notice. That’ the way it should be, we shouldn’t be running to the world for our needs they should be realizing that we got something unique and creative and be asking for our advice. It’s time for us to stop being politically and socially acceptable and start living spiritual. You know that Jesus said, “I did not come to bring peace but a sword?” (Matthew 10:34) What does that mean? That means that we have to quit tip-toeing around the issues that are “case sensitive” and separate ourselves from the world.
The sword divides flesh from your body. Homosexuality? It’s wrong, cut it off. It take’s away the creative purpose between a man and a woman and is an attack on the seed straight from Satan. We still love them and we accept them but we make sure they have limitations set if they don’t deal with their sin just like any other sin and we make sure they know it’s wrong and here is why. Quit being afraid of what will happen and step out and make a difference. If you have a problem with pornography, then unplug your internet or take a baseball bat to your computer. Better your face book account then your soul right? We need to reach the world with Jesus, the real Jesus not the rules, regulations and politics of modern Christianity but the practices of the kingdom.
Kind of branched off onto a bunch of subjects on that post. It needs to be told, too often we dance around the things that are touchy these days. We need to be focused on what is right and what is in the bible not what is our own interpretation of what is right. If it is in the bible then we need to follow it regardless on what people think. We need to live a holy and blameless life, touched by grace so we can share it with the world and then be the church that we are suppose to be and then we can change the world. But you have to start with yourself otherwise everything that you try to do will be in vain.
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