Good and Healthy Despair

“Despair” – is it good or bad?  Man on the street says….? Bad! But not so fast.  I believe that there is a good and healthy place for despair in the life of a Christ-follower.  Despair can shake us and motivate us.  It alerts us to a potential outcome that is terrifying. It wakes us up. The problem is not that we despair; it is that our objects of despair are not significant enough.  We despair of getting that spouse, of having those kids, of landing that job, of sculpting that body, of making that purchase, and on and on and on.  And if that despair does positive work, it doesn’t leave us in despair but raises our determination to push, to get, to have, to possess, and on and on and on. And frankly, my greatest fear is to live my life in response to second tier despairs.  I want my despair to be deeper and so much more significant.

In Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire: What Happens When God's Spirit Invades the Heart of His People, by Jim Cymbala says, “I despaired at the thought that my life might slip by without seeing God move mightily on our behalf." Now that is a healthy despair! I have had moments of despair like that, and I hope they never stop. I hope I continue to have moments when I look around me and am terrified by the possibility of having all of the great work of God in my review mirror, only to be revisited in Christian “glory days” conversations.  I have despaired that that could become me / would become me. I have despaired that I would coast into the end of my life, and I know that I will coast unless my hunger to see God work mightily on my behalf stirs me to live out a faith in God that is empowered by the Spirit of God.

Oh, may we at Journey despair of just doing church and not seeing God work mightily on our behalf.  May we be motivated to live out our faith by the power of the Spirit.

I hope you wake up some night soon with a momentary despair of not seeing God work mightily in your life and in our church.  I hope that that despair shakes you out of any complacency and beyond any fear. I hope you are stirred to do whatever it takes to see God move mightily.