Chapter Two - Despair
by Dane C Ortlund
Make it stand out
Despair
A consistent message throughout the Bible.
God is drawn to the people low and destitute.
Proverbs 3:34 The Lord mocks the mockers but is gracious to the humble.
God wants us to see our sickness, our sin so we can run to him and be healed and forgiven.
Not having self-despair could be holding you back from growing in Christ.
The Sinfulness of Sin
What is our natural human condition? Glory or Ruined
Our hearts and mind are infected.
In short, we construct our entire lives around the throne of Self.
Our disease of self and sin has a symptom of which is that we feel healthy.
Many scriptures speak of our sinfulness as blindness.
The severity of our sinful state dictates the depth and seriousness of the help that we know we need.
Is my sinfulness a headache or a cancer? When we see how sick we are and how short we fall of the glory that is intended for us we take that step to bridge the gap between who we are and who we were made to be.
Morality
Our morality is full of sin. Consider your acts of service. Was it serve or create a perception of you.
Contrast
Self reflection is only a part of how we identify our sinfulness.
The blackness within comes into clear focus only when we see it next to the white brightness of God himself.
Growth will only happen when we go through the painful death of honesty about our own spiritual emptiness.
The Great Prerequisite
Leverage despair to get real traction when defeated by old patterns.
Let it humble you.
This stage of death to self is unavoidable.
The pattern of the Christian life is not a straight line up to resurrection existence but a curve down into death and thereby up into resurrection existence.
Have you been brought to despair? If not do this.
Look in mirror
Repent
See the profound poverty
Ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for your arrogance.
It’s in that emptiness that God lives.
The despair is all he needs to work with.
Collapse
Despair is an intersection. We must go there, but not stay!
It’s a two step movement.
Repentance - It is turning from SELF.
Faith - It is returning to JESUS.
The Christian life is one of repenting our way forward.
Repentance and faith are step to get real healing. Jesus himself
