2 Corinthians 1:9 “Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”
What does hopelessness feel like to you? I’m sure you’ve been there. Every source of security—gone. All the legs supporting the table—cut off. Your faith—down for the count. Try as you might, you can’t muster up the strength to fight the draw toward depression.
To Paul, hopelessness felt like the “sentence of death.” Problems and persecution had pursued him throughout his ministry in Asia. It was so severe, he despaired of life itself. But rather than giving in to it, he seized the opportunity to increase his reliance on God. The same God who raised Christ from the dead could resuscitate his waning hope.
I remember reading the story of Russian dissident Aleksander Solzhenitsyn when Stalin brutally threw him into the Gulag. His imprisonment stripped him of everything near and dear to him. Yet, ironically, his confining circumstances led him to freedom. He wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” Solzhenitsyn could bless his rotting jail cell because it redirected him to the source of true, everlasting freedom: Jesus Christ.
The upside of desperation is waking up to what really matters.
When it seems like everyone else has abandoned us, our aloneness drives us to the One who never will. If God doesn’t pull out a miracle, then we must not need what we thought we did. Isn’t it interesting how surrender opens our eyes to a purpose far greater and higher than we imagined.
Theresa of Avila once wrote even a life of horrible pains will seem like “one night in an inconvenient hotel” in light of eternity’s bliss. If you’re staying in a hotel room right now marked h-o-p-e-l-e-s-s, ask Jesus Christ for the key that unlocks the door. Like Solzhenitsyn, let God use your rotting prison straw to lead you to the freedom and sheer joy of what it feels like to rely on Him.