The Gift of Desperation

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders, and interfering with God’s work within us.” — Credited to A.W. Tozer

A phrase I heard in AA has stayed with me: the gift of desperation.

It stays with me because it cuts against the way most of us think. Desperation sounds like the point where judgment has broken down, options have narrowed, and a person is acting from fear rather than clarity. We tend to assume that whatever follows from desperation must be unstable or somehow less trustworthy because of the condition that produced it.

Based on the success of recovery programs, I do not think that is always true.

Sometimes desperation clears away enough pride, denial, and self trust for a person to face the truth honestly. It removes what kept him from admitting it. A person may have heard the same truth many times before, but as long as he still believes he can manage himself, delay change, or hold things together by his own effort, he is rarely dealing honestly with what is in front of him.

AA states that plainly. The first step says, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.” That is an admission that self rule has failed. Recovery does not begin while a person is still protecting the illusion that he is managing what has already begun to master him. It begins when he admits what is true.

There comes a point when the pressure is too great, the consequences are too obvious, and the old ways of explaining things no longer work. A person can only bargain with reality for so long. Pain by itself does not make anyone better, but desperation can cut through a denial that comfort leaves untouched.

There is a spiritual parallel here.

As long as a person still believes he can fix himself, govern himself, and hold his life together by his own effort, he has not yet truly approached God. At some point, he has to face the fact that the problem is deeper than poor management and that the will cannot repair what the will has bent out of order. That is not a retreat from responsibility. It is the acknowledgement of the truth of our condition.

That is why desperation should not be dismissed as spiritually suspect. If someone seeks God from pain, fear, loss, failure, or collapse, the pressure behind that turning does not automatically invalidate what he comes to see. In many cases, it makes pretense harder to maintain.

A person can live for a long time with a version of surrender that still leaves the self in charge. He may believe true things about God and still approach Him on partly self governed terms. He may yield what is already visible while preserving deeper habits of fear, control, and self reliance. He may sincerely think he has submitted while still arranging his life around the assumption that he must hold it together.

Desperation exposes that more quickly than comfort does.

When life presses hard enough, hidden dependencies come into view. What we had called trust may have included a great deal of self management. What we had called peace may have depended more on control than we realized. What we had called surrender may have left whole areas of the heart untouched. Desperation does not always distort the truth. Sometimes it strips away enough illusion for the truth to be received plainly.

Scripture describes that pattern often. The prodigal son came to himself when he was in want. Paul says he was burdened beyond strength, to the point of despair, so that he would not rely on himself but on God who raises the dead. Psalm 107 describes people at their wits’ end crying out to the Lord in their trouble. Need, weakness, and distress are often the places where self trust begins to fail and dependence on God is finally embraced.

Desperation is not automatically a gift. It can drive a person toward truth, but it can also drive him toward escape, resentment, numbness, or some other false refuge. It becomes a gift when it brings a person to honesty, repentance, and surrender. The gift is found in what desperation may uncover and what it may strip away.

We are often too buffered by comfort to deal honestly with our condition. We postpone obedience. We soften conviction. We keep some reserve of self trust in place and still tell ourselves we have yielded to God. Desperation narrows those options. It can bring a person to the point where excuses weaken, delay becomes harder to justify, and help is finally received as help.

Need is not a disqualification. In some cases, it is the first fully honest thing a person has brought before God in a very long time.

That is why the phrase has stayed with me. Sometimes God brings a person to the end of himself because he would not have stopped resisting any other way. We want relief without surrender, grace without exposure, and help without yielding the part of us that still wants to govern itself. But there is no real progress while we are still trying to give orders.

That is why desperation can become a gift. It leaves a person with fewer ways to avoid the truth and fewer ways to keep negotiating with God. When those defenses begin to fall, surrender can become honest in a way it had not been before. And when that happens, what looked like collapse may turn out to be the point where a person finally stopped interfering with the work God was trying to do in him.

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.  Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

2 Corinthians 1:8-9 ESV