We had a great weekend service at Mavuno
Church a couple of weekends ago. Prashan Devisser was our surprise guest speaker.
Prashan is the President of Sri Lanka Unites which is a movement founded to
bring about reconciliation in post war Sri-Lanka. At 28, he heads the 2nd
largest youth movement in Sri Lanka and the fact that it’s a Christian based
organization in a country that holds a little over 10% Christians as well as
facing some pretty strong anti-Christian boundaries is no small feat.
I got the chance to hear from him during
last year’s Fearless Summit and it was by far one of my best highlights from
last year so I’m joyful he came this year as well. He talked about Desperation.
I thought it was the perfect way to kick off this month’s sermon series,
#FantheFlame.
Before I get into that, I read a story last
night about a young student who asked his spiritual advisor, “Master, how can I
truly find God?” The teacher took the student out to a river which ran by the
village and asked him to step in. The student did and all of a sudden the
teacher put his hands on the student had and held him under the water. A moment
passed and the student was thrashing and beating his hands upon the air and the
waters. Still, the master kept him under. Finally he released the student and
as he came up, lungs aching and gasping for air, moments passed and the teacher
said to him, “When you desire God as much as you desired to breathe the air you
just breathed, then you will find God.”
I love this imagery. It opened my eyes to
the fact that I keep asking God, why am I still stuck here, wanting more but
not experiencing more. Still living in the fruit of yesterday’s victory and as
a result not just experiencing today’s mediocrity but all the trials and
failures in my Christian life that come as a result of this passivity. Today as
we sung “I surrender” at service, I realized I hadn’t. As Prashan spoke about ignoring
God’s call to greatness and instead choosing comfort and security and building
on our Plan B, plan C, plan D, I realized that was me.
Let’s forget the world’s definition of
desperation as it pertains to relationships and empty pursuits and think about
it in heavenly terms. You see, desperation fuels passion. If I’m desperate for
God, it leads to a passionate pursuit of Him. A passionate pursuit of God leads
to a passionately lived life. That’s what I want. I don’t want to just go
through the motions, good grief! I wanna live!
Prashan added that desperation isn’t solely
about our own pursuit of God, but our pursuit for God to move on behalf of
other people. We should be as desperate for others as we are for ourselves.
That’s another thing to pray about. “Lord, give me a cause to be passionate
about. Make me a person who is desperate to see You move in the lives around
me.”
The question I'm yet to answer is, what about people who say, "I feel like I'm desperate for God, I do my best to show Him I am, but why am I not seeing a change in my circumstances? Why can't I wake up tomorrow morning and be the Paul of my generation?" So we'll talk about that as the answers come in.
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