(Back to Archive)

As Dan Allender and Tremper Longman write in their book "The Cry of the Soul": "Every once in a while, life catches us and brings us face to face with reality and we feel what appears to be an inconsolable sadness."

If we dwell on this reality for very long, it's not too hard to end up in the same boat as King Solomon who wrote the biblical book of Ecclesiastes: "Everything is meaningless," says the Teacher, "utterly meaningless!" What do people get for all their hard work? Generations come and go, but nothing really changes. Everything is so weary and tiresome! Everything under the sun is meaningless, like chasing the wind. What is wrong cannot be righted. What is missing cannot be recovered.

I think it would be fair to say that King Solomon was experiencing a bad case of despair. So what is despair? It’s when life stinks.

Allender and Longman define despair this way: "Despair is the utter absence of any sense of hope, accompanied by a feeling of powerlessness. It looks at the world, notes its emptiness and concludes that life is not worth it."

Despair comes in different flavors. In its mildest form, despair is disappointment. A little further along the scale is sadness. Then there is depression, and finally true despair. For me, the strongest dose of despair I’ve ever experienced happened when I said goodbye to my Dad for the last time before he died. There was this overwhelming sense of hopelessness and powerlessness—my dad wasn’t going to recover and I wasn’t able to fix him or the situation.

Life is full of stuff that disappoints, saddens, or depresses us. There’s job instability, the death of a loved one, bad habits, financial troubles, health issues, marriage meltdowns, rebellious children, and life dreams gone bad. These things can shatter our hearts and lives into broken pieces and leave us feeling hopeless and powerless.

God begins His extreme makeover of your heart when you place your trust in Jesus as your Savior and become a Christ follower. God’s resurrection power that brought Jesus back to life is available to resurrect your broken heart and give you an extreme makeover. He wants to turn your heart from despair into hope.

God created the emotions we feel—even the dark ones like despair in order to channel us into a life-changing encounter with Him so he can repair our shattered hearts. Over the next five weeks, we’re going to look at five of the darker emotions that we struggle with and ask NOT "how can we control them?" but "what are they telling us about ourselves and about God?"

Let’s be honest. When it comes to the dark, negative emotion of despair, we want to get rid of it as fast as possible by denying it, stuffing it or by self-medicating it through alcohol, pleasure, food or drugs. But God wants us to face it, feel it, wrestle with it and then run to Him so he can piece together our broken hearts. Here are three benefits God can bring from our despair.

1. The emotion of despair can push us closer to God. Sometimes we feel despair because we sense we’re all alone and no one understands. We even think God has abandoned us or dropped the ball. But rather than ignore or stuff our disappointment and despair with others and God, let despair drive us to an open, frank dialogue and Q&A time with God. King David of the OT was known as a man after God’s own heart. Yet there came a time when pride and prosperity blinded him to his need to trust God, and he became careless with God. Listen to David’s pride as it turned into despair when God removed his blessing and protection from David.

Psalm 30:6-10 says, When I was prosperous I said, "Nothing can stop me now!" Your favor, O LORD, made me as secure as a mountain. Then you turned away from me, and I was shattered. I cried out to you, O LORD. I begged the Lord for mercy, saying, "What will you gain if I die, if I sink down into the grave? Hear me, LORD, and have mercy on me. Help me, O LORD."

David did the right thing. In his despair, he ran to God—to question God—to argue, to wrestle with God over what he was experiencing. Now, here’s the amazing thing. David actually grew closer to God, and God responded with an extreme makeover of David’s heart -- from despair to hope. David understood this: God shows up and does his best work when we are real with Him.

Look what happened. Psalm 30:11-12 says, You [God] turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever. God allows us to experience despair so we will move closer to Him and encounter his character and experience his heart makeover. God may not change our circumstances, but he can change and repair our hearts, if we’ll let him.

2. Despair can cause us to identify with Jesus and his death on the cross. In the garden of Gethsemane on the night before his death, Jesus was in such emotional agony and despair that he was sweating drops of blood. Jesus said in Matthew 26:38, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." And that was the easy part. As he later hung on the cross, he cried out as one who had been totally abandoned, Matthew 27:46: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

At that moment, Jesus experienced despair like no human being has ever experienced it. His friends had deserted him and, now, so too had his Father in Heaven. Jesus was totally alone as he bore the penalty of the sins of the world.

Allender and Longman write: "And when we experience the emptiness of despair, we gain a deeper understanding of Jesus' willingness to empty Himself of His glory and to sorrow alone on our behalf. Through our sadness [and despair], we learn something about the heart of our Lord.

Amazingly, our despair can actually be the pathway to realizing how much God loves us. Think about it. If Jesus would voluntarily choose to go through this kind of emotional hell on our behalf ... we must really matter to God. The fact that Jesus experienced the worst kind of despair also assures that he can identify with us in our despair and walk with us through it. He understands what we’re going through.

3. Despair can lead us to embrace a heavenly hope over an earthly hope. There are two kinds of hope. Earthly hope is the confident desire that things are going to get better in this life. The job, the kids, the marriage, the finances will improve. But earthly hope is fragile. At any moment, something can go wrong and lead to more disappointment.

Heavenly hope is not based on our circumstances but on the fact that God will never give up on us or abandon us, but will continue to work in us to shape us into his likeness. Longman and Allender write: "But heavenly hope provides the substance that allows us also to hope here on earth. God is at work in the circumstances of my life. When there are setbacks, I do not have to give in to despondency and despair, because my ultimate hope is in God who will never let me down."

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16-17, Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Paul had his share of despair, disappointment and trouble in life. And although it took a toll on him physically and emotionally, God used the pain and suffering to transform him into the character of Christ and to give him a heavenly hope—even if his circumstances and emotions never changed.

One of the most beautiful wildflowers in Alaska is the Fireweed. The purple-pink blossoms have a number of uses. As a tea, Fireweed is good for upset stomachs, coughs, and asthma. Applied in other ways it treats bites and cuts. The blossoms are also used to make flavorful jelly or honey. Fireweed is so named because it is the first plant to bloom after a fire. When the smoke clears, and the earth cools, these flowers emerge from the blackened earth like a blanket, trading beauty for ashes.

There comes a point in all our lives when we can’t make things better. We come to the end of our resources. We come to the end of ourselves. We’re flat on our faces in despair. It’s at that moment our hearts are the most open to run to God, to trust him and experience a heart makeover. It’s then God begins changing our weeping and crying into dancing and we taste the heavenly hope of God in our lives. The question is: Will you run to him? Will you let him do an extreme makeover on you?