When the Desire is Gone
How would you like to have been a newspaper reporter during the Great Depression? Can you imagine trying to cover that era and find new angles to something that lasted year after year?
Recently, I was reading a book about some events in 1932 and came across a quote from a Chicago newspaper that was truly powerful. A reporter was talking about a posh and exciting event being held in that city, but it was basically right across the street from a park. In that park, many unemployed gathered. Some were homeless, while others just sort of were there to be with others who were in the same pit of despair. Day after day they were just “there.”
But how the reporter described those people was what struck me. He said they were “men who had lost their want to desire.”
Read that again: they had “lost their want to desire.”
If that does not paint a picture of hopelessness and giving up, I don’t know what does.
When I read that, it just stuck with me, and it made me think about various areas of life where that can be what happens to us if we allow it.
Maybe my marriage has been in shambles for a long time and I used to try to make it better. When things didn’t improve, though, I just lost my want to desire to put forward any more real effort.
Maybe I used to talk to people–even strangers–about Jesus, but kept getting rejected or even made fun of. So, now, I don’t say anything because I’ve lost my want to desire to win people to the Lord.
Maybe the congregation where I worship has gone through a valley and just can’t seem to get any traction toward growth or excitement. I used to work like crazy, but felt I was the only one. So, over time, I lost my want to desire to put forward any effort.
Can you just feel the despair in those situations? Can you, possibly, even relate to them?
After awhile, when a situation seems to not change, we can lose not just a desire to try something different, but a want to desire. We just don’t really want it to get better (or different) anymore. It’s just the way it is, and the desire to work on it dies within us.
We simply cannot let that happen! Situations may or may not improve, but God wants us to trust Him through any situation, no matter how hopeless it may seem. If we desire nothing else, we should desire to be close to Him through that time of struggle. We should lean on Him for our strength, even when it seems as if all else is hopeless.
Never lose your want to desire to be close to Him.
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
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AUTHOR: Adam Faughn
