Heart Tracks - Desperate Places

"They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat." Matthew 14:16...."We tend to see our need as either too large to even ask God to handle or too small for Him to be concerned with......He is the Provider, the God of deserted places." Chris Tiegreen

Too many times in my journey with Him, I've fit into what Tiegreen says about how we believers tend to look at our needs, and their relation to Him. Just as true, too many times I have not realized that He really is the God of deserted places. The God who is there when all else and everyone else is gone.

In Matthew 14, the disciples are faced with an overwhelming need. 5000 plus people who are hungry. They recognized a need but did not recognize the power of the One who was there in the midst of that need. They thought the need not only too great for them, but for the One who was in their midst. So they sought to have that need met through temporal means. They'd send them into the village where they could buy or trade for the food they lacked. Jesus gently rebuked them, telling them that in Him, they had the means to satisfy that hunger. They were overwhelmed. He was not.

Just as true can be our reaction to the small yet persistent needs and cares of life. We tend to think that He doesn't want to be bothered with these trifles. After all, "God helps those who help themselves," right? So we take these things that are mere pebbles singly, and try to wrestle them through to a solution. With each pebble, the load becomes greater until we carry a huge sack that eventually breaks our emotional, physical, and spiritual "back," and renders us unable to go on. In the end, we've become just as overwhelmed by the small things as we have been by the great. We know that one of His names is "Provider," and we've called Him that many times. Yet too often we end up in that "deserted place," where there is only our need and ourselves. We desperately need a fresh visitation from the One who is the God of the deserted place.

His Word says that He is not limited to saving us by either great or small means, for they are the same to Him. Nothing is too great for Him, and neither is anything too small. His Word also says that what touches us "touches the apple of His eye." Our need exposes our very real weakness, and our weakness unleashes His very real strength and power. The enemy of our soul convinces us that we are alone in facing it, that God has deserted us, abandoned us. The Father wants us to know by experience that this is just another of the devil's lies. It only feels deserted. He is there, and He is God Almighty. In the great and in the small, He is God.

I expect I've written of this before, but I never tire of relating the story. On a lonely church campground on a bitterly cold December night, I felt deserted by all, totally alone. Searching through the apostle Paul's writings, I came upon his words concerning his imprisonment and facing of Caesar himself. He said, "At my first defense, no one was with me, All had abandoned me....yet Christ stood with me." Call it what you will, but at that moment I saw with the eyes of my heart, Him coming to me, standing with me...in that deserted place....and putting to flight all the lies of the enemy. He was the God of that deserted place, and every deserted place yet to come. Do you know Him as yours as well? in whatever deserted place you might feel you're in today, He stands with you. Will you receive Him? All human and temporal help may be gone. There may be one overwhelming need, or many small but crushing ones. He comes to you there, in that deserted place, and stands with you. Can you see Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O