In Search Of A Better Tomorrow

Daily Devotional: Hope For Desperate People

Message by Wil Pounds

Hope for Desperate People

There are no hopeless helpless cases with Jesus Christ.

Jesus always invites desperate, helpless, and seemingly hopeless people to come to Him. He issued the greatest invitation to all hopeless and helpless sinners when He said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I wil give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). “He looked over the multitudes and felt compassion for them because they were distressed and downcast” (9:36).

Do you feel harassed and thrown aside? To the weary and tired who are ready to give up Jesus says, “Come to Me.” To those who feel like they have been “skinned alive,” harassed, trouble, worried, importuned; He invites to come to Him. To those who have been cast down from a mortal wound and feel helpless, He gives hope and life.

You do not have to look far into the Scriptures before you realize that God’s people suffered. “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated” (Hebrews 11:37). No wonder they were, and still are, “men whom the world was not worthy” (v. 38a). Rejected and forsaken by men, but not of God.

The central and most important emphasis in the Bible is Jesus’ ability to take away our sin and our reproach to God, and to restore us to spiritual health.

Jesus felt compassion for the multitudes and gave them His rest. Matthew, the tax collector became Matthew the apostle. He was politically unacceptable, religiously, and socially an outcast, but not so with Jesus.

To the paralyzed man Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven.” Before you scream that is irrelevant, Jesus not only forgave the man’s sins, but He also healed him both physically and spiritually. It is clear only God can forgive sin, and Jesus is God (Matt. 9:5-8). To every helpless and hopeless person Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Jesus confronted the hosts of hell and they asked, “What will you do with us, Son of God?” Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?” (8:29). Because Jesus is the Son of God, He alone can cast out the demons in a person’s life and dispose of them as He wishes (vv. 30-31).

To the woman caught in sins He said, “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11). To the incurable woman who had gone to all the doctors for 12 years as her condition steadily grew worse without any help or hope, Jesus brought healing to her from that moment (Matt. 9:22). Jesus took a dead girl by the hand, and she got up being raised from the dead (9:24-25). Jesus can raise the dead because He is God. He touched the eyes of the blind, and “their eyes were opened” (v. 29-30).

In the person of Jesus Christ, there is hope for the hopeless. Apart from the grace of God, our case is hopeless. We are sinners, and we cannot cleanse ourselves. Because we are dead in trespasses and sins, God has raised us up with Jesus and has seated us up with Him in the heavenlies. He has made us alive in Christ. We too can declare there are no helpless and hopeless cases with Jesus.

We are all unclean, isolated, hopeless, and dead in our sins without Christ. To be saved from sin, we must have the powerful, cleansing, and forgiving grace of God. Other than that, we are desperate people.

Moreover, the Spirit of God “helps us in our present limitations” (Rom. 8:26, Phillips). When we are in a hopeless circumstance, the Holy Spirit comes and renews our hope. When we do not know how or for what to pray, He intercedes according to the will of God because there are no hopeless and helpless circumstances.

When our hearts are filled with blinding fear, He sheds the light of His presence and knowledge all about us.

In our state of desperate hopelessness, the Spirit of God comes and instills His hope.

Selah!

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