Desperation: The Ultimate Cure - by Isaac Surh

This article is an expansion and addendum to a testimony I gave at ACTS Fellowship on November 5^th, 2000. It is concerning some realizations I received about my own state of sin and my neediness of God during a forty-day fast that ended a week before I gave my testimony. I apologize for the lengthiness of this article, but to help I’ve divided it into sections. The format is that of a series of questions and answers that I found particularly enlightening, and I hope that, by sharing this with you, you also might be encouraged and find some answers to the questions of your own heart.

God’s Absolute Holiness

Sin is a disease. It is a chronic illness of the spirit that makes us unclean before the Lord. It is more terminal than AIDS and is more infectious than ebola. Just as the Israelites of Moses’ time were cast out of the camp and the presence of God while they were ceremonially unclean, so we are cast out of His presence by our sin. One of the discoveries I made for myself during my forty-day fast was the utter absoluteness of God’s holiness. It is not to be contested with in any way; it is for this reason that so many of the sins of the Old Testament were punishable by death. When you break a law concerning the very holiness of God, you are trespassing on God’s holiness itself, which is the most heinous crime that can be committed by a mortal being.

In my readings of the Pentateuch of late, the theme that stood out the most for me this time around was that of God’s holiness and the way in which He manifests it, most explicitly in the care and operation of the Tabernacle. Throughout the book of Leviticus, God details exactly how the objects and utensils of worship within the Tabernacle were to be used, cleansed and treated, and anyone who violated these decrees was to be put to death. Aaron’s two eldest sons, shortly after they were ordained as priests, were destroyed by the LORD because they offered "unauthorized fire" to Him, possibly as a well-meant gesture (Lev 10:1-2). Even a transgression as seemingly innocent as not washing the hands and feet with water before approaching the altar was punishable by death (Ex 30:17-21).

?Perhaps the most noted instance of God’s wrath in response to an infringement of His holiness is the death of Uzzah (2 Sam 6:1-7). King David was bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem, and Uzzah was one of the priests escorting the cart on which the Ark was placed. At one point, the cart slipped and the Ark almost fell, and Uzzah reached out his hand and touched the Ark to steady it. Then the LORD struck him dead. The obvious question to ask is why God would kill a man for trying to prevent the sacred Ark from falling on the ground. As R.C Sproul once put it, "it is because Uzzah assumed his hand was cleaner than the ground on which the Ark would have fallen." Uzzah, a sinner, reached out and touched the manifestation of the very Presence of God (hence, that is why the Ark is sometimes called the Ark of the Presence). It is true, Uzzah’s intention may have been innocent, but a crime committed in ignorance is still a crime. And when it comes to His holiness, God cannot make any concessions or compromise. The presence of sin cannot co-exist with the Presence of God. If His holiness is violated, the violator must be destroyed. God’s holiness must remain pure and unchallenged.

?Why am I going on about God’s holiness? It is because we have to consider our sin in the light of His holiness. When we sin, we are infringing on His law and are challenging His holiness. We are also hating Him by showing contempt for His law (Ex. 20:5-6). That is the reason Paul can say, "the wages of sin is death" (Rom 6:23), because all sin, whether intentional or unintentional, is a challenge to God’s holy sovereignty, which is the most detestable act a human can commit. To put it another way, to challenge God, His law or His sovereignty is the very nature of sin, all sin, great and small. It is also the definition of something we call pride.

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My pride was the main issue with which I struggled throughout the forty days of my fast. Even the weeks after the fast was over were especially hard for me, because for any degree of godly success one experiences, one also experiences an equal degree of temptation to take the glory for oneself instead of attributing it to God. I had scores of people telling me how impressed they were of my "spiritual feat" and how I inspired them in some such way. I thank God that I was able to have a positive effect in some people’s lives, but with every word of praise that I heard, I felt more and more in danger of falling into the pit of pride. As a worship leader, I was already familiar with this struggle, but never to this intensity.

?The danger of pride cannot be over-emphasized or over-estimated. Pride was the first sin ever to be committed, namely by the glorious arch-angel, the Morning Star, whose radiance and beauty was far greater than any other angel, God’s own worship leader and director of the heavenly hosts, whose name, in Latin, is Lucifer. He let his pride get the best of him, and his unfortunate rebellion against the Most High God altered the course of history forever (Isa 14:12-15). The first sin committed in human history was a sin of pride as well. The serpent tempted Eve by telling her that she can be just like God by eating of the forbidden fruit. It was her desire to be like God, that is to say, to be His equal, which was the heart of her sin. Her sin was not just a simple matter of doing something that God commanded her not to do.

?Jesus knew full well of the danger of pride, and how susceptible we are to it. For this reason, Jesus began his earthly ministry with a lesson against pride. We read in Matthew 5:3-5, which is the account of Jesus’ first sermon, "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." These characteristics of being poor in spirit, being mournful and being meek are in stark contrast to the characteristic of being prideful. Jesus also ended His earthly ministry with a lesson of humility when He washed His disciples’ feet during the Last Supper (Jn 13:1-17). It is as though Jesus was warning us about the true nature of pride by framing His ministry with these identical teachings. It is also worth noting that Jesus never treated any sinner with anger or judgment, no matter how sinful they were, except for the Pharisees and those who were spiritually arrogant. Their attitude of superiority, self-sufficiency and hypocrisy always provoked a response of holy anger from our Lord. Throughout the Bible, pride is given special treatment compared to other sins. It is also one of the few sins that the LORD calls "detestable", ranking equally with idol worship and child sacrifice. I would even say that pride is a form of idol worship, because in pride we are setting ourselves up as being higher than God. For all these reasons, I have come to the conclusion that pride is not just one type of sin among many. I believe that pride is the motivation and, indeed, even the very essence of sin.

My Testimony

Lou Engle, in his book Fast Forward, says he believes a forty-day fast done in faith can break any spiritual stronghold. I agree with him. But when it comes to pride, I do not believe a fast of any length can break it, simply because pride isn’t a stronghold. Pride is the sinful nature itself, and we will not be cured of it completely until we are perfected in Heaven.

One afternoon during my fast, I was in my room praying away. Curiously (and to this day, I don’t know what inspired me to say this), I asked God to bless me for my act of devotion to Him. I said, "LORD, I hope this proves to You how serious I am about You and how truly desperate I am for You." And I got the strange impression that God was slowly shaking His head at me, side to side, with a sad smile on His face, as if to say, "My son, you do not realize how far you’ve yet to go." The truth be told, in terms of human exploits, there is not much more you can do to show your dedication to God than a forty-day fast. But it wasn’t the act that determined my dedication. It was my heart. And the way in which the LORD revealed my lack of devotion to me was by giving me an impression of two eyes staring at me while I was praying.

We are all familiar with the awkwardness we feel when a stranger or even a loved one stares at us for a prolonged period of time. Well, I felt the same way with these two eyes that were staring at me, which I couldn’t get out of my vision. After a while, I felt I had to open my eyes, and when I did, I got the impression that the eyes belonged to God and that He was the one staring at me. And then it hit me: God is, in fact, staring at me all the time, every second of the day, since the time I was conceived to the day I die. He can’t take His eyes off of me, and every one of you too, simply because He is so in love with us. He calls us "the apple of His eye" (Dt 32:10, Ps 17:7-8). The prophet says that God "will rejoice over you with singing" (Zeph 3:17), literally meaning that God dances and spins over us due to extreme joy and adulation. And so because of His great and unimaginable love for us, I can say that, in a way, He is desperate for us. That is not to say that God is needy, because He is perfect and lacks nothing. But if we were to compare His love for us to our own standards, we would say that He’s "crazy and obsessed" or "hopelessly in love with us", words that are also descriptive of human desperation.

Now, if God is so obsessed with us, and is thinking about us day and night, should we not aspire to do the same, or at the very least reciprocate the greater portion of our day actively focusing on Him? And as I knelt there in my room, I felt so ashamed. I realized that, even during my fast - a period in which I was supposed to be especially devoted to God – I still didn’t put Him as the first priority in my life. I thought about Him for less than ten percent of my waking hours. But the most disturbing realization was that, aside from this very moment, I lived my life absolutely numb to the eyes of my Father who watches over me. I detected a troublesome lack of awkwardness or awareness that I should have been feeling, knowing now that God has been staring at me since my birth, an awkwardness I know I would have felt had a human being been staring at me the same way. And right then, I knew that my level of hunger and desperation for Him was not nearly where it should have been.

I asked myself, "What is it that’s preventing me from hungering after God, as I know I should?" And the only answer I could think of, the only answer that made sense and was quite obvious to me was that it was my pride that prevented me from thirsting after Him. It was that same Pharisaical strain of spiritual self-sufficiency in me that prevented me from acknowledging my barrenness and utter neediness for Him. Being the analytical person that I am, I went through in my mind all the ways in which I was prideful, all the traces and manifestations of pride in the way I lived, my thoughts, my words and my actions. And I was overwhelmed. Everywhere I looked, every corner I turned, I saw my pride. I saw that my pride had infiltrated and contaminated everything that I did and everything that I was, even my worship, and felt a despair such as I’ve never known before. I wailed to God in my heart, "LORD, what am I supposed to do about my pride? It’s too much. I don’t think I can deal with it!" I felt that God was expecting too much of me. How was I supposed to deal with a sin of such magnitude? And the answer to this question came to me through a memory of one of my favourite books, The Spiritual Secret of Hudson Taylor. In it, there is a little poem set as a header for one of the chapters. It reads:

Bear not any cares for Thyself,

For one is too much for thee.

The work is Mine and Mine alone.

Thy work, to rest in Me.

Desperation: The Cure for Pride

The answer was so obvious when I realized it. It is true that my problem with pride was too much for me to handle. But it wasn’t for me to handle! It was God’s work, and immediately I felt some measure of relief. Now, I’ve often found in all my years of church-going that pastors and teachers often present biblical truths as ideals to be reached, but leave us with no clear or practical ways to reach them or to live them out. I am not a believer in following methods or formulas, but to end an exposition of a profound teaching by saying, "Just trust in God and He’ll get you there" is not quite sufficient, especially for younger or new Christians. So, now that I’ve presented the truth that it is God’s work to deal with our sin, it would be good of me to offer some ways to live out this truth. I will begin by saying that one will not experience God’s sanctifying work in one’s life by sitting around doing nothing, expecting God to make the changes overnight. In all things, we need to respond to what God is doing in and around us. When it comes to dealing with sin, though, the response must be in the arena of the heart, since that is where sin resides.

?Brother Lawrence, a 15^th-century Dominican monk, who was more-or-less unknown during his lifetime because he was just a dishwasher for his monastery, has become an inspiration to many Christians because of his teaching on "practicing the Presence of God". Every hour, as he went about his day, he would remind himself that God was right there with him, and he found that this awareness of God’s presence profoundly changed the way he lived. If we humble ourselves as children and remind ourselves of the Presence of God daily, I believe we will be on the right track in dealing with our sin, especially pride. If we bow our knees in heart-felt prayer and ask God to fill us with a complete dependence and desperation for Him, as He fills us up with more of Himself, there will be less and less room for pride and our egos. To put all of this in one phrase, utter childlike desperation is the cure for the disease called pride.

I know this answer was rather simplistic, easier said than done, and was also incomplete (what, did you expect me to have all the answers?), but it’s something that all of us need to work on. So let’s work on it, or rather, let’s let God work on it and respond to what He’s doing within us, so that one day, we can say with sincerity that we stare back at God with the same love and intensity with which He stares at us.