Desperate Days

Dakota Community Church

February 24, 2008

Desperate Days

We all have days when we can’t seem to get anything done. We run into the grocery store to grab a few quick items, and every open till is lined up four people deep, or head out to that appointment with just enough time to make it on time, only to sit in a line-up three miles long because of a broken down Mercedes. It’s frustrating! We feel powerless, and nobody likes to feel helplessly trapped.

What about when we are feeling powerless and helplessly trapped by more than a mere traffic jam or some poor incompetent trainee check-out girl?

What about when we are feeling helplessly trapped by life itself.

Have you ever reached a place like this in your life? Maybe some of you are in one now.

You have a game plan, you’ve set great goals, you feel like you heard from God on how and where your life is going to go and suddenly; “bang” you run head on into a dead end.

Everything comes crashing down around you and it feels like God is playing a cruel joke on you.

Have you ever found yourself having one of those days; and they just keep coming one after another like a bad dream that you can’t wake up from?

That is the topic of this morning’s message – Desperate Days!

I don’t know if this will help you to know or not, but, you are not the first child of God to experience this phenomenon!

David had been anointed King of Israel by Samuel a number of years earlier, he had proven himself on the battle field slaying Goliath and he faithfully served his father-in-law King Saul until the time would arrive for his ascension to the throne. But things were not going as planned!

1 Samuel 21:1-9

David went to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech trembled when he met him, and asked, "Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?"

David answered Ahimelech the priest, "The king charged me with a certain matter and said to me, ’No one is to know anything about your mission and your instructions.’ As for my men, I have told them to meet me at a certain place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find."

But the priest answered David, "I don’t have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread here—provided the men have kept themselves from women."

David replied, "Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual whenever I set out. The men’s things are holy even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!" So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the LORD and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away.

Now one of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the LORD; he was Doeg the Edomite, Saul’s head shepherd.

David asked Ahimelech, "Don’t you have a spear or a sword here? I haven’t brought my sword or any other weapon, because the king’s business was urgent."

The priest replied, "The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah, is here; it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you want it, take it; there is no sword here but that one."

David said, "There is none like it; give it to me."

So what about these desperate days? How do we get into these places in life?

Sometimes we get into a desperate days state because of a stubborn heart, or an immovable mindset.

Mark 3:4-6

Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent.

He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

Jonah 4:1-4

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"