Escaping Desperation
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WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE? Program 140 Escaping Desperation by Ernest O’Neill
Have you ever thought, “I cannot go forward another step. I can’t. I just can’t. I’ve done everything I could. I’ve done everything as far as I can possibly go. I cannot go another step. I have not got it in me.” You feel you’ve gone more than the second mile. You feel you’ve gone more than the second mile and the third mile and the fourth mile. You’ve gone more than you thought you would ever be able to go. You’ve gone more than you ever thought you would be able to go and you’re just absolutely worn out.
You feel, “I’m just about ready to lie down and die. There’s no way I can go through another week like I went through last week. There’s no way in which I can face this domestic situation any longer. There’s no way I can go another month in this present job situation. I just can’t. I’m at the end of my tether. I’m ready just to blow the whole thing. I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care what I lose. I don’t care whether I lose my money, my job, my wife, my children, whatever. I’m fed up. I can’t take another step.”
Many of us have felt that. Many of us have been in exactly that spot that you’re in. Moreover, I know it sounds strange and maybe almost a little hard, but the whole of life has been designed to bring you to that place. It has. If you say, “Oh, yeah, yeah sure. I always believed that there’s some demonic tyrant behind the universe who’s out to string us up and torture us to death.” No! No, there isn’t.
But there is a dear, loving Father who is the Creator of the universe. He made you and thinks a lot of you. That’s why He put so much effort into making you, because you’re quite a complex individual, you know. He put that effort into you because He really does think a lot of you. In fact, actually, He loves you. He wants you to know Him and to love Him.
He has put you here with the possibility of being like Him, but really, you’re like the rest of us. You have become anything but like Him. You have become the very opposite. He has allowed that to take place. In order to let you know that you are not going the right way, He has set up this world so that when everybody exercises their free will, you end up in the kind of miserable situation that you’re in today.
In other words, He so arranged it that we would all come to the end of our tethers. We would begin to realize this crazy world doesn’t work right. It doesn’t work right because it’s not working the way He wanted it to. It’s not working in conjunction with Him. All the people in the world do their own thing in their own way and don’t give a darn what He wants. He knows that and He’s allowed certain events and consequences to follow in this world so we would realize that.
Actually, the very situation you’re in today, however horrible it may seem to you (not that He put you in it; you put yourself in it. All the rest of us have helped put you in it.) is exactly the situation that He is satisfied with you being in, because He wants you to see that you can go another step. You can go another week. You can go another month. In fact, you can go another mile. In fact, you can go another five miles. In fact, you can go another fourteen miles. In fact, you can go on and on forever if need be. He has actually done a miracle in timeless eternity.
He has done a miracle in timeless eternity. If you go out beyond the sun that you see, if you could ever get beyond the sun, and if you could ever get beyond the stars and all the planets and you could get away to the end of space, you’d eventually enter into, as Einstein pointed out to us, a timeless state where there is no space and where there is no time. It’s in that state that the Creator, Himself, is. In that state, He has
actually destroyed you and remade you completely.
Like a manufacturer who takes a flawed product back into the factory and remakes it, that’s what He has done with you. He has remade you. He did it in a way that is very visible for all of us to see in His Son, Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified in the first century of our era. That was actually just the time/space expression of that in history. He actually was crucified in that spaceless, timeless zone that we talked about, that timeless, spaceless zone of eternity beyond the end of the universe.
The Creator remade you in His Son. He remade you with the personality of His Son, with an ability to go on forever, with endless courage, with endless patience, with endless love, with undying forbearance, with an ability to be joyous in hideous situations and with an ability to exercise unbelievable restraint and self control. He gave you that. He put into you the personality of His Son and that is your personality today.
It can be actualized in your life by you simply believing these words. That’s what He said. He said, “It will be unto you according to your faith. If you receive my Son into you by faith, He will begin to live in you His life which is endlessly strong, infinitely patient, absolutely loving and utterly competent for every situation.” You can go on in the strength of God’s own Son.
So, yes, it is possible for you to go on. That’s why one of His followers said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Actually, you can go on. You’re right. You can’t go on in your own self. You can’t go on in your own pitiful weakness. You can’t go on in your own miserable little personality that you have inherited from your parents. But you can go on in the strength of God, and of His Son because He has put His Son inside you. The moment you believe that, that moment, His Son’s strength will begin to be manifested in you.
If you say, “Well, now wait a minute. I mean, well, why can it only come when I’m at the end of my own strength?” That’s exactly the only time it can come. There’s a verse in the old book called the Bible that says, “My strength is made perfect in your weakness.” The word perfect is the word that comes from the Latin “perficio” – complete. “My strength is ‘completed’ in your weakness.”
In other words, the Creator uses even the weakness that you have brought upon yourself and that we men and women have brought upon ourselves by our own perverted personalities. He actually uses that weakness to complete His own strength, because he expresses His own strength in the very place where you are filled with weakness. So, the amazing thing is, you’ll still feel weak. You’ll still feel “Oh, no! I can’t face it.” Even as you listen to me today you’ll still feel, “Oh, no, but I am weak. I’m worn out emotionally, physically and mentally.” You’ll still feel that weakness. But if you’ll believe that His strength is in you, despite that feeling of weakness, if you’ll believe that His strength is in you, His strength will actually manifest itself through your weakness.
It’ll come right through it. When you feel you have no strength, no more patience left, no more forbearance left, no more happiness left, His strength will manifest itself through you if you simply believe that. It’s hard, I know, to believe, but your present situation is not at all the end. It, in fact, is the beginning. It’s the beginning. It’s the end of a beginning of a new life for you. All you need to do is to believe that these things are really true.
In future weeks, we’ll back them up. I’ll show you how they’re explained in that old book called the Bible, so you’ll see why you need to believe it or why you ought to believe it or should believe it or what right you have for believing it. But, the fact is today you can start. This is not the end. Get up. God will give you the strength. All you have to do is believe that He will. And He will. It’s yours. Get up. Let’s get going.
You can do it.
Let’s talk a little more about it tomorrow.
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