How Desperate Are You?

Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: How Desperate Are You? ------------------- Date: 3/18/2003
Keywords: "beg" "beggar" "call" "demon" "desperate"
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Passage: Mark 7:24-30*

24. From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,

25. but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.

26. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

27. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

28. But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."

29. Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-the demon has left your daughter."

30. So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Questions

1. Where are you at with your porn struggle? Has it become a serious problem in your life?

 

2. If porn has become a desperate problem in your life, what insight can you gain from today's passage?

 

Practical help

Sometimes we blame God for our porn problems because it is easier to do than admit our own culpability.

This story could support the possible opinion that God is uncaring. After all, this woman has a problem and Jesus seems indifferent — even insulting — at first. I've heard it used that way by people who are explaining why they don't trust God.

But let's look more closely at the story. This woman's daughter is demon possessed. How she got this way, we are not told. Could it have been due to poor choices either on the daughter's part or even possibly her family — including this woman who is now standing before the Messiah?

And what's a Gentile woman doing seeking the religious leader of another religion anyway? She was obviously desperate, wouldn't you agree?

As long as we are not desperate, there is room to critique God's motives. As long as we don't see our lives or the lives of those we love hanging in the balance, we can study from a distance what God might be doing or thinking. But when life punches us in the gut, and we come to see little hope for our situation, it's time to drop the mask and call out just as a beggar on the street might. After all, what do we have to negotiate with God? It can't be our goodness or purity, since this is the very problem we seek his help to fix.

The good news is that the God who might at first appear unapproachable is simply waiting for us to call his name. He loves you, friend, and it's not because you are such a good person. It can therefore only be because he is such a good God.

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*"New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved."