When You’ve Run Out Of Backup Plans

Desperate Faith Doesn't Wait for Desperate Circumstances

by Pastor Garrett Black

Years ago I was on a missions trip to Haiti, and on the way there we had a six-hour layover in Atlanta. My friend and I decided we weren't going to just sit in the airport, so we took an Uber downtown to find something to eat. At one point we walked past a theater with a massive line wrapped around the building. My friend, who never meets a stranger, started asking people what they were waiting for. Prince, they said. Prince was playing that night.

We weren't there to see him, so we shrugged it off, got some food, and flew on to Haiti. Seven days later, I got a notification on my phone: Prince had died. That concert in Atlanta turned out to be the last one he ever played.

Nobody in that line knew it at the time. And I've thought about this a lot: what if they had known? What would the tickets have cost if everyone knew it was his last show? How desperate would people have been to get in the door? How many people who said "I'll catch him next time" are living with that regret right now?

Here's the principle I keep coming back to: the expectation of another opportunity kills the urgency of the one in front of you. And that's just as true with faith as it is with concert tickets. When you have a lot of options, your faith tends to get casual. But when you only have one option, something happens — you get desperate. And desperation, as strange as this sounds, is actually essential to healthy faith, because healthy faith is completely dependent on Jesus, and it takes desperation to get you there.

Here's the main thing I want you to walk away with today: desperate faith doesn't wait for desperate circumstances.

We've all felt real desperation forced on us by life — the surgery that has to work, the check that has to clear. Those situations are guaranteed to show up eventually. But desperate faith is different. It's not something that happens to you; it's something you cultivate on purpose, even when life isn't pushing you into a corner.

There's a woman in Luke 8 who shows us exactly what this looks like. Jesus is on his way to heal a synagogue ruler's dying daughter, and the crowd is pressing in on him from every side. In the middle of that crowd is a woman who's had a chronic discharge of blood for twelve years — which means, under the law, she wasn't even supposed to be in public. Everyone around her is only there for their own reasons. Jesus is already moving toward someone else's miracle. Every circumstance is working against her.

And that's exactly the point. She had no options left. No backup plan. Just one: reach for the hem of his garment and see what happens.

I think about this every time I catch myself keeping backup plans in my back pocket. When Keilah needed a new car last year, I had a choice — I could go to CarMax, research online, do it the normal way. Instead I told God on a prayer walk: I'm going to give you the opportunity to do what only you can do. Less than 24 hours later, a guy from our church called out of nowhere and said his mother-in-law had a car to sell — one neither of us had told him we were even looking for. That's what happens when you stop keeping backup options open. Less options gives God more room to work.

Here's what's easy to miss in this story: Jesus doesn't even know this woman is there. He doesn't lay hands on her — she reaches out and takes hold of him. It's a reverse laying-on of hands: instead of power flowing from his hands into her, power flows from his robe into her body, because she reached for it. Desperation reaches. It doesn't wait to be reached.

I think about a man I met during a drive-through prayer time we do at an intersection near our church. I was preaching over a speaker to the cars stopped at the light, saying there's no addiction too great for God, when a man pulled over in an SUV. His son had been addicted to drugs for nine years, homeless, and he'd just picked him up. His son was in the front seat, incoherent — his dad had to rub his sternum just to wake him. That man stopped his car because he heard someone say the power of the blood is enough, and he was desperate enough to pull over and ask for prayer on the spot. He didn't wait for a conference. He didn't wait for the next altar call. He reached for what was right in front of him.

That's the whole point. Stop waiting for the pastor to notice what you need. Stop waiting for the next worship night, the next conference, the next televangelist. Reach for the promise that's already in your hand — right now, on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, with no music playing and no special feeling in the room.

When Jesus finally turns to this woman, he calls her "daughter" — a term of real affection, the kind a father uses for his own child. He calls her that not just because she acted like one, reaching for him the way a child reaches for a parent, but because he's confirming an identity that will outlast this one moment. It's easy to have faith when the music's playing and God's presence feels close. The real test is whether you still have it on an ordinary Tuesday, with no feelings to lean on.

Here's the good news: you can. Because God's children never outgrow dependence. Maturity in God's kingdom doesn't mean needing God less — it means becoming more like a child, more fully dependent on Jesus, the longer you walk with him. That is maturity.

Key Ideas

1. Fewer options produce more faith, not less. Options don't strengthen faith — they let you hedge, which quietly makes faith casual instead of dependent.

2. Desperate faith is cultivated, not just inherited from circumstance. Desperate situations happen to everyone; desperate faith is a discipline you choose, whether or not life forces your hand.

3. Desperation reaches; it doesn't wait to be reached. The woman's healing came from her own initiative, not from Jesus noticing her first — a reversal of the usual pattern where Jesus seeks people out.

4. God's "daughter" language signals a lasting identity, not a one-time transaction. The healing wasn't just physical — it named who she was becoming, an identity meant to outlast the moment.

5. Maturity in God's kingdom means increasing dependence, not decreasing need. Spiritual growth is measured by deeper childlike reliance on Jesus, not by needing him less as you go.