NEED SOMETHING?

BIBLE PASSAGE:
“But my God shall supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
(Philippians 4:19)

MEDITATION:
If someone said to you,
    “I’ll give you everything you need”,
how would you respond? What feelings would it generate in you?
Do you have a mental list of the things you would like to have? If
you had to limit your desires to one thing, what would it be?

Remember the offer was to give you your ‘needs’, not your ‘wants’.
If we could get everything that we ‘want’, our lists would probably
be very long. But what about our ‘needs’? We have some obvious
needs such as food, clothing, shelter, oxygen, etc. However, there
are some other things we need that may not be as obvious.

How has God responded to our needs?
    Our hunger for food has been satisfied.
    God provides grain, land to grow the grain, and the sun
    and rain to nourish the grain to produce crops for food

    Our hunger for clothing has been satisfied.
    God taught us how to create clothing from  
    any number of resources also provided by Him.

    Our hunger for shelter has been satisfied.
    God gave us the ability to harvest the materials
    required and the skills to use them to build shelters.

    Our need for sustaining life has been satisfied.
    God has given us oxygen and a heart that continues to
    provide life sustaining blood to every part of our body.

    But what about our hunger for love?
    God creates an attraction between two people and provides us
    with the institution of marriage where two become bonded as
    one in love. In addition, God has eliminated any confusion about
    His definition of marriage, which is, a bonding of one man and
    one woman in ‘holy’ matrimony.

    We also have a hunger for friendships.
    God has given us the capacity for developing friendships with others.
    He has taught us how to have friends, and how to be a friend. One of
    our closest friends is our spouse if we are married, but we can also be
    friends with others.

    True friendships are a type of bond where one can ‘sense’ the needs of
    others, and respond to those needs by listening as they share things they
    don’t feel comfortable sharing with anyone else. Friends also encourage
    each other and are willing to make sacrifices to help them at any time.

    Although some may not admit it, or be aware of it, we have a hunger
    for fellowshipping with God, Himself. God has answered that need
    through His Son Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to pay our sin
    debts and open the door for us to have an opportunity to develop a
    closeness with our Creator.

When we take the time to think about it, we know that when God says
He will provide for all our needs, He keeps His promises. But how have
we treated His provisions? Rather than embracing the good that He has
given us, too often mankind has found ways to distort and/or misuse the
gracious gifts we have received.

Using the ingenuity God has given us for raising crops for food
to sustain life, some have found ways of planting and cultivating
crops to create substances that are harmful to our bodies (opium,
tobacco, marijuana, opium, etc.).

Some of these ‘illicit’ crops will cause damage to our brain and
our knowledge of right and wrong. Others will damage organs
of our body which God has created to sustain life (heart, lungs,
liver, etc.).

Mankind has also developed its own definition of love, which is
different than what God intended. We live in a world where sex
without the emotional attachments is called love. Mankind has
even redefined what God described as the bond of marriage.

It is an example of how Satan has distorted the thoughts of man
to the degree, that many have decided that God made a mistake
in how He created some people. God is sovereign He doesn’t make
mistakes!

So, how has mankind treated their perception of God’s ‘mistakes’?
Some destroy His creations before they experience the life God had
intended for them. Others try to re-engineer physical characteristics
of God’s creations in an attempt to ‘correct’ the ‘mistakes’ He made.

Some miss out on satisfying their hunger to fellowship with the
Lord. Why? Because they have either decided that praise and
worship of the Lord is not needed, or it is not as important as
other things in their lives, or they have created their own form
of worship which excludes ‘connecting’ with other followers of
Jesus Christ.

Some fail to ‘connect’ with God through prayer on a daily basis.
Connecting with God means communicating with Him and that’s
why we have been given the opportunity to ‘meet with Him’ in
prayer.

When Jesus died on the cross to suffer the punishment we deserve,
look what happened as a sign that we would now have direct access
to God, rather than having to go through a mediator.

Up until that moment, there was a veil separating mankind from
communicating with God, and only a priest could go behind the
veil to speak to God. Notice in the scripture below that the veil was
torn from top to bottom. This gives us a visual of God removing the
veil so we would be able to speak directly to Him.
    And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice,
    He gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of 
    the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
    (Matthew 27:50-51a)

In a survey of over 327,000 American adults, a Gallup poll found that
78 percent of Americans consider themselves Christian. According to
the Hartford Institute of Religion Research, more than 40 percent of
Americans “say” they go to church weekly. As it turns out, however,
less than 20 percent actually connect with other believers regularly.

What does that tell us about the other 58 percent? Wouldn’t it be an
indication that many have found other things that they feel are more
important than connecting with other believers, and ultimately with
God? The scriptures tell us that when the return of Jesus gets nearer,
many will stop ‘connecting’ with other followers of Jesus Christ.

God promised to provide all our needs, and He does, however mankind
has a responsibility to trust His promises, to accept His provisions, to use
what He provides in the right manner, and to obey His commands, if we
expect to have all our needs satisfied.

ACTION:
Think about all of the needs that God has provided for you. Also,
think about how many of your wants have been satisfied, and how
you benefited when some of them were not provided. God loves us
all very much and His desire is to fellowship with us and provide
for our needs. Remember that God,
    works everything for the good of those who love
    Him and have been called according to His purpose.
    (Romans 8:28)
With that in mind, thank God for unanswered prayers.

In addition, God has a desire is to sanctify us and transform us into
a more righteous likeness of His Son, Jesus. How much more could
He offer us? Where else could we be guaranteed of unquestionable
love, and having our needs fulfilled?

Pray,
“Heavenly Father, thank You for loving me and
providing for all my needs. My greatest need is
to be a child of Yours and to fellowship with You
all the days of my life. You have provided for my
need and hunger for love abundantly. Forgive me
if I have taken for granted all that You have provided.
Help me to exchange my selfish independence for a
new dependence on You. Thank You for Your plan of
salvation for me. Thank You, Jesus, for making the
ultimate sacrifice to show Your love for all people.
I am in awe and eternally grateful for the pain You
suffered for me!”

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