Is it just me, or do you struggle with what is really a need? Many times what we think is a need is really a desire or a want. How do we balance those and especially in our family? My devotion recently spoke to this and I would like to share it with you today. It is taken from New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp.
If you put too many things in your need category, you will end up frustrated with life, hurt by others, and doubting God’s goodness.
It really is one of the sloppiest words used in human culture. If need means “essential for life,” then the vast majority of the things we say that we need we don’t actually need. You know this if you have children or are around children. Let’s say you’re a parent and you have taken your child to the mall (which is your first mistake). As you’re walking through the mall, your child sees the sneaker store and immediately makes a left-hand turn. Now, with nose pressed against the window of the store, he says, “Mom, I neeeeeed those sneakers.” You look down at his feet, which are encased in perfectly good shoes, and you say: “No, I’m not getting you those sneakers. You already have perfectly good shoes.” Now, when you say this, your child does not think: “What a wise mother I have been blessed with. She has seen through my distorted sense of need, has recognized selfish desire, and has lovingly rescued me from me.” No, your child lashes out against you: “You always say ‘no’ to me. I don’t know why I have to have the one mom who hates sneakers.” Then your child refuses to relate to you for the rest of the time that you are in the mall.
When you tell yourself that something is a need, three things follow. First, you feel entitled to the thing, because, after all, it is a need. Second, because it is a need, you feel it’s your right to demand it. And third, you then judge the love of another person by his or her willingness to deliver the thing. This not only happens in our relationships with one another, but more important, it happens in our relationship with God. When you name something as a need and God doesn’t deliver it, you begin to doubt His goodness. What is deadly about this is that you simply don’t run for help to someone whose character you’ve come to doubt.
In Matthew 6:32, Jesus reminds us that we have a heavenly Father who knows exactly what we need. There is comfort and confrontation in Jesus’s words. The confrontation is this: the reason Jesus reminds us that we have a Father who has a clear understanding of our true needs is because we don’t have such an understanding. We constantly get needs and wants confused, and when we do, we are tempted to question the love of our heavenly Father. The comfort is that, by grace, we have been made to be the children of the wisest, most loving Father that the universe has ever known. He is never, ever confused. He knows our every need because He created us. We can rest in the grace that has made us His children, knowing that our place in His family guarantees that we will have what we need.
I love Paul David Tripp’s writings in this devotional book because they are so practical to every day living. I think we are all guilty in getting our needs, desires and wants mixed up. God knows our needs and we can trust Him to supply them!
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