Autumn Leaves 3 Column

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

At Peace With my "Neediness"

I am a needy person. There it is written for the entire world to see: I am needy. Now please understand me; I’m not talking about being a “black-hole of need” as a girlfriend of mine is known to say! But within healthy boundaries, I need to feel valuable, to be important to the people I love, and to be respected. I need encouragement and I want to be liked, even if my laugh is too loud! For years I have struggled with what I have believed to be an unappealing aspect of my personality. I perceive it as a weakness. I want to hide my neediness from the people around me, especially those people that are not part of my inner circle. I want to overcome it. So I spent years trying to be self-sufficient. I was not very successful and I ended up retreating further into myself denying my neediness.
To top it all off, we live in a culture that encourages self sufficiency. We admire “self-made” individuals; we look up to those who “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and then we wonder why we struggle with being vulnerable and authentic. The idea that people need each other can be a real turn-off. But frankly the truth is we are all needy. I believe God created us to be needy….to need Him.
When we look to God to fill our need for value, the words of John 3:16 answer us: “For God so loved the world, He sent His only begotten Son…” When we look to God for love, we find that His character is love, (1 John 4:8); therefore He cannot love us any more or any less than He does right now. When we look to God to fill our need for respect, we find that He considers us His masterpiece according to Ephesians 2:10. That should fill our need to be respected.
Finally, as we are able to ascertain our value, lovability, and worth in what God says about us, it takes pressure off of the people most intimately connected to us in our lives. The ability to receive His love and His worth of us then translates into seeing those around us through that blanket of love. We are therefore able to love others with a less demanding love, a love that can enjoy others just for who they are, not for what they give us or what needs they fill in us! That’s when we will know that our “neediness” has been transferred to Him, where it belongs. I suppose that is why I can be at peace with my own “neediness”!

5 comments:

  1. I think this is great. We are all needy and I too have spent YEARS working to be so self-sufficient it's become painful to ask for help even when I really, REALLY need it.

    I agree. We were put on this earth to "be together" to "help eachother". But learning to fill your cup from God only comes when we actually realize that no human will be sufficient for this task. Your right. Once God can fill us...our need becomes more manageable and others can actually meet it! (Ergo our unrealistic expectations of others to fill us up!)

    You go girl.

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  2. You are important to me, you are valued in our family's life and I respect you as my SiC and my friend. :)

    Thank you for once again being transparent and encouraging the rest of us to be more so.

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  3. Filling that need with the love that has poured down from the cross is the only way we can ever have anything of true value to give out. When our cups are filled with the cool and living waters provided by Jesus in the form of the Holy Spirit, that small (and sometimes gaping) black hole of need can be filled. Nothing earthly or human can fill it, nor were they ever meant to.

    I'm so glad that God in His infinite wisdom has blessed you with a gift that HE pour out through you to people like me. But it's because you Fill up at the foot of the cross!

    Love you!

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  4. So true, our culture certainly promotes self. The world thinks its blessings lie in such terms of strength, power, ability, self assurance, aggressiveness, materialism and wealth; that is the world's idea of conquest and success.

    How then, I wonder, does this all fit into Jesus' statement, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5). I thought it was whoever dies with the most toys wins. Or maybe whoever has the biggest motorcade up Route 3 has the victory. One thing is for sure, that statement must have come as a great shock to the Jews of our Lord's day and I don't believe it has lost any of its voltage today.

    Unsure, go back across last week, consider in your mind and recall in your conscience the moments of unhappiness or strain, irritability, bad tempers, things you said or done of which you are now ashamed. If we look at them one by one, it will be surprising to discover how almost all of them point right back to SELF. Something WE wanted, something WE needed, something WE did or did not want to happen. Most of our unhappiness and sorrow, most of our troubles in our lives arise from this ultimate origin and source; SELF.
    Jesus said, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross (an instrument of execution), and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."

    If we read the Bible we see self was responsible for the fall. Self always means defiance of God. Self puts me on the throne instead of God. Self seperates me from Him and His blessing. Self never seeks to help others. Self only seeks to love itself, fill its own needs, to find its own pleasure, and put itself in the spotlight.

    It is interesting to think that Scripture never tells us anywhere that Jesus laughed. We are told He was angry, tired, hungry, and thirsty. And we are also told that He wept. He wept at the grave of Lazarus, He saw this horrid, ugly, foul thing called sin which had come into the world and introduced death and the exaltation of self. And He wept because of it. He also wept over the city of Jerusalem. He saw them rejecting Him and bringing upon itself its own damnation. Jesus wept because He understands what sin means to God, His utter abhorrence and hatred of it. Jesus mourned over it and so does His true follower, "Hate evil, you who love the Lord" (Psalm 97:10).
    How often do we mourn over our sin? How often do we pray to God for His Spirit to reveal the sin in our lives, and then to reveal to us the Lord Jesus Christ in all His fullness? Perhaps we have forgotten that, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matt. 5:4).

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