What do we really need? Do we need the new car? Do we need the TV? Do we need a refrigerator? Do we need money? Do we need food? Do we need relationship? Do we need God?
We know that God will provide for all of our needs, but we still wonder what He is going to provide because we don’t know what our needs are. There are a lot of things that we legitimately need. We need air to breathe, food to eat, water to drink. Those are all obvious physical needs. Well we don’t really need God to provide those do?
Air is always going to be there, so God doesn’t have to provide that. And God only has to provide water to people in Africa, because everyone else has access to clean water, so I don’t need Him to provide water for me. Food, well all we need for that is for God to give us money and then we can take care of that. So, basically on those assumptions we only really need God to provide money and we can take care of the rest. Well, I can go and get a job and provide money, so I guess we don’t really need God for money either. So now we only need God when we don’t have a job.
Maybe we missed something in these assumptions about what we can do, or maybe we missed something in the assumptions that all of our needs revolve around money. We so many times limit our wants and needs to materials.
Too many people come to God asking for Him to provide money for something. Money is such a huge deal to us. Our lives revolve around money. Money has become what provides for us. Money is so so so insignificant to God. When God said He would provide for our needs, maybe we missed something. Maybe our only needs don’t revolve around money. Maybe God isn’t just there to provide us with money.
What about relationship? Yeah we need relationship, but only with God. We just need to seclude ourselves and have a relationship with God. God is a jealous God, we need to have more amounts of quiet time than we have hang out time. Hanging out with friends can’t be part of God’s plan. Hanging out is such a “secular” thing to do.
Where on earth did we learn that? God made us for relationships, not only relationship with Him, but relationships with others. This world was created out of God’s relationship in Himself (the Trinity), it was made for relationship, and it was made because of relationship. We were created to relate to one another and to relate to our God. Relationship is one of our needs. We need friends. We have to stop believing that everything outside of church is secular and not from God. We think God is in the church and He just stays there. He doesn’t like to come out of the church building, so we better go to church, because that is the only place that is “Godly.” Everything else is so “secular.”
We have to stop judging stuff based on whether it is Godly or secular. I wholeheartedly believe that God enjoys hanging out with you just as much at a football game as He does hanging out with you at church. Why do I believe that? Because we were not created for church. We were created for relationship, and God is so much bigger than the church building. Church has become a place to meet with God and friends. Church is such a good thing, but we have turned church into a box, into a building and we have tried to house God in it.
God cannot be confined by anything. We try to put Him in a box so we can understand Him, so we can be comfortable because we can see all of Him. We have to learn to stop confining Him to our imagination, because our imagination is limited and He is limitless.
