You Can't Always Get What You Want (or Changing Our Desires to Match our God-Given Needs)

Hello friends! Sorry for the extended hiatus - I think all of us LR girls have been busy with starting new jobs and classes and moving, but we're back! Over the past few months, I've been reading When People are Big and God is Small by Edward Welch (I'm a bit of a slow reader!). It focuses on changing our fear of man (dependency on the approval of others, etc.) into a fear of God. It's a great read and I'd definitely recommend it - let's face it - who doesn't struggle with wanting others to like them a little bit too much?

One of my favorite parts of the whole book were 2 chapters that focused on examining our felt needs and identifying our biblical needs. If someone were to ask me what I felt I needed, I could probably spew off a list of things: food, clothing, water, attention and love from others, Jesus, to feel worthwhile and valuable, to have meaningful work. Basically, we can group our perceived needs into 3 categories: biological (food, water, shelter), spiritual (forgiveness of sin from Jesus), and psychological (love, significance, self-esteem). While Welch agrees with the importance of our biological and spiritual needs, he thinks that thinking of psychological needs in this way can be a tripping point. Welch argues that we only truly need what allows us to fulfill our primary purpose of imitating and glorifying the Lord.

For me, this totally flipped my typical selfish view of focusing on my desires and my personal happiness on its head. I should not expect Christ to fulfill all of my psychological needs for love, significance, and self-esteem - these desires are unwieldy, too big, and not submitted to Christ. I need to stop acting like an emptying cup full of psychological needs and instead focus outward on imitating Christ and His glory. When I first read this, it made me upset - How could the Lord not care about these deep longings and needs I had? How could He expect me to just submit these to Him? Then I realized that having a relationship with Christ does ultimately fulfill these needs: we receive His unconditional love, purpose in working for His Kingdom, and self-esteem in knowing that we are adopted into His family. The difference is that we are focusing on glorifying the Lord instead of expecting Him to fill us up psychologically. I pray that as we go through the end of the week, we can examine our perceived needs in light of our biblically given needs, and surrender our unwieldy desires to the Lord.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Psalm 37:4-5