thought exercise on Needs

Needs are not bad. If God is sovereign and the “first good” comes before sin invades the world, then why did God wait to create the woman until later? In my mind, there can be only one rationale: God ...

What is it that you need most? No, it’s not that girl or that new car that you’ve had your eyes on. It’s not that promotion you’ve worked so hard for or that vacation you’ve dreamed of. No, it’s not t...

Desire is something no child has to be taught. Early in the developmental process, most of a child’s desires center around physical needs being met or objects that attract interest. If a child is secu...

Desire is part of what it means to be a child, as implied in Jesus’ words to his disciples when he tells them, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never ente...

Everyone wants it. It’s the thing that fuels what we do. It’s the thing that stimulates courage and perseverance. It’s what gets you through the tough times and keeps you from quitting. It’s hard to b...

In the early days of my experiments in listening to the Lord, I sensed a distinct word to call a friend, a chaplain at a local college, and see how he was doing. The word carried with it the marks of ...

A man walks into a pet store and says, “I want a talking parrot.” The clerk says, “Yes sir, I have two birds that talk. This large green parrot here is quite a talker.” He taps on the cage, and the bi...

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament) , scholar Ken Bailey describes the nature of David’...

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us...

As Europe plunged ever deeper into a second world war, the British poet W.H. Auden composed a poem (“September 1, 1939”) that peels back our human tendency to cover up all fear and uncertainty with se...

Survival requires more than the basic biological necessities we readily acknowledge—oxygen, food, and water. It also demands something less tangible but equally vital: hope. When hope vanishes, the hu...

You ought to.” “You need to.” “You’ve got to.” “You’re supposed to.” “You better.” Do these sorts of exhortations sound familiar? Perhaps you have heard admonitions such as these from the pulpit, from...

As adults, we develop all sorts of coping mechanisms to handle stress. Maybe you like to read a book, meditate, knit, watch TV, or exercise. When I was in New York, I used to go for a long run at the ...

Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering. Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love, for one another. Christ does not give us security in the sen...

Dr. Kevin Leman once told me that parenting is like an airline emergency. Before takeoff, every plane passenger is instructed that if the oxygen masks come down, parents should put on their own masks ...

Years ago Wendy and I were out to dinner and she observed that something was different about our marriage in recent years, something good. She asked me if I had any insight into what it was. After ref...

Bear one another’s burdens, the Bible says. It is a lesson about pain that we all can agree on. Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But...

In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko shares the challenge of raising special-needs children: My friend...

With the exception of some of the Proverbs, the Bible does not contain isolated sayings. I should be wary about dipping into it at random and extracting individual verses without any regard for their ...

Alexander Maclaren writes about the importance of recognizing our dependence on God for all we have: Up to the very edge we are driven before He puts out His hand to help us. It is best for us that w...

Desire is primal: to be human is to want. Consider that wanting is the earliest language we learn. As infants, when we’re yet incapable of forming words on our tongue, we’re infinitely good at knowing...

I turn to John Wyatt [cf. p. 103: professor of ethics and perinatology at University College Hospital in London] for an eloquent expression of the priority of dependence: “God’s design for our life is...

If I asked you the same question I asked my patient Aaron—“What do you want?”—and you could for a moment put aside the predictable anxiety that comes with it, I’m confident that at some point in your ...

I turn to John Wyatt [professor of ethics and perinatology at University College Hospital in London] for an eloquent expression of the priority of dependence: “God’s design for our life is that we sho...

Every meal—not just Communion, but including Communion—is a reminder that we are dependent on God as creatures. We are not self-sustaining. Much of our food is grown, processed, distributed, and possi...

Contentment is when we tell the Shepherd that His provision is enough for all our physical and material needs. If our old car gimps down the road, that is fine. If we get a shiny newer auto with less ...

Many of the greatest Christian spiritual teachers and mystics such as Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Ignatius Loyola, or some of the seventeenth-century Anglican spiritual writers focus on the language...

For some people the brokenness in these foundational relationships results in material poverty, that is their not having sufficient money to provide for the basic physical needs of themselves and thei...

…And we are unnecessary to what congregations insist that we must do and be: as the experts who help them stay ahead of the competition. . . . They want pastors who lead. . . . Congregations get their...

One of the most influential myths nourished by the culture of authenticity is that we will be “saved” or made complete when we meet the right-shaped soul, that perfectly complementary person who can f...