needs on Noticing

Lord—You’re the God who notices. You notice a desperate woman who touches Your garments in a crowd. You notice a lonely, little tax-collector in a tree. You notice a blind man on the roadside, a widow...

Listening to other people's needs is listening to God. Noticing simple, natural beauty, hearing music, even confronting the challenge of pain and problems - that can all be listening to God too.

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 Sound Foundation Acts 2:42 would make for a solid outline for a worship service, checklist for a congregation’s life together, or personal schedule for an afternoon. Most of what we are called to d...

There is an invisible pattern in the design of deprivation: deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens it. And the more heightened the desire, the greater our satisfaction will ultimately be. It ...

The more I understand people and their needs, the more I am persuaded that God has uniquely designed the local church to respond to those needs.

Although I witnessed the faithfulness of God to meet my basic needs, I used coping mechanisms to meet my immediate, personal 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 ...

For the times when we fail to notice others’ needs, we repent. For our apathy for those you’ve entrusted to us, we repent. For the amount of time we spend focused on ourselves, we repent. For fa...

God of mercy, we ignore the needs of people around us all too often. We get caught up in our own issues and forget that there are millions of people who struggle for basic necessities on a daily basis...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we often take stock of your work and your goodness based on what we have and see in a particular moment. We follow the desires and encouragements of crowds rather than...

So we learn early on that lack is embarrassing. Our pain is uncomfortable not just for ourselves but for those around us. Our need is obscene and offensive to a world that prides itself on its self-re...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we too often center our lives around ourselves and our immediate needs, and that this blinds us from being aware of the needs of our neighbors. Help us to know our tru...

Preaching Commentary A Sound Foundation Acts 2:42 would make for a solid outline for a worship service, checklist for a congregation’s life together, or personal schedule for an afternoon. Most of ...

Great needs grow from great possessions.

Prayer of Adoration God, Almighty – holy, gracious, truthful and loving, we’re drawn by Your invitation to enjoy Your love, an invitation to feel Your touch and hear Your voice, to taste and see tha...

One of the oldest human needs is to have someone to wonder where you are if you don’t come home at night.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread; and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ...

“For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to tas...

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...

A Multi-faceted Church Who loses by the church and parachurch’s lack of unity and cooperation? Absolutely everyone : congregations, ministry organizations, ministry leaders, individual believers . ....

There are two ways each of us can approach life: spending our days meeting our needs or looking for ways to meet others' needs. The mystery is that when we spend our life focused on our own needs,...

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Vocation comes from the Latin  voceru , to call, and means the work a man is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem i...

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...

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

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...

God with us, your very nature demonstrates that you reach out to us. You are the God who sends, and you’ve sent us to spread your love to others. However, we get too comfortable keeping our faith to o...

You aren't alive if you aren't in need.

Heavenly Father, You and Your Gifts are Perfect. We are not. You lead us with abundant mercy, justice, and grace. We are slow to follow. We abandon the straight and narrow path of life in which You di...