The Blessing of a Needy Life

If I could wish, for you, one thing this New Year that would bolster your faith and bring vitality to your Christian experience it would be a needy life. Now, of course, you are wondering why I would wish you a needy life. I mean, would it not be better to wish you a fulfilled and completely needless life? No, I don’t think so and let me tell you why. Without needs we will not go far in the Christian life. Furthermore, without needs we cannot grow deep as believers. You see, our neediness is our impetus for spiritual growth and maturity. Our needs cause us to turn away from ourselves and our own resources to Christ and His resources. Our problems produce stress, which results in the neediness that drives us away from our miniscule personal resources to Christ as our infinite and all-powerful resource. Were it not for our needs, most of us would not search out, reach out and then appropriate by faith God’s promises. And if God’s promises are never appropriated we will not become partakers of God’s divine nature. This is what 2 Peter 1:4 teaches us. “For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” God’s plan for our spiritual growth primarily utilizes our problems, struggles, and challenges to promote within us the sense of need that pushes us to search the Word of God for the promises of God. Once these promises are found and we by faith grab ahold of them and appropriate them spiritual growth occurs and we find ourselves becoming more and more like Christ. God is not so much experienced through knowledge as much as He is through our experience of neediness. As J.N. Darby writes: “. . . necessity finds Him out. I doubt much if we have ever learned anything solidly except we have learnt it thus.” Therefore, perhaps it is not the most knowledgeable and articulate that make the greatest ambassadors for Christ—perhaps it is the believer who has experienced Christ and His power, comfort, riches, compassion, mercy, and grace through neediness that best represents Christ to a world in great need. The Apostle Paul was a very needy man. In fact one time he confessed that he was feeling so afflicted, so burdened, so needy that he “despaired even of life” (2 Corinthians 1:8). He further made the point that this sense of neediness was for the purpose of teaching him and those with him “not to trust in themselves but in God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9). In other words, Paul’s sense of neediness was for the purpose of teaching him to rely more heavily upon God rather than upon himself. God wanted Paul to experience a much greater resource and power than he had known or could know otherwise. Ultimately, this great experience of neediness which led to an even greater experience of God in his life was for us. That’s right—for us! For in summing up the why of his neediness Paul writes—“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). So, Happy New Year and may 2013 be our neediest year ever.