LISTEN TO THE DEVOTIONAL
“I really need that!” How many times have you said those words even this week? Or perhaps it was your eight-year old who had been impressed with the commercials on TV who says, “I really need it, Dad!” And, of course, we quickly think of Philippians 4:19, which brings God into the process of canceling out our needs with His provision. But what constitutes a valid need, and how does a need differ from a want?
When can you legitimately apply the promises of answered prayer to what we think we need? How does God view our needs anyway? How different are our “needs” from Kallello Nugusu—he’s a Christian farmer in Ethiopia? When famine struck, he was forced to sell his two oxen to buy food to keep his wife and six children alive; but with the oxen gone, there was no way to plow his field, apart from drawing the plow through the sunbaked earth in a weakened condition physically. Eventually, there was no hope for a crop. When he was asked what he would do when the food was gone, he dropped his head and he said, “When my children cry because they are hungry, then it is very hard to be a father!”
It is one thing to acknowledge the needs of poverty and starvation, but something else to classify what we often think of as “needs” as legitimate items of concern which should not be overlooked, though, in the distribution of heaven’s blessings. In all honesty, we have to correct ourselves as we pray, and add, “No, Lord, I really don’t need it, but it would be nice to have it.” Valid needs constitute far less than most of us would be prone to admit.
Item #1: Physical needs or environmental needs.
They include food, shelter, and clothing. But, of course, the spectrum of these needs spans the gamut from simplicity to extravagant. Whole wheat grains of rice have far more nourishment than meat or gourmet cooking; they cost far less too. Now, when it comes to clothing, few have the attitude of John Wesley, who wrote, “As for apparel, I buy the most lasting, and, in general, the plainest I can.”
And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19
Item #2: Your emotional needs.
These are a valid matter of concern to the Lord. In 2 Timothy 1:7, Paul said, “God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power, of love and of a sound mind.” This past week, I’ve struggled to help a friend battling the monster of depression. There is no questioning the fact of need, and an area of hurt that needs healing. Yes, we can pray with confidence, saying, “This is a valid need.”
Finally, Item #3: Spiritual needs.
It was because of a spiritual need long ago that Jesus Christ left heaven and was born in the manger of Bethlehem.
Philippians 4:19 says God will supply your needs, but few know much of the context of the passage or the historical setting. Philippi, in Northern Greece, was a mountainous area when Paul wrote, and the century before it had been the hub of a prosperous gold mining deposit. But eventually, the vein of gold ran out, and with it, the prosperity that gold brings. It was to Christians who had no gold that he wrote, “God, not gold in the hills, will be the supply of your needs.”
The promise is just as valid today, but it extends only to real needs, not wishes or desires. What happens when you defined “need” in a biblical context? Two things. There is immediate freedom from the bondage of things, and secondly, there comes the blessing of knowing that God was the one who met your needs. It is still true. He supplies our needs.
Resource reading: Philippians 4:10-19
