Since Advent is the season of waiting, I'm doing a lot of learning about my needs. And since I've been learning about my needs, I've also been learning about waiting. What are my needs? Why am I ashamed of them?
I think part of the reason that many people (okay me) find themselves feeling ashamed of their legitimate needs is that people (the conventional need-satisfier) do not do a very good job of meeting each other's needs for many reasons. We're selfish, impatient little creatures with short fuses, so when someone has a need, it is often second nature to deny it. We meet our own needs first or in leiu of meeting another's. We invalidate other's valid needs because it is simply more convenient to convince someone that they don't need something than it is to meet their need.
Naturally, in order to survive, many of us (okay me) come to ignore our needs. I tend to continue on for a very long time in a situation where my needs have been invalidated and not met, with the false hope that the person with the power to meet that need will notice my suffering and have a change of heart.
The Big Surprise: They don't.
Many of us have simply turned off the need feeling switch, hoping the need will get the picture and move somewhere far, far away. You can guess how this works out.
Let's just say that my own personal relationship to my needs is a bit tricky. But now that I've gotten to the point where my needs have held me hostage, forcing me to admit they exist, I've made some progress. I've been playing the waiting game with God, asking Him for things I need like a good nights sleep, the ability to feed myself all month long, the skills to relearn how to cook for myself in a balanced, healthy way, enough money to pay my utility bill, the desire to forgive, the gift of compassion, hope, love. As I've been doing this, thinking about what it is I need, and asking God for those things, I've been shocked by His response. He's giving me things I wasn't even sure were needs, things I thought I was just responsible for mustering up.
The moment I mention maybe wanting some ideas or some options for healthy, balanced, non-emotional eating, Jesus is right there in the form of my friend Lisa on the telephone rattling off 101 healthy cook-at-home options for under $5. God uses people. God LOVES using people. Especially to meet people's needs. Because just like God, we love meeting needs too. When we aren't busy being selfish or convincing others they don't have needs, you must admit it feels really awesome to really help someone. It does not feel awesome to be selfish. God LOVES serving us and He LOVES it when we serve each other because everyone wins.
I think this concept can be really clearly illustrated by Walt Disney. In Beauty and the Beast, there's this scene where Belle says she's a "little hungry." The entire castle party then goes into this very enthusiastic and showy parade of options for her dining pleasure expressing their immense joy to serve her.
"Life is so unnerving for a servant who's not serving!" they say, sadly.
They used to be flabby fat and lazy...but she walked in and...well you know the rest.
If you haven't seen this, you need to.
Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h3Cvs1caeA
An excerpt from John Piper's book "Desiring God" really got me thinking on this (as did my insistent needs)
"God aims to exalt Himself by working for those who wait for Him. Prayer is the essential activity of waiting for God--acknowledging our helplessness and His power, calling upon Him for help, seeking His counsel. Since His purpose in the world is to be exalted for His mercy, it is evident why prayer is so often commanded by God. Prayer is the antidote for the disease of self-confidence, which opposes God's goal of getting glory by working for those who wait for Him.
"The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him" (2 Chronicles 16:9). God is not looking for people to work for Him, so much as He is looking for people who will let Him work for them. The gospel is not a help-wanted ad. Neither is the call to Christian service. On the contrary, the gospel commands us to give up and hang out a help-wanted sign (this is the basic meaning of prayer). Then the gospel promises that God will work for us if we do. He will not surrender the glory of being the Giver."
Well it turns out God is interested in whether or not I get a good night's sleep. It turns out that He's interested in how busy I am this week. He doesn't look down from up there and say..."Welp, you wouldn't be so busy if you just slowed down." Nope. He's not like that. He says, "Here. This will help you slow down. Just don't worry about this thing here. Let it go." God cares about what I cook for dinner and how much it costs. This is amazing. No one has ever cared about my life this much. This stuff doesn't matter to anyone but me.
Well, that's because "anyone" has never been JESUS.
God wants to meet our needs so badly if we'll ask Him. He wants to be the giver of good things in our lives. REALLY good things. Sometimes really good things take a while, so we have to wait to receive them if we want to receive them at all.
So it's no wonder if we're sitting on the couch scarfing cheez-its that Jesus is saying--"Hey! Quit that!"--if He's making filet mignon and lobster tail in the next room. But we don't believe He is because it's in the "next room," so we we're scarfing the cheez-its, yelling with our mouths full on the couch, "PROVE IT!"
What's Jesus supposed to do? By the time the lobster tail and the filet mignon are ready, you'll be in bed and full of cheez-its, Jesus will be eating dinner by Himself, and you won't trust Him any more than you did before you were full of cheez-its. All because it takes five seconds to open a box of cheez-its and hours to cook filet mignon and lobster tail.
So put the cheez-its down.
And wait for the lobster tail.
