Better Than Being Needed

I've found over the years that people like to feel needed.

And when we become Christians, this desire to be needed carries over into our relationship with God. We want to be needed by God, and sometimes we try to "serve" Him in such a way that we look or feel indispensable to Him.

But the more we learn about the Lord, the more we realize something that we really don't want to admit ... God doesn't need us.

He really doesn't. If you doubt that, then you need to know more about God. Take a look at the photo I've included above in this post.

It's the gas pillars in the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light years from Earth. Now light travels at 186,000 miles per SECOND! So this is a long long way away. But even the pillars themselves are light-years tall, so this seemingly insignificant far away blip in space is really a huge multi-universe of its own, forming new universes.

And God created it, and the trillions of other outer space phenomena, with a word, a phrase really, "Let there be..." And there was.

Now do you really think this God needs us? Oh, I know we say that we are His hands and feet and mouth on this earth. But He only uses hands and feet and mouth because He chooses to. He could use a donkey. Or the rocks could cry out. Or He could do nothing.

But before you get all sad on me because God doesn't need you, let me tell you something far better.

He WANTS you. And He wants you just because He does.

And to be wanted like that is infinitely better than to be needed. Because if we are just "needed", there may be a time when we're no longer needed, and then what? If we're just "needed", then what about when someone comes along who performs our job better than we do?

And because of that aspect of being needed, there is a perverse idea behind being "needed". The perverse idea is that if we "do a good job for God" then we'll be needed, and then we will be wanted, because we're needed. And what we really desired all along is to be wanted. Feel free to read this paragraph over again :)

But to be wanted, just because God chose to want us, is a precious thing. He doesn't want us because we are flawless. He already had that in the Trinity. And He doesn't want us because we're needed.

He just wants us.

He chose to want us.

He chose to love us, and so He wants us.

But to be wanted by the Creator of the Universe is a hard thing to believe, sometimes. And so God came to dwell with us as a Man, Jesus. And the Father showed us how much He wants us by giving His Son to die for our sins. And the Son, Jesus, showed us how much He wants us by shedding His blood, and even having His Father forsake Him in some mysterious way. And the Holy Spirit showed us how much He wants us by awakening us to the Truth, and giving us new Life, and sealing us for eternity. We can't fully comprehend.

But we can comprehend, by God's grace, that the One who launched the stars and the planets, and the Eagle Nebula with a word, WANTS you and me.