God Has No Need For Me

(Photo by Stuart Miles - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Ponder this truth: God doesn't need me...or you...or anyone for that matter.  While this is probably disheartening at first and perhaps even scary, this truth is the ultimate sign of love.  How?  Let's look into it.

So much of the love we experience on earth is based on an exchange of affection - you love me, and I'll love you back.  If we're honest, we know this to be true even in some of our closest relationships.  Unfortunately, the kind of relationship where a person gives his or her all regardless of what is given back - those are very rare indeed.  Perhaps a parent to a child is the closest we get to this, or the sacrificial love we see of an elderly couple where one of the spouses gives full care to a debilitated spouse.

However, if God doesn't NEED us, there are a few invigorating and freeing realities.

1. Do we really want to serve a 'needy' God?
A powerful God?  A sovereign God?  An omnipresent God?  Yes.  But a God who is needy?  Honestly, not many of us crave to be around a needy person, let alone a God who is needy.

2. If God does not need us, it must mean something else, because the Bible clearly communicates that God desires to be in relationship with us.  God does not need us - He wants us.  He desires us because we were made by and for Him.  He desires to pour out His love on us and as we receive it and glorify Him, He is filled with joy that we are living as He intended, reveling in Him and glorifying Him as we know and reflect Him.

3. If God doesn't need me, but He still wants me, then the direction, the insight, the denial of certain things, the guidelines from Scripture - all of these are for us that we might live most fully, honor Him most fully, and in turn, find that these two things (living fully and honoring Him) are not different truths world's apart, but instead they function together in a symbiotic relationship.  Life is most full and most human when we are most fully honor and love God.

He doesn't need us.  He wants us.  And in this there is freedom and joy.
- tC