And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
We must ask what are the needs of man's soul, His heart. It is to be fully known and loved by God. All other needs flow out of this one need. The need for worth, purpose, acceptance, peace, joy, safety, life. We long for perfect love and that is only met by God, through Jesus.
Adam and Eve had this perfect love relationship with God, in the garden. Then satan entered the picture and sin came in. Eve wanted to be God and Adam wanted Eves approval. He did not lead and she did not follow. She thought she had to know everything and he wanted the praise of man. They couldn't face their sin, so they blamed each other and hid themselves. They were ashamed and fearful. So are we. There was the curse. Eve was to try to find her life in her husbands approval and Adam was to try to find his life in his work. Man and woman are still struggling with this today, we see. We try to find love and the relationship we think we need in our families and our jobs or the things we do. We try to prove ourselves. To earn love. We reject and please based on how others respond to us. We are either puffed up or torn down. There is no contentment because man cannot satisfy us and we cannot satisfy man. We are approval sucks and we suck the life out of each other. Man will always fail us. We will fail each other. God never fails.
When we cannot have our need for relationship and love met, in the things of this world, we are searching for, we suffer from a deep pain, a loss. A deep ache inside so we cover ourselves. We wear mask and pretend to be something and someone we are not. We numb our hearts. We go into isolation, denial and feed our hungry souls, with the things of this world. We numb our pain, in our addictions. These addictions can be from anything good to anything bad, that we run to, to relieve the ache in our hearts. It can be from exercise to heroin. We are a discontent, lonely, insecure, fearful, fake, hurting people. We return to broken cisterns to find the water our hearts thirst for, trying to find love. When the love of God melts our wax mask away and our needs are revealed, this is where God meets us. We turn to Him, for He draws us. We long to know Him and be known by Him. We long to know others and love them also. To give them a taste of this fountain we have found, that has found us. We are to respond and not harden our hearts but His love is greater than our rebellion. We are the beauty of Christ, a new creation to reflect His glory and His grace. Jesus is a fountain of His love that will never run dry, we can forever run to quench our thirsty souls for love. We are pure and holy right now with the righteousness of Christ. We must see ourselves as the Father sees us, a treasure, a valuable gift, He has given Jesus out of His love for His Son and His love for us. We are perfect. We are His delight.
Man could not chose God, so out of Gods unfailing love God chose man. God put His affections on us before time. He directed His love on us. He made a plan to rescue man, from himself and evil, in Jesus, on the cross. Jesus came to know us and to reveal God to us. To incarnate with us. To be God, man. He knows what it is to be rejected and alone, but He wanted to experience it. To know was not enough for Him. God, Himself knows our deepest needs and He promises to meets those needs in Jesus. He has set out to satisfy our deepest needs and will not rest until it is accomplished. Gods love is lavished on us. He has given us everything through Christ. It cannot be earned or lost, but is so freely, joyfully given to us in His endless mercy and grace.
I love the book, Redeeming Love by Rivers. It is a love story, based on the book of Hosea. She is a prostitute who is changed by the redeeming love, unconditional love, of her husband. He would not give up on her, even though, she kept returning to the destructive way of her life, her prostitution,what was speaking the lie to her, that it could give her love, life. Because of his love, she found life, beauty, purpose and a sense of belonging. He found her. Life found her. She saw herself as unworthy, but this was not the way he saw her. His love, made her the beauty she was meant to be, because of his affections for her. His passion to see her whole and her life joyful and meaningful.
Jesus is the Husband of our souls. He loves us with a jealous love, that will not give up on us. He takes our weak attempts to love and returns an unfathomable love, that will not turn away. His love will never fail us. He receives our love with great joy and pleasure in us. Tullian Tchividjian said, "the Christian life is a love affair with an unloseable lover!" God gave us the end of the love story before we ever began. The victory for us has been won. The pursuit has begun. We can know the start to finish, love story, now. Our knight and shining Armor has come and He will rescue us, to a life, we could never have known, apart from Him. Love isn't love, until it is given away. He has brought us into a beautiful dance, with the Father and Spirit and Himself, by His Spirit. Their love has overflowed to us in His Son. The most unbelievable love story, has been made real and we will believe, by His most unbelievable, real grace, Jesus, His riches and glory. His glory is revealed in us, a display of His grace for all the world to see. He brags to the heavens over us throughout eternity. We were a slave who has been made His queen. It is a Cinderella story of all stories. We are His. We are free and we are loved. He meets us at our deepest need. The need to be fully known and loved by Him. It is His delight and joy!
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