Need and Needs

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4:19

Philippians 3:18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,

I saw a comment on Phil 4:19 that said 'Jesus is our only need.' I understand the reasoning behind that statement, but I am tired of people who constantly make the scripture so spiritual that it has no practical application to our lives.  Friend, in your 'need' to sound wise or Godly, don't strip the Word of God of its power.  Through Jesus, our physical, fleshly, emotional and social needs are also met.  Jesus was never confronted with a need that he ignored.  Even the need to save face and provide a good wedding was met head on.  Even the need to be rescued from a punishment that her lifestyle demanded was recognized and resolved.  Often going against the protocol of his day, he met the need of beggars, social outcasts and even the wealthy and powerful around him. 

He made a whip and purged the merchandising of devotion to God from the temple –two times.  He caused a fish to have money in its mouth to meet Peter’s need for public approval -after a kind reprimand.  He looked at a sea of hungry faces late in the day and with a plan in mind said to his disciples “We need to feed them.” 

Then he said “I’m getting ready to leave and you guys will have to do the stuff I did- even greater stuff than I did.”  He told them to wait for the power of God to come on their lives which he would send to them all when he rejoined the Father.  And signs and wonders followed these followers of Christ.  They began meeting needs in his name.

We must not dilute or emasculate the Son of God because of our own lack of power to live, to accomplish, to hear and follow, to dissociate from the merchandisers.  We would rather reason about the cross of Christ than to honor and trust it fully.  Not wanting to appear as fools in our generation, we become enemies to all the cross promised.  Over the millennia we have forgotten, we’ve misunderstood, we’ve assimilated the world.  But God is one God.  His plan was and is right.  His power is ageless. 

Jesus is our need –period.  But he meets our needs day to day, year to year, century to century.  Part of this world’s problem is in not seeing him as the need supplier, the wish granter, the great healer, the hope giver.  The sin of a generation is not trusting Him to supply our needs, but going about determining and trusting other sources for everything.

Jesus said reprioritize and all your needs will be met.  But we are so ingrained in our material, worldly reasoning that reprioritizing is extremely hard.  It was for a young rich man that Jesus loved.  Yet that man walked away from his need for Jesus because he had great wealth and I am sure great worldly responsibility.

So in conclusion, I say that when the one need is recognized and met, all needs are met in time and space.  It does become a matter of priority, of Godly thinking and of human trust and submission.  But my God will supply my need and my needs according to Christ Jesus.