God Delights in Being Desperately Needed!

Hey, Christian. Guess what? I know you’re ashamed sometimes.

I know because I’m with you. There are moments when you wonder if you’re even saved. You have been raised with Christ. You have been given new life. You have been equipped with power from the Holy Spirit Himself. You have been guaranteed the endless and all-satisfying love of the God who breathed the universe into existence. YOU ARE SO BLESSED. And yet..

You clicked into that website again. You lied for the umpteenth time. You backstabbed your best friend. You harbored that murderous thought toward a brother in Christ. You cheated on the exam. You still fight homosexual desires. You’ve considered ending it all.

Even if I didn’t mention your specific sin, you know it’s there. You don’t like to talk about it; if you don’t, it can almost seem non-existent. But it doesn’t work to play games with sin, and you know that. Another reason you don’t talk about it, though, is that you’re ashamed. You’re baffled that a so-called “child of God” could ever be suicidal or have homosexual desires or lie chronically or feel hatred or ___________, but you can’t shake the struggle, even though you’re redeemed. And since everybody else in the church is too ashamed to admit that they’re in the same boat as you are, you feel like you’re totally alone in this fight against sin. Everyone else is perfect, right?

Let’s just all admit right now in the quietness of our hearts that this is where we’re at. All of us.

You need to hear, Christian, that God knows this. Listen: “O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them (excerpts from Psalm 139).”

All of your brokenness and struggle is plain to God, even when you try hiding it. Hear that. Because that’s not all.

My pastor recently said something to the effect that “God delights in being desperately needed.” I’ve been thinking about that sentence ever since, and pondering its implications for my life. I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to really believe that about God sometimes. In my sin and brokenness and shame, I fool myself into believing that God must be super ticked off at me. He can’t want me back after I sinned for the millionth time, can He? He can’t be waiting anxiously for my cry for forgiveness and help after I did that dumb thing again, can He? Surely He’s sick and tired of this miserable creature who can’t seem to do anything right.. right???

That’s what Satan says. Here’s what God says in Isaiah 55.1-6: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”

I think we’re ashamed sometimes because Satan tells us we’re supposed to bring money to God’s marketplace. We’re not supposed to be so broke. We’re not supposed to need so much help. We’re supposed to have a little something to offer back to God. What we forget in those moments is how much God loves being our helper, not just tolerates it. Like a mom who loves making lunch for her two year-old who can’t make lunch for himself, so God loves helping us in our fight towards holiness when we sure as shootin’ can’t get there ourselves.

All over the Bible, God invites us to come to Him in prayer with our brokenness and need so that we can be healed. There are no taboo subjects with Him. No struggle you have that would surprise Him. Remember, He knows the most intimate details of your struggle today.

And I just wanted to remind you that He still loves you. In your brokenness, don’t run from God in shame. Run to God in joyful expectation and hope. He’s the only one who can make you whole again. He delights in being desperately needed.