“When we think that we can fulfill all of our own needs. We are no longer, in our minds and hearts, dependent upon God.”
Pastor, professor and author A.J. Swoboda encourages us to solely depend on God to fulfill our needs. He reveals helpful insight his book, The Dusty Ones.
We all have real needs that only God can meet.
“Either God enjoys creating a people who are constantly thirsty and have parched lips, or God knows that in putting us in places where our needs, where we are most vulnerable and have real needs, that we are most dependent upon Him.
“Needs are so crucial because they are God’s in-built way of constantly reminding us how dependent we are.”
We don’t have to have all of our needs met in order to depend on God’s faithfulness. A.J. shares an example,
“I have a friend who is a sociologist at a local university who told me once that when you look at statistics, the more affluent and well-off someone is, the less likely it is that they are going to be a person of faith, more particularly, a Christian.”
“But when you go to the poorest of the poor; the lowest socioeconomic classes, you go to places where people have the least of their needs met ironically and counter-intuitively, people believe in God more in those places.”
Why is it that people believe in God when the least of their needs are met?
“This has always stuck with me, he said, ‘God is always closest to those who need Him the most.’”
We are encouraged to pray, trust that God will meet our needs and know that He is with us every step of the way, especially in the desert.
A.J. leads us in a prayer,
“Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thank you for the deserts that you placed us in. We don’t always know why you’ve done it God; why we are where we are, we don’t often know how we arrived here, but we do know and we respond to the reality that God, you are with us in the desert and you are with us in our needs.
“We pray together now as your people and invite you, as you did in the desert, rain down manna on our lives, not just physical manna, but bread from heaven and that is Jesus.
“May we eat of you and drink of you and remember this new covenant that we have. That is, the covenant of God’s grace and mercy in Jesus that we find in His death and resurrection. We cling to you Jesus when we don’t have answers; we eat you when we don’t have anything else to eat. You are our hope and our salvation – we trust in you. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
