need for Jesus

Here's just a small part from When People are Big and God is Small. I'll have to one day write down all the quotes I found really good which may be the entire Bible!

In Ed Welch's chapter titled "Fear God and Keep His Commandments", he shares a story about a woman who had it pretty bad. Poor relationships with parents and with her husband. She had a lot of "psychological needs". However, contrary to common cultural and "Christian" thought, there is more than "sympathy".

One reason Christians respond positively to a need psychology is that it takes people's pain seriously. However, this perspective actually make pain worse. It compounds pain by suggesting that not only did the sins of others hurt deeply, but they also deprived you of something - a right, something you were owed - that is necessary for life. Being deeply hurt by others is hard enough, but when we believe that their sin was a near-lethal blow that damaged the core of our being, the hurt is intensified...Therefore one task in counseling is to beginning to separate the real hurt from the pain that is amplified by our own lusts and longings. The result will be simple, gold grief.

Questions to ask yourself: 1. What do you need? 2. Who or who controls you? 3. Where do you put your trust?

With this at the core, she knew that the answer was not to turn to Christ to meet her felt need. That would have made Jesus her personal talisman or idol. Instead, her answer was to put to death her selfish desires and to learn to fear God alone... She found Jeremiah 17:5-10 especially helpful. It showed that the fear of man was the real cause of her emptiness...

It's interesting how Jesus isn't even to make us "feel better" but looking to the cross we are to put to death our sins. Our spiritual needs are greater than any other.

More to come...