29 We Just Need Him
WE JUST NEED HIM
Benjamin, my friend Bonnie’s young son, waited patiently for his turn to pray. It was family devotional time, and he listened, head bowed, as someone intoned, “Jesus, we just want to know You better.”
When Ben’s turn came up, he put forth his petitions,then closed by saying, “And Jesus, I hope You get to know me better, too.”
I can identify with Benjamin’s concern. Years ago, while still very young in the faith, I too struggled with some things everybody else seemed to take for granted. Before long, I had cultivated a kind of twisted, upside down view of God’s glory.
Sitting in Sunday school, I listened to all of those stories of how Jesus moved among the crowds—how He was always walking here and there with multitudes of people at his heels. I wondered why.
I found myself slightly repelled by the paintings and drawings of Jesus I saw on the walls and in the Bibles. They always made Him look like some sanctimonious saint—you know, someone with His head way up in the clouds.
As a youngster, I fostered the idea that God was on an ego trip, always telling people how wonderful He was. Telling people that they should get to know Him. Calling lots of folks to follow Him. I got the impression that God just had to be worshiped—that somehow He had to have a big crowd of people adoring Him.
Maybe you’d never admit it out loud, but have you ever found yourself thinking thoughts like those? Do you ever feel like God is making a bit much of all this stuff about His glory? Do you ever wonder if all this attention He is getting is simply satisfying His ego? Do you ever question exactly why God wants us to get to know Him?
If we’re going to wrestle with questions like these, we had better stop using human logic. With God’s help, we need to view these mysteries from His perspective. Many years ago, in a book called A Step Further, I tried to do that. Suppose you, like God, were the most true, just, pure, lovely, and praiseworthy being in existence. And what if everything else in the universe that had any of these qualities got them from you, as a reflection of yourself. For that matter, suppose that without you, these qualities never existed?
If that were the case, then for anyone around you to improve in any way, they would have to become more like you. For you to ask people to think about these good qualities would be to ask them to think about you. Their ego trips would be wrong, for then they would be centering their thoughts around sin and imperfection. But your “ego trip” would be glorious. Indeed, it would be the only hope for humankind, for your so-called ego trip would revolve around perfection.
So when God asks us to think about Him, He asks us to think about everything that is true, just, pure, lovely, and praiseworthy.… He knows how desperately we need His qualities to become ours.
God knows that the more we get to know Him, the more we will know of life—real life—the life we were created to experience. HE IS LIFE.
He understands that by walking with Him, we will better comprehend what genuine love is all about—how it differs from the tawdry imitations put forward by the world. HE IS LOVE.
By focusing our thoughts on Him, we will grasp more fully His goodness, and be all the better for it. HE IS GOODNESS.
Our minds will begin to blossom as we feed on the truth of His Word—pure truth, unadulterated by prejudice, politics, or impure motives. HE IS TRUTH.
We’ll come to see how much we really do depend on Him for everything, from salvation to strength for each day … to the next breath we draw into our lungs.
God wants us to get to know Him intimately—not because He needs our worship, but because we need His strength. It has nothing to do with satisfying His ego but everything to do with our hope of making sense out of life today and finding eternal life in the future.
God’s glory, someone has said, is man’s highest good. The better we know Him and the closer we draw to Him, the stronger, more joyful, more peaceful our lives will be.
Knowing that, He invites us to draw near.
A Step Closer
“Hear, O my people, and I will
warn you—if you would but listen to me,
O Israel!
You shall have no foreign god
among you; you shall not bow down to an alien god.
I am the LORD your God,
who brought you up out of Egypt.
Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.”
PSALM 81:8–10
Psalm 81 reveals the longing of God’s
heart like few other places in Scripture.
Within the lines of this song of Israel,
God groans aloud at the stubborn resistance
and fickle hearts of His people.
You get the picture of a God who longs to
help and defend, who can’t wait to pour out His blessings.
Read the psalm, and feel His heart today.
It’s a good picture of how the Holy Spirit longs
for us to obey His promptings and draw near to Jesus.