Our Deepest Need

10/16/2005

What would it take to get to the deepest part of you? Maybe you don’t even want to think about it…but God knows. He knows exactly what is needed to expose the most protected part of our heart, the part we will hold onto with all our might. There are many, many layers in a human heart. Like an onion, God will peel away at our heart until our deepest need has been revealed. Why? Because He already knows our deepest need, and that is Jesus Christ. Our Father knows we need Him long before we do and He must bring things into our lives until that need for Him has been exposed.

Why expose it?
So our deepest need can be satisfied. So we can live forgiven and enjoy the abundant life God has offered us. So we won’t miss the very best God has for us here and forevermore. God is not exposing our deepest need to harm us; He is exposing that need to help us find Him.

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father
and we will be satisfied.”
John 14:8 (NLT)

Many years ago, I don’t remember exactly when, but I was probably in my twenties, I made a “deal” with God. I said, “God, you can do anything you want to me just don’t paralyze me and don’t take my child.” Now I wonder what I was thinking?!! Did I know long before it was revealed to me what it would take to peel away the layers of my heart and realize my need for Jesus Christ? I can’t say as yet that I have the answer to that, but it astounds me that those were the two things I knew I could not handle. I knew I was strong, that I could withstand most anything that came into my life, anything but that. I guess I knew that ultimately they would destroy me should they happen. What I didn’t know then is what God has since revealed to me…the very things that will destroy us without Him, are the very things that will lead us to Him and save us!

I don’t like this about myself, this “conversation” I had with God way back when…it makes me question whether my stubbornness, my pride, my independence caused the death of my son? These are not easy things to consider…and yet even in that I know that God loves me and everything that He brings into our lives is for our own good and for an eternal purpose.

For me, there are two ways to look at the situation I find myself in now. The first one is that my pride, stubbornness and independence worked against me and ended up causing me great pain. I lost my son because I would not hold my children with an open hand to the ways of God. It was my fault, my failings that brought this into my life. I was making “deals” with God that I had no right to be making. I am to blame…

The second way of looking at this situation is the one I believe is the truth of the matter, and although it contains parts of the first one, it also contains the hope and the peace many of us miss when we blame ourselves even for things that are out of our control. The way that I look at this situation now is that I do believe my pride, stubbornness and independence played a part in why our son now lives in heaven, but it is not something that happened because of my so-called, “deal” with God. God is so much bigger than that, He is the beginning and the end, He knew each day of my life before I was ever born.

You saw me before I was born. Every day
of my life was recorded in your book. Every
moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
Psalm 139:15 (NLT)

God knew my personality going into this…He was the One who gave it to me. He knows our every thought before we think it, He knows our every decision before we ever make it, nothing is a mystery or a surprise to Him. He is not disappointed because of who we are, He already knows what we will do each day of our life. He knows the day we will be born; He knows the day we will die.

I thought about that as we were waiting for our granddaughter to be born in August. It seemed it would be one day, then the labor pains for our daughter-in-law stopped. Then it seemed it would be the next day, but they stopped again. Finally on the day our little Kylie was born, the water broke, and we knew it was the day!! There was no turning back then, it was only a matter of time and she would be here.

On the day she was born, we were there, privileged to be able to hold her when she was no more than a half hour old. It was the 14th of August 2005, when we welcomed Kylie into the world. Our hearts were full of God’s blessing on that day. As we left the hospital, it was like God whispered to my heart, “It’s the 14th.” Then it dawned on me, God had taken Phil home on the 14th of the month, and He had given us Kylie on the 14th of the month. It was His little reminder that He is in all things, that He is in control, and that life and death are in His hands.

“The Lord gave me everything I had,
and the Lord has taken it away.
Praise the name of the Lord!”
Job 1:21b (NLT)

In the perfect plan of God, He knows who we are and what will be required in our lives to bring us to Him. Before the world began, God knew He would be creating you and me. He knew in my life that I would have a third son, that through his life I would learn great lessons about compassion, about service, about all the ways of God. As God created me with all my pride and stubbornness and independence, He also provided a way that I would not miss Him while I was here. Through great hurt and great loss, I would find my God.

I can see it all now as the perfect plan of God. Phil’s life was meant to change mine and the lives of many others who knew him. His life was not cut short, it was exactly what it was meant to be. It was not without the trials and difficult struggles we all have to face, but those trials and struggles were completed in a shorter amount of time than most. God brought Phil and all of us here for a specific purpose, to know Him and to reach out and touch those around us through the relationship we have with Jesus Christ.

Phil has no idea the amount of lives he has touched, none of us do. Phil had no idea that his struggles, his pain, his home-going were the tools God would use to give my life deeper meaning, greater purpose and an eternal perspective on this world and all it contains--that God would use his life to reach into the deepest part of my heart and expose my deepest need.

Phil’s life was a gift to me, and to those who knew him. It was all in God’s plan before time began, and anything that I might have done or not done could not change that. It was what was needed to fulfill the will of God in this situation.

It doesn’t make any of this easy, but it does bring peace to it. We can blame ourselves, berate ourselves for all the ways we fail, for all the mistakes we make, for all the things we should have done to change what has happened, but God knew it all before we were ever born. God knew exactly what would be needed in each of our lives to take our focus off this world and place it on Him. The question is, will we? Will we turn to Him, look at Him and find the truth He so longs to share with us, or will we turn away from Him and be forever lost? Will we allow what hurts us most to reach down into the deepest part of our heart and expose our greatest need…the need for Jesus Christ, finding our satisfaction in Him?

I thought I needed my children above all else, or to not be limited physically, and that was not what I needed at all. What I needed was to know that there is so much more to this life than what we see each day. I needed the assurance that only Jesus Christ can give, that no matter what I have done, how miserably I have failed, how difficult this life can get, there is Hope in Him. There is forgiveness and life-everlasting. We cling to what is so temporary, most times, and miss what is of eternal importance.

I thought my deepest need had to do with what I wanted, my selfish desires…that’s the devil’s lie. It’s a lie that will keep us bound in chains if we will not allow God to expose what lives even deeper than that in our heart…our need for Him. When we get there, to the deepest cavern of our heart and open it up to the light of God, we will see things in a whole new way. That’s where God brings in His peace that transcends human understanding.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:7 (NIV)

It cannot be done in the flesh; our nature is just not willing. It has to be done in the supernatural, and in a way that just does not make sense to the world around us. Here we have set rules, set ways of looking at things, set ways of how we think things should be done. How can we accept the fact that God would bring a child into this world for the sole purpose of changing lives and refocusing them on Him? What kind of a God is that?

I say that’s a very loving, caring God, who knows exactly what He is doing! My flesh cannot say that, my flesh balks at that, refuses to want to believe that, cannot understand that way of thinking! But, my spirit, filled with the Spirit of God, can say that, can accept that, and can believe and understand that that may be exactly God’s plan and purpose for some on this earth. And from Phil’s point of view, what a privilege it must have been for him to be used of God in that way, especially when he arrived Home and his earthly job was completed in just 16 years!! That’s a pretty short stint in the army of God--it seems most of us have to re-enlist several times over during the course of our lives before we are relieved of our earthly “duty.” Those who go Home early are the most blessed of all!

As I was talking with a friend the other day who is dealing with the loss of a spouse, it was plain to see that those of us left behind have a tough job. God’s plan is detailed, and it is difficult. The only way to make any sense of it is to not question the strategy of our Creator, but to trust Him and follow Him all the days of our lives. To wait on Him and watch what He is doing with those things in our lives that confuse us the most. To bring the deepest part of our heart to Him daily, crying out to Him, searching through His Word, and allowing God to work through it all in His own way and in His own timing. The process is long and hard and can get pretty messy, but the end result is Victory!!

“Time is nothing to God. For a while you said—‘I asked God to give me bread, and He gave me a stone.’ He did not, and today you find He gave you the bread of life.”
(O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, October 11th.)

Many things are not resolved in a day, a week, or even longer. Many things need to be taken to God over and over and over until God gives us a peace in our heart that transcends all understanding. Many things will not make sense to us, they may seem wrong and we may try to make them right with all our might, but it may never be so. There must come a time of acceptance, for the will of God to prevail, for us to give up any right to ourselves and just be…that place of just being can only be found in one place…the deepest part of our heart, the place that God is seeking.

Everything that happens here is for our own good because God doesn’t want us to miss Him in our lifetime…if we do; we miss what this life was all about. God created us to know Him, to love Him, to be with Him. We were disconnected from Him in the Garden when man first sinned. We were reconnected with Him when Jesus left the Garden of Gethsemane and went to the Cross to cover our sins with His blood. It’s been a rough road, for all of us. Jesus was no exception; in fact, He was not spared at all from the suffering, the sorrow, the pain, the rejection and the eventual death of His earthly body. Our Father has not asked anything of us that He did not ask of His very own Son. In all of it, there is a greater purpose…God knows what He is doing. Jesus had to trust His Father, and we must follow His example.

No, we don’t want to…don’t be surprised at that. That is very human, very natural, very normal. Our flesh will fight against trusting God, that’s no big surprise to Him. Our pride will rise up and we will want to resist giving that place in our heart to God. We think it is ours to keep, and it will take every ounce of spiritual fortitude to say, “I’m Yours Lord, do with me what You will.”

Last night at church we sang, “I surrender all to You…,” I remembered singing those same words right before I was baptized. Right as I stepped into the baptismal tank, the worship band started playing that song. I knew it was in the perfect plan of God. Phil was very sick and I knew what God was asking me to give up. It didn’t take the mind of a genius to realize that. Many who watched me being baptized knew of our situation, many did not, but God knew what was ahead of us. I had to release any control I thought I had in my life and place it in the hands of God if I were ever to find any peace in what was to come.

Releasing the control of our lives is a daily exercise. As I sang the song last night I knew I must constantly place our other sons, our daughters-in-law, our grandchildren, and everything that is most important in the hands of God. We are much too quick to take everything back again when times are good, we start deciding things on our own, making our own plans…we have to continually give the control back to God. Not that He needs us to, it already belongs to Him, but we need to, for our own good, until “Christ is fully developed in” our lives. (Gal. 4:19 NLT)

The only way Christ can be fully developed in our lives is to give Him our lives, lock, stock and barrel. To expose everything to Him, to ask Him for His help to clear out all the garbage that gets in the way of our relationship with Him, to surrender all to Him and be willing to take our orders from Him. It is a long process, one that will not be finished until we meet Him face to face on that final day.

He bent his bow and aimed it squarely at me.
He shot his arrows deep into my heart…He
has given me a cup of deep sorrow to drink…
Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:
The unfailing love of the Lord never ends!
Lamentations 3:12,13, 15, 21,22 (NLT)

For the Lord does not abandon anyone forever.
Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion
according to the greatness of his unfailing love.
For he does not enjoy hurting people or causing
them sorrow.
Lamentations 3:31-33 (NLT)

God has a plan and a purpose for all things. He is in control. The question is, when He shoots “his arrows deep into” our heart, how will we respond?
With anger?
With bitterness?
With resentment?
Or will we remember that “the unfailing love of the Lord never ends?” That His ultimate goal is to bring us close to Him, under His wing, and safely Home when our time on earth is finished?

Will we allow God’s plan to unfold, to be used for His glory, to give Him the freedom to work in our lives by inviting Him into the deepest part of our heart--or will we insist that His ways are wrong, fight for our right to be “right,” and never allow Him to touch us that deeply, to change us that miraculously or to use us in such a mighty way for His Kingdom? It is a choice we must make…

I don’t want to miss what God is doing. My son’s life was precious to me, to many who knew him. The very stubbornness that played a part in this in the first place will now be used for good. I will allow God access into the deepest recesses of my heart to serve Him better. What the devil meant for harm will be used for good. The enemy wins too many of these battles, takes too many down who drown in the sorrow of it all. We must refuse to be one of the “casualty” cases because:

…you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won your
fight with these false prophets, because the Spirit who lives in you
is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. 1 John 4:4 (NLT)

For every child of God defeats this evil world by trusting Christ to give the victory. And the ones who win this battle against the world are the ones who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. (1 John 5:4-5 (NLT)

That’s why God has to get to the very deepest part of our heart and touch us there. Because that is where His Son resides when we open ourselves up to Him. Jesus can’t live in our arm, in our foot, or even in our mind, His Spirit must live in the deepest part of our heart so that everything that flows out of us begins and ends with Him. We can live without an arm, without a foot or even a mind, but when our heart stops beating, our days on this earth are finished. Jesus must be our everything, or we’ll be defeated long before we ever cross that finish line.

I made a deal with God, “Don’t take my child or my physical abilities.”
God said, “I want your whole heart, and I love you enough to use whatever is needed in your life to bring you to Me.”

It didn’t feel like love, it felt like the most intense emotional pain I had ever endured.
I thought I would die…God wanted me to truly live.
That is only made possible when our heart beats for Him alone, when our deepest need has been satisfied by a loving Savior.

Continuing to learn,
Diane