Do you meet “my need” or “my Jesus?”

In my early life, I walked about this earth strutting my need. I guess it’s just common that when we are wounded we can be a sucking vortex rather than our true person. It’s like we’re looking for someone to kiss our boo-boo to make our pain go away. The problem is that inherently most people reject and resist this demand for comfort rather than satisfy it. We know when someone wants something from us, and we instinctively know when it’s illegitimate. We tend to run the other way. This makes for a cauldron of rejection, which then feeds our need, making us needier. It’s a vicious cycle.

Is that Need or Jesus

But today I want to talk about the paradox—walking in Christ. I’ve learned that when people meet Jesus in me, He often elicits the very response that my need would have wanted. Isn’t it odd that when I deny myself and let my needy old man die, Christ’s resurrected Life satisfies those very needs? What I was looking for is fulfilled in Christ.

So then, when people meet us, do they meet our need or Jesus? When we walk through the world, is it “Christ” or “me” they see? I assure you, One gives while the other takes, and One is Life and the other death.

Give Me Jesus

Recently I showed that we are a living tabernacle of Christ’s presence. We’re indwelt by the Living God, which means we carry His presence everywhere we go. But if I travel through this world peddling my needs, I hide His Light beneath my bushel, so to speak. On the other hand, if I allow Christ’s Life and Light to shine, not only do I experience Him but I am satisfied in the core of my being. My so-pervasive need withers away in Him. And there is no amount of panhandling which can ever amass the contentment I receive in Him.

But thanks be to God, who always puts us on display in Christ and through us spreads the aroma (fragrance) of the knowledge of Him in every place.
2 Corinthians 2:14 HCSB

Jesus by Design

Attempting to find someone who might meet my needs is an exercise in futility. I was never designed to live like this. I was fashioned to carry the Living Christ in my world and let His Life impact that landscape. While it is not easy to choose to embrace the cross and deny self, it is the most fruitful and eternal choice I make.

Because the God who said, Out of darkness light shall shine, is the One who shined in our hearts to illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not out of us.”
2 Corinthians 4:6-7