Good morning. Everyone wants to be needed. It’s intrinsically tied to our sense of worth and value. If the people closest to me didn’t need me, if I felt that my New Life Christian family didn’t need me, why, even if for some reason it became clear that our two little dogs no longer needed me, my life would lose much of its purpose and energy. I think that this is one of the traps that we unintentionally set for our most elderly. We tell them that they have “done their bit” and now it is time to sit back and relax. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of you, or make sure that others will.” It is when any person feels that they are no longer needed that they begin to question if they are not loved, or at least no longer appreciated. We need to be needed, always. One of the first things that happened after the creation of man and their placement in the Garden of Eden was that God gave them a job to do. They were busy, and they felt needed.
While we all want to be needed and want to relate to someone whom we need, there is no relationship where this is more crucial than our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We need Him. There is none more deserving to be the focus of our dependance and the absolute, all-sufficient resource for life than Jesus. That is why it may seem strange to read that He is standing at the door to every one of our hearts, knocking, waiting to be allowed to come in. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Revelation 3:19-20
Intimacy with our Lord requires that we are serious about our needs, and that we will repent so that He may join us fully and meet our needs. I have always found the image presented in these verses interesting. Jesus, who is creator God as well as our personal Savior, does not barge in. Jesus patiently stands at the door to our heart and knocks, waiting for us to open the door and welcome Him. We need to recognize our need.
Repentance is coming home to God. Rebellion takes us away from Him. Disobedience takes us out of His arms and away from His care, but repentance means doing a “180,” which is to say that we turn ourselves completely around and head the opposite direction. Repentance means coming home to our loving Father who meets our needs.
Intimacy with God through accepting the love of Jesus into the depth of our heart is not possible as long as we foster sin. God will not be intimately joined with evil (sin). Repentance is all about turning back to Him and welcoming His presence, which brings with it the cleansing power of forgiveness. We repent, and the righteousness of Jesus Christ becomes our righteousness, and we are made right for God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Repentance means change. The word is translated from the Greek word monteneo which simply means to change direction. It is not sufficient to change our mind, we must also change our path. We must stop wandering away and instead turn back to Him, back home to the arms of God.
In a nutshell, repentance means accepting the fact of dependency, which is to fully admit that we have needs that cannot be met without the aid of another. Repentance means that we abandon our plans and our paths that rely on us “doing it our own way,” and accept the truth that our own way leads to disaster while God’s way is the path to forgiveness which brings peace, joy, love, and life.
God created us to need to be needed. That means that we are created with a need to be useful to others, and a need to be appreciated, and a need to be loved. It is in that need to be useful-appreciated-loved that we come to recognize and understand our need for our heavenly Father. God created us to realize the need to know Him intimately, for as much as we may be needed by others, we all know that we are never in and of ourselves fully capable of meeting our own needs.
Jesus stands at the door and knocks. He is waiting for us to turn to Him, and to return to Him, and to bid Him enter. We need Him. Every day, every hour, we need Him.
Open the door today.
Vern