The Resurrection Separates Real Needs from Perceived Needs

[HKHaugan]

For many people waking up in the morning is greeted by incessant calls from within…You need to look younger, reflects the mirror… You need to have what they have, says my coveting the larger house in the nicer neighborhood I happen to pass by, you need more money, shouts my limited budget… I need to change my eating habit and lose weight, says weak will power …I need to be better at what I’m doing, says that sense of self-dissatisfaction… I need someone to give me a break, says my tendency to blame the world for where I am…I need to be heard but no one listens to me, says my need for recognition… I want to be one of the in group, says my need for acceptance…I need to stop spending so much and charging my credit card even when I know it’s killing me, says my tendency to not face reality…I need a facelift, says my fear of looking and growing old…I need a new house, a new boss, a new job, a new place to live, says my belief that material possessions and status can answer all my self-fulfillment,…in a word I am never satisfied, says my unfulfilled self…if I could just look good I would feel good, says my alter ego, the list goes on and on. It is those momentary calls from within that plead ‘…if I could have my immediate perceived needs met my life would change, I would be happy inside and be successful in the presence of others.’ There is an ad on TV that shows a man sitting in an electronics store wanting to purchase a TV. The background music supports lyrics that burst out, “I want it all and I want it now.” We live in the midst of a tyranny of immediacy. Sums it all up doesn’t it?

In many ways it seems lonely humanity is a bundle of yearning needs waiting to be met. Jesus tells the story of a man on the way to Jericho who was beaten by robbers and left half dead. If you read that story closely you will see that Jesus was talking about a spiritual condition in all of us. We are born alone having been isolated by sin, left half dead, and, as each of us is on life’s journey, we are victimized by inner insecurities (spirit of fear that clamps onto them) and the insecurities of others. Those insecurities bubble up in our consciousness as perceived needs. Our individuality, our heart is robbed by those who feed on perceived needs (marketing strategies of the advertising industry that are fueled by spirits of lust, compromise, greed, pride, envy, jealousy, idolatry to name a few). Each of us is half dead (because we don’t have the Spirit of real life to discern them and deny them) until that Samaritan comes along, sees our condition, picks us up, fills us with His life through His Spirit and takes us to His inn for salvation’s healing.

Until that happens we are on a downhill road to Jericho where life is all about me and we end up in a Dead Sea of reckless self-indulgence, a process finalizing itself in a state of depressed self-loathing in which we do what is characteristic of our age and that is to blame someone or something outside ourselves for our plight. That process is centered on perceived needs, the meeting of which are momentary, temporary highs like alcohol, drugs, getting trophies, big salaries, notoriety, trophy wives; all band-aids over wounds that need major surgery and offer no long-term stability. This is the stuff of angry rebellion in youth that, if unresolved, becomes a life of lonely superficiality that lashes out at everything and everybody. Unless it is dealt with spiritually the result is joyless crystallized fear, a sculpted statue of rigidity in adulthood. Jesus’ prophetic warning, “Remember Lot’s wife,” becomes a reality. Having started alone we end alone, thus fulfilling the devil’s plan of eternal isolation from God, from ourselves and from others. The picture is one of catatonic isolation from which there is no escape. That, my friends, is hell.

The bottom line is this. There are two realities, one we can see and one we can’t. The problem is that 100% of everything we do is ruled by what we can’t see not what we can see. Who or what are we trusting to deal with the invisible reality we face each day? The very process of life requires constant decision-making. That is an invisible process depending on invisible factors with invisible internal forces as well as invisible external forces.

There is God who is good and is seen in the life and work of Jesus. He wants to love us through a relationship with His Son and gives us an eternity of fulfilled relationships. Then there is the devil, with his forces of evil, who works on the insecurities in each heart. You can always tell when the devil is at work. He tempts us to seek immediate solutions to eternal problems.

It is Jesus who has come from the unseen who has shown us the truth about what the unseen is, the way to move through it and are given a new spiritual life to counter the false life of instant gratification. Paul writes in 2 Cor.4:16-18 Though outwardly we are wasting away (physically decaying), yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day (we are in the process of being spiritually restored through our relationship with Jesus). For our light and momentary troubles (that present us with the choice of who to choose to meet them) are achieving for us (when we let Jesus help us) an eternal glory that far outweighs them all (which is eternal life given us now). So we fix our eyes not on what is seen (our physical environment), but on what is unseen (our spiritual environment). For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18). The final question for every heart is this: Is who or what you trusting to make every decision in the unseen, working for you? Is what you believe about life, the world, people and getting along working for you? Are your present choices working for you? Why Jesus? Is there an alternative? Therefore, why not Jesus?