God Meets Our Deepest Needs

Charles Stanley once gave a talk called "How God meets our deepest needs;" his talk (in June of 2010) is still available on the website.  According to Stanley, our deepest emotional needs can be summed up this way:  every person has three basic needs that must be met before that person can grow and give---

• We all need a sense of acceptance
• We all need a sense of competence
• We all need a sense of confidence

Unless we feel accepted by the people who are most important to us, we constantly feel rejected---unloved, and therefore unlovable.  Unfortunately, because of the sins and failings of our parents, some of us have not felt accepted growing up, and we are still looking for acceptance from others.  The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to do for us what He did for Jesus at the River Jourdan---to witness to us from within that God has accepted us as His most beloved child.

If we feel unworthy, unacceptable, unloved and unloveable, our only hope to change those deeply-rooted patterns in our brains and cells is to turn to the Holy Spirit and ask for help---for we ourselves do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with unutterable groanings according to the will of God (Rom 8:15-16).

Jesus said, "If anyone love me, the Father and I will come to him and dwell with him....and I will send another Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, to be with you."  The Spirit of God indwells our spirit to witness to us the love of God, who has accepted us.  Jesus said, "If anyone come to me, I will never turn him away, or abandon him."  Jesus took those little esteemed by the world, fishermen and tax-collectors, those looked down on by the establishment, and He set them on "a lampstand" to give light to all in the house of God.  Will He do less with us?

When I started teaching at Delgado, the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me one day as I was in my office:  I will cause you to find favor in the eyes of your superiors, He said.  Somehow, I believed that was truly spoken to me by the Spirit of God.  Never again in 20+ years would I be concerned about the opinions of other people while I was at work----God Himself had given me a sense of acceptance, of competence, and of confidence---and with that, freedom to pursue the things I felt were important.

Jesus told us:  You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. When the Spirit of the Lord reveals to us the truth about who we are in God, we are truly free to be that person without fear.