“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16
“Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!” Psalm 107:1
How many of us have never done anything wrong? How many of us have nothing we regret? How many of us can say we have lived a perfect life never saying a cross word or hurting anyone’s feelings? That would be none of us. We are all imperfect. We bring our biases and our hurts with us into each relationship. We are flawed and covered in warts. But the great thing to remember is in all our imperfections: God loves us anyway.
Have you ever thought about that? Really thought about that? God loves us when we say hurtful words. God loves us when we ignore doing what is right? God loves us when we don’t speak up for things that are unjust. God loves us when we don’t go to church. God loves us when we don’t even acknowledge that God exists. God love us. Period. And that is simply amazing!!!
Do you know any one in your life who loves you that way? Completely unconditionally? I don’t. I doubt you do either. Because the bottom line is, we tend to love conditionally. Why? Because we all have needs, we try to get filled through other people. Unmet needs can cause a lot of heart ache in our relationships. And we are guilty of not meeting the needs of the people we love as they are of not meeting the needs we may have in any given moment. In fact, we are unable to get all our needs met if we wait on people to meet them. But…God can and will meet every one of our needs when we turn to God in all things.
But there is one thing we can do to help us get our needs met within our relationships. First, we need to figure out what it is we want. Then…and this can be the hard part, we need to ask for it. I have no idea why people have such a hard time asking for what they need. Except, maybe I do. Too often when we have done the work to understand what our specific and precise needs really are, and then ask for them to be met…our requests are met with things like, “what do you want that for,” or “that’s a silly thing to ask for,” or some other derisive comment that stops us from asking further. We shut down and begin to think, that what is important to us, doesn’t really matter. That is a lie we tell ourselves as we deal with the hurt of not getting our needs met. What is important to us does matter. Even more our needs matter to God.
Getting our unmet needs met, is critical for our emotional well being and here I am not talking about the physical needs we may have on any given day. If we didn’t get the love, comfort, security or other emotional needs met while growing up we will have a hard time with the many different ways we connect as people. Meeting a child’s emotional needs is critical to their overall well-being in life. Acknowledging those unmet emotional needs as an adult is the first step toward healing them and learning how to embrace your best you.
I encourage anyone struggling with this, to seek counseling as you learn how to heal those unmet needs from your past and learn how to ask to get those needs met in your present. What better day than to begin your journey towards emotional and mental health than today: World Mental Health Day.
Right now, what I want you to remember is this: God loves you, warts and all.
Peace,
Pastor Beth
Beth's Blog 