I was close to dreaming last night when a thought woke me up “God doesn’t need me, he wants me.” I don’t know why I had this thought, I was so sleepy, and then the thought came, and from there you know how thoughts go. I had to deepen the thought, I needed to think more about why God doesn’t need me, was that even a truth? So then my thoughts took control and I was further away from sleep than I wanted.
God doesn’t need me. He doesn’t. I can’t do anything for Him. He created me, he created the world, he didn’t need me to create the world, He made it all by Himself. Yep, I didn’t help Him. So He doesn’t need me to do anything to keep this world going, He’s got things under control. He does, however, want me. He wants me to be a part of this world, and He has things He wants me to do, but He does not need me to do them. The things He wants me to do are for my benefit or the benefit of others, but not His. He wants me, He does not need me. Want and need are two different things. I am not going to explain them, I expect most people understand the difference between the two.
We seem to think God needs us, so we feel guilty when we don’t do the right thing. He needs us, so when we mess up, He must be mad at us. How many times has someone been mad at us because we messed up at work, or at home, and someone had to do our work, or fix what we broke? So we think God has to do extra work or something when we aren’t doing our job. We feel like we’ve messed up the world when we do the wrong thing. The truth is the world is already messed up. When we do the wrong thing we mess ourselves up. When we do the right thing, we make ourselves better, and others benefit from our doing the right thing. God is ok whether we do the wrong or right thing, but when we mess up, we are not ok, and those around us are not ok. We might get mad at ourselves but God isn’t mad at us.
God isn’t angry with you. In the Bible you read about judgement and you read about God’s wrath, but let me say it again, God isn’t mad at you.
Let’s imagine there is a little kid who wants to play with a dog down the street. His mom has told him not to play with this dog, several times. The mom knows the dog is bigger than her child, she knows it’s not a “gentle” breed, but a guard dog. Guard dogs aren’t bad, they have a purpose. Would the child be “sinning” if all he wanted to do was pet the dog? Um…no. It’s not a sin to pet a guard dog, maybe not the smartest thing to do, but not a sin. But the child doesn’t know this, he thinks Mom is being unfair and thinks he can take care of himself. One day the child walks over to the fence and sticks his hand inside to pet the dog. The dog nearly bites the child’s hand off. There is blood every where. All of a sudden things just got messy. Sin is like that…it doesn’t seem bad, but all sin really is is disobedience. Sin sounds like such an ugly word, the word “disobedience’ is more relatable. But they are one and the same thing.
Back to the child. Does the child go back home and yell at his mom? Does the child think the mom is mad at him and has punished him? After all the mom warned him not to go and play with this dog. Can we blame the dog? Nope, the dog was doing his job. What about the child? The child just wanted to play with the dog, it doesn’t make the child bad. Can we blame the mom? Where was she? Why didn’t she stop the child? She could have kept him inside all day, locked up in his room so he wouldn’t hurt himself…but that doesn’t seem very nice. After all if she did that, the child’s freedom would be at stake. The child did disobey his mom, which led to him almost losing his hand.
The child will not go home and yell at his mom. BUT he will go home crying and his mom will rush to him, she will take care of him, shushing him, talking sweetly to him, she will pick him up and rush him to the hospital if need be. Will she be so mad at him that she turns him away? What mother would do that? What human being would be so mad at their child for disobeying them they would let them bleed to death? News flash! God doesn’t turn away from you for disobeying him. It’s not in His DNA, He is more than a superhuman, He can handle disobedience, it’s us humans that can’t handle it.
What would happen to the child if he did not go home to his mom after being bit? Would he bleed to death, depending on the size of the wound? Would the hand get infected? What would happen to him if he thought his mom was mad, and he decided never to go and talk to her again? What if he decided his disobedience was too great for his mom to handle? What if your disobedience has kept you from going to God? What if you are afraid of God? But what if God just really cares about you and wants to love and protect you?
God isn’t going to turn you away for disobeying him, he is going to send his angels to you, He is going to speak words of love over you till you hear Him, He is not going to give up on you. He wrote an entire book for you. He whispers words of love through the trees, which float on the wind all around you. You don’t need human ears to hear him, you need a mind that is awake to Him. If He only spoke in an audible voice how would deaf people hear him? He doesn’t need a physical voice to communicate with you. He communicates with you every day, He hasn’t skipped any days, you may have stopped listening, but He hasn’t stopped talking. He shares his thoughts with you, you just have to share your thoughts with him, it’s called prayer.
God isn’t mad at you. I don’t know you, I don’t know what you’ve done or what you think is so bad beyond help, but you are not gone. God doesn’t need you so he isn’t mad at you. He does love you, and He does want you. Whatever you’ve done has hurt you (or maybe something someone else has done has hurt you). If you never bring yourself to God and let him take care of you, you will go on hurting, you will go on bleeding, and you might never be fixed. It’s ok to be broken, it’s ok to have messed up. It’s ok. God wants to fix you, but you have to bring yourself to him, and you have to allow the healing to happen. You are not ok by yourself. You are not ok without Him. He is ok, you are not.
It doesn’t come easy to me to think that God doesn’t need me. But if God needed me then the world would surely be in trouble, because I am pretty imperfect, I am unstable, I worry a lot, I am selfish, I am anxious, and I am scared most of the time. It’s a good thing God doesn’t need me. But I love Him, and He loves me and if He calls me to do something I want to do it, not because He needs me to do it, but because He loves me.
If you still are trying to reason that God does need you, so He must be mad at you for not doing the right thing, think about this. A person has fallen from a cliff, and is barely hanging on. A rope is thrown to this person. Does the person need the rope? Or does the rope need the person? Obviously, that’s a silly question. But it’s so ingrained in us for some reason that God needs us and therefore He is angry when we mess up. I’ve been a Christian my whole life and I still struggle with this. God doesn’t need you to throw him a rope, you wouldn’t be strong enough to pull him up anyway. You need Him, you so desperately need Him.
It’s not easy, but the first thing you can do is just open your mind to Him, just your thoughts. You don’t have to say anything, just let Him know you are open to Him. Ask Him to show you how to communicate with Him, ask Him for help. God’s anger was nailed to a cross, His son Jesus died in our place. There is no wrath or anger for those that believe in Him. I promise He won’t turn you away. I promise He will be there for you, and I promise your life will start to change. God loves you, He isn’t mad at you.