These were the very first words that greeted me as I stepped into church this morning where the worship band was practicing.
Just recently I was talking with an unbeliever about faith and she made the often-heard comment, "that's not for me." Especially in the last couple years of attending secular campuses, I have heard these phrases and seen this kind of attitude. "That's good for you. It's not for me. I don't need that." Underneath these nice, neat, vague comments is a mindset that says a relationship with God acts as a crutch. I have felt the weight of those words and I start to wonder: is it true? Am I needier or weaker than most?
But before I can accuse non-Christians of denial, I'm forced to ask myself: do I belittle my need for God?
The conviction hit hard for me just two or three weeks ago. I had had an amazing semester, an amazing year of growth in my walk with God. He's opened my eyes to a whole vault of fear that I've been hanging onto for dear life. But somewhere in the midst of the lessons I was learning, a terrible sort of pride began to rise up in me. I started to think that if I could just read enough books and blogs, and if I thought hard enough and made enough better choices, I could change myself. It didn't seem at all wrong for quite a while. After all, these were Christian books, Christian blogs...and yet, suddenly I found myself looking for a savior in something other than God. I was trying to use knowledge to control my spiritual growth.
And I find this: if I am not proclaiming my need for God, I am secretly trying to meet my need with something less than Him.
In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis states that "our Need-love for God is in a different position [than our need-love for people] because our need of Him can never end either in this world or in any other. But our awareness of it can, and then the Need-love dies too." But that must be a dangerous position because he also asserts that "one Need-love, the greatest of all, either coincides with or at least makes a main ingredient in man's highest, healthiest, and most realistic spiritual condition."
Perhaps when we deny our neediness, we are actually cutting off the very means that brings us to Him. Perhaps I should be most afraid when I think I'm doing just fine. In this world full of self-improvement books and all kinds of advice that basically claim you gotta pull yourself up by your bootstraps, God offers something so wildly unique, something so startlingly opposite that we have to take notice. He invites us to surrender. He tells us that we have a gaping hole that can only be filled with Him. It goes against everything we feel is right.
But...didn't He show us the way? He came as a baby - Need in its most obvious form - having to be held and cared for. So if He - very God - came to us in need, doesn't that mean we must come confessing our need if we are ever to receive the fullness of Love?
I want to leave you with this one story that touched my heart yesterday. Kara Tippetts is a mother of four, an author, and a very brave woman. And she is dying of cancer. I came across her blog a couple days ago and was struck by her post titled, "Meet Norman." "Norman" is the name of her wheelchair. She confesses, "you can imagine I don't love having a wheelchair. In some ways, it admits defeat. I'm learning a new corner of my own vanity...It's hard to admit weakness. Norman and I get to figure this out. We get to learn this new hard corner of life. We get to admit we need help, and strength of another and gentle care."
Will we be brave enough to admit weakness? Will we admit we need Him?