The importance of need
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The Importance of Need
The Importance of Need
1 Bow down Your ear, O Lord, hear me; For I am poor and needy. 2 Preserve my life, for I am holy; You are my God; Save Your servant who trusts in You!
4 Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; And let those who love Your salvation say continually, “Let God be magnified!” 5 But I am poor and needy; Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay.
We need to know that We need God.
It is this understanding that we pull us towards the living God.
A lot of people because of their pride and ego they think they don’t need God.
Firstly We need God for our salvation.
Without God we are lost
Sadly the only way many will realise their need for God is in time of trouble.
16 Lord, in trouble they have visited You, They poured out a prayer when Your chastening was upon them. 17 As a woman with child Is in pain and cries out in her pangs, When she draws near the time of her delivery, So have we been in Your sight, O Lord.
From the point of salvation, many of us were introduced to God, or began to have relationship with God as a result of a specific need in our life.
Manaseh as an example
9 So Manasseh seduced Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel. 10 And the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they would not listen. 11 Therefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the army of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze fetters, and carried him off to Babylon. 12 Now when he was in affliction, he implored the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, 13 and prayed to Him; and He received his entreaty, heard his supplication, and brought him back to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. 14 After this he built a wall outside the City of David on the west side of Gihon, in the valley, as far as the entrance of the Fish Gate; and it enclosed Ophel, and he raised it to a very great height. Then he put military captains in all the fortified cities of Judah. 15 He took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem; and he cast them out of the city.
our need will humble us before God and drive us to God in prayer and supplication.
That time of his life when he was in need, it was something that changed his life around.
3 The foolishness of a man twists his way, And his heart frets against the Lord.
Proverbs 19:3 NLT “People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the LORD.”
1 Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim, of the mountains of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. 2 And he had two wives: the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. 3 This man went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. Also the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the priests of the Lord, were there. 4 And whenever the time came for Elkanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. 5 But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the Lord had closed her womb. 6 And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable, because the Lord had closed her womb. 7 So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that she provoked her; therefore she wept and did not eat. 8 Then Elkanah her husband said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?” 9 So Hannah arose after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the tabernacle of the Lord. 10 And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish. 11 Then she made a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head.” 12 And it happened, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth. 13 Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. 14 So Eli said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!” 15 But Hannah answered and said, “No, my lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. 16 Do not consider your maidservant a wicked woman, for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief I have spoken until now.” 17 Then Eli answered and said, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition which you have asked of Him.” 18 And she said, “Let your maidservant find favor in your sight.” So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. 19 Then they rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord, and returned and came to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her. 20 So it came to pass in the process of time that Hannah conceived and bore a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, “Because I have asked for him from the Lord.”
1 Need will draw you to God
Hannah had a need, and that need drew her to God, she began to pray like never before.
She taught that she was bringing her need to God, but God had purposed to use that need to bring her to him.
2. You begin to know God’s heart.
10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,
I am talking to the righteous
God was suffering, he was in need of a child for his house
He could not find a person who could pray in a way that would bring about a child that would meet God’s need. So he created a need in Hannah life so that she could see his need.
You begin to start to see what concerns God, what his needs are.
For example Abraham praying and interceeding for the righeous men of lot.
3. You start to see God greater than your need
God becomes more important to you than what you are seeking him for,
Hannah was willing to Give her only son to God, without seeking for another (since she did not pray).
The same with Abraham, he was willing to give up his only Son because all those years of prayer for his need had transformed him to realise that God is more important than his needs.
4. God’s power is revealed through our needs
There is a reason why David when he prayed he always mentioned before God that he was in need.
1 Bow down Your ear, O Lord, hear me; For I am poor and needy. 2 Preserve my life, for I am holy; You are my God; Save Your servant who trusts in You!
4 Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; And let those who love Your salvation say continually, “Let God be magnified!” 5 But I am poor and needy; Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay.
8 Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
When God want to do a particuler work through your life, he makes you needy, so you can depend on him and so that he gets all the glory.
God used Gedion to deliver the Israelites from the medianites.
When Gedion had 32,000 solders to go with him, God told him to only use 300, which is 0.93 % of what he had. This was to keep him dependant on God for the Victory that he was going to have.