Quotes about Need

All the arts serving human desires and needs are derived from the breath that Godsent into the human body.

We can depend upon it that people will never come to Jesus and stay with Jesus and live for Jesus unless they really know why they are to come and what their need is.

What do we think of Christ? Have we felt our need of Him and fled to Him for peace? Is He king over our hearts and all things to our souls? What do we think of the Holy Spirit? Has He wrought a saving work in our hearts? Has He renewed and changed them? Has He made us partakers of the divine nature? Life or death depend on our answers to these questions. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him (Romans 8:9).

We may depend upon it, men will never come to Jesus and stay with Jesus and live for Jesus, unless they really know why they are to come and what is their need. Those whom the Spirit draws to Jesus are those whom the Spirit has convinced of sin. Without thorough conviction of sin, men may seem to come to Jesus and follow Him for a season, but they will soon fall away and return to the world.

Thirst is a symptom of need, the body's way of telling me to take action. If I don't listen, I end up dehydrated and all sorts of bad things can happen, including loss of consciousness and death. Spiritual dryness is also a symptom: Something is wrong! Take action! I'm drying up! I need God. My soul's longing for God is as never-ending as my physical need for water. And spiritual dehydration leads to spiritual death.

To love God is to cooperate with His grace. And since I'm so very aware of my own need for grace, I must be willing to freely give it away. Each hole left from rejection must become an opportunity to create more and more space for grace in my heart.

No, it's not wrong to need people. But some of our biggest disappointments in life are the result of expectations we have of others that they can't ever possibly meet. That's when the desire to connect becomes an unrealistic need. Unrealistic neediness is actually greediness in disguise.

If our souls never ached with disappointments and disillusionments, we'd never fully admit and submit to our need for God. If we weren't ever shattered we'd never know the glorious touch of the Potter making something glorious out of dust, out of us.

Prayer is such an intimate act, a place of vulnerability. It is, hopefully, when we are our least guarded, our most honest selves. And this is good, of course; this is as it ought to be. When we come to God, we certainly want to come as honestly and openly as we can; we want to be our truest selves before him. Prayer lets us be in a place of need.

Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need," wrote George MacDonald. "Prayer is the beginning of that communion and some need is the motive of that prayer."

I am careful how I bring my emotion, or my experience, to the need at hand. I don't ignore them; but neither do I let them dictate what I am praying. Our testimonies of previous results are valuable, and they may come into play. But this is a very dynamic story we find ourselves in, and as we mature in prayer, let us be careful not to assume this situation is exactly the same as the one before. You will want to ask God what needs to be prayed.

We have sought for devices that make us feel good without being good. We have tried to banish evil without quitting evil. In the end, we have sought peace of mind without moral price. Simply stated, we want the gifts of God without the need of God.