Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, November 21st. Jesus said, You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Today, you'll be challenged to take an honest look to find the origin of your unmet needs. God has an answer for all of our unmet needs. If they are material needs, He has a material answer. If they are physical needs, He has a physical answer. If they are emotional needs, He has an emotional answer. And if they are spiritual needs, He has a spiritual answer. God will not meet emotional needs with material answers.
He's not going to meet spiritual needs with some physical answer. God wants us to become whole persons and therefore, He wants us to discover what our need is. He wants us to understand where this need came from.
He wants to make us whole persons. In this message, I want to talk about the source, the origin of our needs. And what I'd like to do also is to give you someone in the Scripture who would relate to that need and then personally to explain how these things come about in our life and how they can be met.
So I want you to turn, if you will, to Philippians chapter 4 and the 19th verse to remind you again of this awesome promise that our Lord has made. Paul said, My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus, which was His way of promising to us that on the basis of our relationship to Him, He would make every single need that we have, He would make it available. Now, what is the source of these needs in our life? Now remember, we want to get under the surface of that. We all know that we have such needs as food, clothing and shelter, and that we have those common needs that everybody has in life. We understand that.
So what are those issues in life that cause us to have difficulty ever having any peace and joy? Because there are people who have every material thing, all the recognition, all the prominence, all the prestige. They have all the notoriety. They have anything in the world they could possibly own.
And they're still deep down inside. There is a level of misery they cannot understand and cannot handle. Well, the first source of these needs, look at it this way. The first source of those needs we create for ourselves. And I want us to turn, if you will, to Luke chapter 15 for a moment. And let's look at the example of one who created his own need.
No question about his need. The 15th chapter of Luke, you'll recall that this son asked his father to give him his portion of the possessions. So the Bible says, here's what happened.
Once he gave it to him. Verse 13, not many days after, the youngest son gathered everything together and went on a journey to a distant country. And there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in this land and the country, and he began to be in need. And he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country. And he went into the fields to feed swine. And he was longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating.
No one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired men have more than enough food or bread, but I'm dying here with hunger. I'll get up and go to my father and say to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. Now, let's look at it this way for a moment. Here's a young man who suddenly found himself in need. In fact, he had become so desperately, desperately hungering, thirsting, yearning for something deep down inside that here, this Hebrew boy had hired himself out to a Gentile to slop hogs or to feed and care for these hogs.
He could not have been in a worse situation. Now, you see, sometimes we have needs that we create ourselves. You see, the reason he's in the hog pen, when he could have been on his father's, maybe some great plantation of some sort, he swapped places with his wealth and his position and his prosperity and his confidence, his convenience for a hog pen.
You know why he did it? He made some wrong decisions in life. You know why oftentimes we have needs in our life? Because we create our own needs by disobedience, by rebellion, by misinterpreting what's going on around us, by blaming others, by accusing, by lust and desire and covetousness or whatever it might be. We make wrong decisions in life.
And you know what? When you make wrong decisions in life, you suffer the consequences in life. And so therefore what we have here is we have needs that are so deep, needs that are much deeper than food, clothing and shelter, something that motivated him, something that caused him to leave and to leave the best and to take less than the best.
He made some very wrong decisions. And so therefore we have to ask the question, what's the real need? The real need with the prodigal son was something that was deep down inside of him. He created some needs and these created needs. Listen, even when he created these needs, there was no real genuine satisfaction. So one of the ways that we find that there are needs in our life, there are needs that we create ourselves. Secondly, I want you to notice the second way that we discover these needs in our life and that's this, and that is there are needs in our life that are created by others.
There are genuine needs that are created in our life by others. Let's take Joseph as an example. You recall that Joseph grew up in a home where his father favored him above all his other brothers. The Bible says his brothers hated him. They hated him so intensely that the first opportunity they got to kill him, they tried to do it. They finally threw him in a pit and finally sold him as a slave to ultimately he got down there where Potiphar, who was the bodyguard of Pharaoh, bought him off the slave block.
So now I want you to see something very important here because Joseph ending up in the household of Potiphar as a slave, here's what he did. He could have said, poor me. My brothers hated me. They tried to kill me. They sold me into slavery.
Here I am a slave in this man's household. Who am I? I'm a nobody. Certainly not very confident that I'm being anything and I don't belong to anybody.
My family's way up yonder. They rejected me. Who am I?
What can I do? You know what he did? Now I want you to listen real carefully because this will affect you. Here's what he decided. I'm going to do my best.
And here's what happened. The Bible says in a very short period of time, Joseph became so accepted and became so much a part of this family and he became of such worth to Potiphar, the bodyguard of Pharaoh. He demonstrated his competence until finally Potiphar said, Joseph, I'm turning everything in my household over to you. You are in charge. Everybody is subject to you.
I will not even spend my time giving my thought to the affairs of my household. I'm turning it all over to you because you have certainly proven to be competent and worthy and you certainly are a vital part of this family now. Let's ask yourself the question, what is it about Joseph? What is it about him that made this difference?
What caused him to survive this whole circumstance was his intimate relationship with Almighty God. I cannot tell you how very, very important it is that we begin to teach our children very, very early in life what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that it isn't just a matter of going to church and listening to a Sunday school class or listening to a sermon, but it is a matter of learning how to relate to a God whom we believe in, the God of the Bible and beginning to teach those children that God is their friend and that he wants to meet every single need of their life and that he will live on the inside of them through the person of his son Jesus Christ. We want our children to grow up that way.
You know how that happens? When mom and dad begin to say to them and speak to them and feed their soul and feed their heart and feed their spirit the truth, what happens? Teaching them to have an intimate relationship with Almighty God. I'm here to tell you that growing up in a society, if they don't learn to have an intimate relationship with God, somewhere out there, the devil is going to get them one way or the other. We live in a viciously wicked, vile, sensual, sexual oriented society and Satan is doing everything he possibly can and what is he doing?
He is making this world a sexual wilderness and causing people to think if I can just have this or that or him or her, that'll satisfy this deep abiding need in my life when the only thing that's going to satisfy that is an intimate personal relationship with Almighty God through his son Jesus Christ. You do not start teaching people that when they're teenagers. You begin to teach them that when they are children. They don't fully understand, but if they hear it enough, God will interpret the truth of that to them. And so what saved him?
What saved him was an intimate personal relationship with Almighty God. Well, there's another source of needs in our life and this is one that most people don't think about. That is the needs that God creates in our life.
We say, now, wait a minute. Aren't we talking about God meeting needs, not creating needs? I am because God will indeed meet every single possible need that we have as children of God. That is on the basis of your relationship to him. Does he want to meet your needs?
Yes. Trust him as your personal savior. God begins to meet your needs.
But what about those needs that God creates? Well, let's say that here's a young man who's 36 years of age, has three children, lovely wife, and he's been doing real well in his job. And so they've just moved in this beautiful new home and got their furniture and everybody's happy.
They're in the right neighborhood with the schools and everybody's just fantastic. He comes home one day and he says to his wife, honey, God's calling me to preach. He's doing what? God's calling me to preach. What does that mean? It means I'm going to have to go to seminary.
What does that mean? Well, I guess it means we're going to have to move. You mean sell this house?
Yes. What are the kids going to think? We're going to have to explain that to them. He's got a whole bunch of needs. Not one single one that he choose. He didn't choose to leave his job. He didn't choose to sell his house. He didn't choose to explain this to his family.
He didn't choose any of those things. All these things God chose for him. Well, what will God do?
He will meet every single one of those needs because Almighty God is absolutely, totally committed to meeting every single need He creates in our life. So let me just say this. Oftentimes when you and I go through some difficulty, hardship, looks like my God, listen, Lord, you could have stopped that. This did not have to happen. Sometimes God, listen, allows circumstances and situations in your life, in my life. Sometimes it's things that He creates. Sometimes it's things that He allows to happen in your life and my life. And we thank God you could have stopped it.
Absolutely. I believe He's absolutely totally sovereign. He can stop anything starting the thing He chooses.
He is an absolute final ultimate control of every single thing. Therefore, whatever pain, whatever heartache, whatever disappointment, whatever hardship, whatever hurt, whatever rejection, whatever criticism, whatever persecution, all these things that are allowed into our life and come into our life, we can respond in one of two ways. We can blame God.
We can blame others. We can be forgiving or unforgiving. We can sulk in our hurts and in our rejection and in our pain. Or we can look to God and ask the question, God, what is your goal for my life in allowing this need to be in my life at this point? What is your purpose for allowing this need, allowing this hurt, allowing this pain in my life? And if you and I are wise and we develop our relationship with Him, God will take us through those difficult times.
And what will He do? He will be preparing you and me to be wise, godly, helpful, encouraging vessels to other people who are going through the same thing. And we will understand it better because we have been there. God creates some needs in order to accomplish His purpose and His plan and His purpose in our life. Well, there's one other area of needs that I want to talk about here.
And this one is a little more personal and probably sometimes a little more painful. I want to talk about the needs we inherit from our childhood. Now all of us have inherited some. When you think about your own childhood and think about things that you grew up with, you say, well, you know, my parents did this and my parents did that and I don't have any hurts and I didn't get any needs from my parents.
Well, let me just say this. If you cram it and you jam it and you stuff it and you ignore it and you deny it, you will, until you come to grips with things back there, it may have been something that your parents did that they didn't even realize at the time how they were damaging you. They may have thought they were motivating you when they said, look, you know what, you're not going to amount to anything.
Get that thing, get yourself a job and get with it. It may have been that your father may have thought that he was motivating you. But in your child mind, in your teenage mind, what you said was, they don't want me. They don't want me. They want me to get out of here. I'm a burden to them.
I'm costing them money. You see, what we don't realize oftentimes is how a child hears what a parent says, how a child interprets what that parent says. And so we all have a self-image. And that self-image, that self-concept is the way we see ourselves. And I want to say again, you and I are going to act out and live out the way we see ourselves. If we see ourselves as competent and that we belong and that we're accepted, we're going to act out that way. But if we do not, we are going to act out exactly what we feel.
What I want you to see is this. When people are emotionally damaged, when they've got hurts and fears that they grew up with and they've never been dealt with, don't want to deal with them because their idea is if I get married, they'll settle it. Well, you know, after a while, I'll outgrow it. Or they go to some counselor, the counselor says, well, you can just forget that.
No, you can't. You'll outgrow it. No, you won't because you have to deal with it. You have to be willing to rip off the scab and look inside and face the pain of seeing and recalling and reliving out some hurts and some difficulties and hardships that are very difficult. But you know what? That's the way healing comes. I don't mean just stirring up the same old pot over and over and over again, but doing what?
Looking to realize what's the real basis of these needs. Children get damaged. And you know what happens? They grow up and nobody ever says to them, well, let's think about what the real need is. And so people can't live together and so they leave, they separate, they divorce. They hate each other. They have all kinds of animosity toward each other and unforgiving spirit.
He did this, she did that. And somehow until they are willing to open it up and say, Oh God, what's the real need? What happened back yonder that makes me feel these feelings I feel? Why do I hurt? Why do I feel rejected when no one's rejecting me? Why do I treat relationships the way I treat them when people tried to do their best for me and somehow I can't accept it? You see, when we get handed down those hand-me-down emotions and those hand-me-down needs, they're not easy to deal with.
None of us like to talk about ourselves and we certainly don't like to talk about our personal life. I would simply say this, God certainly has a purpose for allowing these things in our life. And if we respond properly, He'll turn them for something good. I can tell you this, God can heal any damaged emotion you have experienced.
He can heal any need that you have, but only if you're willing to deal with it. You know what Jesus said? He said, when you know the truth, the truth will set you free. Where does that start? The truth about Him. Does it end there?
No. I also need to know the truth about myself so He can also free me of damaged emotions. Free me of these memories that will keep haunting me unless I am freed of them by being healed of them. And I simply want to challenge you to take a good look on the inside, remembering that God loves you. He'll make your whole person, but you got to let Him do it His way. It may be the most painful experience of your life, but you know what?
It's in the valley that gets me ready to walk on the mountain top. Your God, Jehovah God of the Bible is on your side, and He'll set you free if you'll let Him do it by His wonderful grace. Thank you for listening to The Origin. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
