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How Can We Stay Focused on Our One Need This Christmas?
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- Updated Dec 11, 2023
Christmas time, the most important birthday party of the year, brings an inundation of commercials and advertisements, accompanied by hard-to-pass-up prices designed to evoke a desire, a need for the newest, best, most expensive. Slightly different model numbers with words like “ultra,” “max,” and “plus” fool us into thinking our current model is so obsolete and out of fashion. We are tempted into thinking that we need other things, even though believers have all they need. “If I just had that…ok, and that and that.”
For some of us, the fallacy of needing more has been with us well before the holidays arrived. Overachiever. Perfectionist. Workaholic. Burning the candle at both ends. Those words describe that person that seems to go after it all.
“Keeping up with the Jones’” is an antiquated phrase describing those that attempt to have the newest and best of everything.
Golden calf: an actual golden statue built by the Israelites (right after they were free by the way), that represents the need to have something else, in addition to our relationship with God.
Do any of those scenarios describe you? Have you been after it all, trying your best to excel at everything and appear like you are able to do it all? Do you pursue better things and a better you just to keep up with social media comparisons? Or have you started subconsciously idolizing something and need to realize that you’ve added that something else to the equation that God set into motion?
Our One Need
For whatever reason, I realized recently that I have been living the last twenty years with a wildly inaccurate formula in my head regarding my needs. I hope these thoughts help others with their understanding of what they need. Thankfully, it’s simple. We only have one need; a relationship with God.
Up to this point, I’ve placed such a high value on many things. My faith, yes. My family. My health. My education. My relationships with my children. My prosperity. My income. These are all good things to prioritize. Your list may be different. You might have different priorities and different things that you highly value in your life. This is a good time to make that list. Now cross one off the list. What if you didn’t have that one thing; how would your identity change, or would it? If you didn’t have the income you have now, how would your identity change? If you didn’t have that item or as good of a relationship with your kids as you do, what would happen? I thought about this a lot recently.
One thing I highly value is my health. But as we all know, as we age, our health can decline even if we do everything we can to prevent that. God has designed our bodies, and that design includes natural aging and decay. More aches and pains and health issues have occurred that, if you had seen all the stuff I’ve done correctly according to studies and best practices, you wouldn’t expect. I’ve started pondering what it would be like if I didn’t have that health at all. What if I lost my ability to walk? What if I lost a child? What if I didn’t have a job? Panic set in as I imagined losing a significant chunk of my identity and confidence. It was an instant indicator that something was wrong. Is your happiness, security, and confidence tied to anything else but God? The formula in my head thus far was that my identity equals God plus other factors. However, as soon as that formula includes any other factor, it’s wrong. Yes, I have a strong relationship with our father, I pray regularly and do the best I can to role model what it’s like to have a relationship with Christ. All that comes with an asterisk; I’ve also tied much of who I am in other things.
Job and Abraham’s Examples
The story of Job takes us through Job’s identity crisis. It is a very good book to read regarding maintaining your identity through a crisis. Some of us don’t have major midlife crises like Job did. I am going to turn to another story, however, to awaken us to the hidden aspects that we may subconsciously tie to our identity.
God’s original equation: Your Needs = God
Our adjusted equation: Your Needs = God + ? + ? + ?
There’s another popular story in the Bible, where Abraham is asked to sacrifice his only son. He takes his son up a mountain, telling him that they are going to go make a sacrifice. His son, very astutely, recognizes that they have wood, oil, and ways to make fire, but no actual sacrifice, and he starts inquiring, “Dad, I’m so excited! This is great, and I can’t wait to offer a sacrifice with you, but, in the past, I’ve seen you do it with an animal. Where is our sacrifice? Where is the lamb? Don’t we usually have lamb.” If I were Abraham, I wouldn’t have made it that far. I would be shaking with the overwhelming thought that I was going to sacrifice a major part of my identity, my son.
If you know the story, then you know, Abraham goes as far as raising the knife above his son's body and looking him in the eyes. Only then does God call out and say stop. He acknowledges the faithfulness of his servant, Abraham. His son, Isaac, just witnessed how dedicated his father is in his relationship with our God. He was probably feeling a few mixed emotions, some pride in his father but some fear as well.
How Dedicated Are You?
Are you willing to sacrifice and let go of those things that make up a major part of who you are? A spouse, a parent, a job? Honestly, most of the time, God isn’t even asking us to sacrifice these things in the literal sense. It’s the dedicated willingness that says, “I would if He asked me too.” Matthew 5:30 says, “Cut off your right hand if need be.” Sometimes the chaos in the world does rip things out of our hands. If your identity is not in the proper place, you have a major identity crisis ahead of you. At the end of the sacrifice, Abraham sets up an altar and calls it Jehovah Jireh.
Jehovah is based on the vocalization of the name Yahweh or YHWH, God’s name in the Hebrew script. It is recommended that you explore the history, but for now, we will focus on the suffix, Jireh, which means “He will see to it.” That is future tense, by the way. Abraham didn’t call the altar “God did see to it;” he called it “God will see to it” as a reminder to all that God knows what you are going through and will see to your needs. Don’t try to see to it yourself. Don’t try to find your needs in other things or even other people. God will see to it.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/udra
