Editor’s note: The following article was adapted by the author from his book Pour Out Your Heart: Discovering Joy, Strength, and Intimacy with God through Prayer (pp. 33–41). Pour Out Your Heart is available now from B&H Publishing and wherever books are sold.
I don’t watch much TV these days, so I rarely see any commercials anymore. But even I noticed that commercials in mid-2020 took on a totally new tone. This was, of course, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, and large corporations were scrambling to maintain their sales during a national lockdown. Let me remind you of the basic commercial script during these months.
Let’s say the product is Reese’s peanut butter cups. The scene opens with dramatic, inspiring music. There’s a sunrise, or sunset, we’re not sure. Children are dancing. They’re talking with grandma by video. Parents are smiling from their laptops. And the narrator, in a deep and reassuring voice, says: “In these uncertain times…now more than ever…we are resilient, we will make it through…nothing can stop us…Reese’s. You can eat them at home.”
Whatever the product, the message was the same. But immediately, an internal inconsistency was evident. “Nothing can stop us,” they would say. Well, Covid can stop us. “We will make it through.” Well, not everyone.
This was the problem revealed: We are needy creatures, and life is far more fragile than we realize. Denying this will do us no good. Trying to motivate ourselves to overcome is sure to run out of steam. For millions of people, Covid meant the death of loved ones, losing their jobs, financial hardship, strained relationships, political strife, church conflict, and persistent despair. (A more honest commercial would have been: “Everything is awful. There’s not much to say. But Reese’s might help you feel better for a few minutes.”)
To be “a needy person” is one of the great insults of our performance-based, success-oriented culture. But the truth is that we are creatures of need. There will never be a time when we are no longer in need.
And believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Jesus invites us—commands us, even—to acknowledge our need and bring it to God.
Why We’re Needy Creatures
We were designed to have needs long before sin and all its effects entered the world. Adam and Eve needed God for life. They needed God for provision. They needed God’s world as a home—a habitat in which they could live, move, multiply, and cultivate good things. To be needy, then, is not the same as being sinful. Further, even Jesus, in his humanity, experienced need.
When the Son of God came to earth, he came in need. He didn’t descend in glory. He didn’t come as a young adult, strong and well-educated and self-sufficient. He came as a baby. He spent nine months in Mary’s womb. He was completely dependent on others, like all other babies. Luke 2 says “he grew in wisdom and stature” as a young man. He was needy and dependent because he was fully human—as well as fully divine. He needed his Father’s presence; he needed food, water, and rest.
Not only did Jesus exhibit human neediness, he taught it. In his parables and teachings, Jesus shows us our need. Remember Jesus’s Beatitudes? If we could distill them down, they’d be this, simply put: Blessed are the needy, for they will be satisfied. In fact, it seems like Jesus came especially for those with the most significant, immediate needs (Luke 4:18–19).
To be human is to be in need. To resist your neediness is to dehumanize yourself and reject God’s design. We reject our neediness often out of pride, but also because we have a low view of our physical world, which is the environment by which God meets so many of our needs.
Being a Christian is not first about being a good person like Jesus. It’s about being the kind of needy, broken person that Jesus loves to forgive and heal and restore. The needy receive forgiveness and respond in love. The proud tragically secure their own future—life without God. It’s haunting that Jesus lets the rich young ruler walk away from him; Jesus doesn’t pursue him (Matt. 19:16–22). Why? The young man has no need of Jesus. Or rather, he has no awareness of his need.
Could it be that Jesus doesn’t reluctantly meet our needs, but that he actually delights in meeting our needs? As the pastor Jon Tyson has said, “Jesus is drawn to your need.”
Jesus Is Drawn to Your Need
On one occasion, Jesus is moving through a crowd, and a synagogue ruler named Jairus approaches him and begs Jesus to heal his only daughter (Luke 8:42). Jesus is making his way through the crowd, headed for Jairus’s house, when a woman with great need interrupts him—she had had a chronic health issue for twelve years—and reaches out to touch Jesus’s clothes. Why? “Because she had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well’” (Mark 5:27–28). The result?
“Immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease” (Mark 5:29). Instantly, Jesus realizes power has gone out from him, and he stops to ask who had touched him. When the woman sees she can hide no longer, in a moment of great shame, she reveals her condition and approaches Jesus “with fear and trembling… and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth” (Mark 5:33). And—don’t miss this—she doesn’t do this in private. The crowds are still around. When she falls in front of Jesus and explains why she is making physical contact with him, we see that she “declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him” (Luke 8:47). She is doing this in front of a massive gathering of people who will look down on her for her uncleanness and neediness. And yet Jesus raises her up out of her shame and says, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed from your affliction” (Mark 5:34).
Now, pause and recognize the difference between these two individuals. Jairus was a man, a respected leader of the synagogue, a pillar of the Jewish community. This woman, who is not named in the story, is likely older, unmarried or widowed, and lacks any social status; even more, she’s chronically ill and unclean. Jairus stands at the center of Jewish life with so much influence; this woman cowers outside of it, with none. You’d expect Christ to be more drawn to Jairus’s need—after all, healing the daughter of a synagogue ruler would certainly circulate the news of Jesus like wildfire. Not to mention, Jairus isn’t the infected one. He’s still in good standing before the community. If the aim is ultimately to spread the good news and reveal Jesus as the divine Son of God, pushing past this woman and getting a move on to Jairus’s house would be the efficient and effective method for ministry growth. Draw near to the one in good standing—the guy with influence—right?
This woman, on the other hand, is the infected one. When Jesus realizes power has gone out from him, he could have just moved on to the more important ministry with the more important person on his schedule for the day. Why stop? Especially with such a “better” ministry opportunity waiting for him at Jairus’s house? And once he discovers the identity of the person who touched him, why address her further? She got what she wanted, after all. Why linger even longer—long enough to call her daughter, and bless her in the sight of the crowd?
Because Jesus is drawn to need—in all its forms and from all kinds of people. And he can meet more than one at a time. He can be on his way to meeting one and make time to be interrupted by another. So, on the days you feel like your need isn’t as important as the next person’s, remember this woman and tell yourself the truth: Jesus is drawn to need, and he likes when you interrupt him with yours.
More than that, he’ll bless you for coming to him and telling him the whole truth about your needs. Of course, Jesus is the only one who can meet our deepest need—our need of forgiveness and salvation. But he’s drawn to all our needs because he is drawn to us in love.
When we come to Jesus with great need, he responds by giving us his full attention. It doesn’t matter where we stand in society. When we muster up all the faith we can, though we struggle to believe, Jesus stands ready to respond. When we realize we can hide no longer, he is ready to embrace us.
It’s good to be a needy person. Jesus loves to meet your needs.