Needs and Disappointments

The subject of DISAPPOINTMENT came up in our church recently, and as I was thinking about this I asked myself the question: “Why do we experience disappointment?”

The answer seemed to be rather obvious: We have an expectation which is not fulfilled.

The next logical question leading on from this must surely be: “Why would the expectation not be fulfilled?”

Again, the answer seems to be obvious, but this time it’s two-fold:

1. What we wished for did not come about, or
2. What we wished for DID come about but, contrary to our expectation, the outcome did not satisfy.

There is no mystery about answer (a), for we all know that expectations can be dashed for all sorts of reasons, most of which lie beyond our powers of control; but answer (b) poses its own inevitable further question: If I got what I wanted, why did it not satisfy me?

In a daily devotional that I happened to be reading at the time, I came across this statement: “We cannot get enough of what we do not need”.

This seemed to me to be the key to the mystery of option (b), for the following reason:

• When we get what we NEED, we are satisfied with it.
• When we get what we do NOT need, it does not satisfy, so we want more of it, or we want a better make, or we want a newer model, or we want some other alternative which we wish, or hope, will bring the satisfaction that the first one failed to provide.

What types of things could we say that we need and that bring us satisfaction, or that we do not need and that fail to satisfy? Well, how about:

• We need BREAD, but do we need CAKE?
• We need WATER, but do we need TEA?
• We need LOVE, but do we need ROMANCE?
• We need ENCOURAGEMENT, but do we need FLATTERY?
• We need INFORMATION, but do we need ADVERTISEMENTS?
• We need to WORSHIP, but do we need to BE WORSHIPPED?

These are just a few examples from what seemed to be an endless list that was building up inside my mind, so I stopped and asked myself: “Can this be distilled into a meaningful and useful short-list?”

As I considered this question, it occurred to me that, in order to achieve this, we need to be asking an entirely different question, namely: “What do we actually mean by ‘NEED’?”

Would it not be true to say that what we NEED is what enables us to ACHIEVE, or ACQUIRE, or SUSTAIN, or PROTECT what we hold to be IMPORTANT?

If this is the case, then the first thing that we need to do is to make a list of those things which we would consider to be truly IMPORTANT?

To my surprise, and relief, this turned out to be very simple, and it amounts to a short-list of TWO:

1. Is there anything more important than LIFE?
2. If life is to be worth living, is there anything more important than LOVE?

LIFE and LOVE are the two most important things to both God and mankind.

But human beings are not simply physical animals. By God’s design, there is a lot more to us than that.

We could say that we exist on two levels, namely the NATURAL and the SPIRITUAL, and that both LIFE and LOVE are essential elements of our being at both levels.

This being so, we should sub-divide our two short-list items into FOUR, as follows:

I believe we can say, therefore, that what we really NEED is whatever promotes or contributes to any, or all, of the items in this set of four.

Anything which does NOT contribute to or promote any of them, we do NOT NEED.

We may ENJOY it; we may be BLESSED by it; we may even find it FULFILLING for a period of time; but we do NOT actually NEED it.

Jesus tells us that the things that are truly important and that we should value above all are the heavenly things, which are not subject to spoiling and fading, like those that we find here on earth:

If I set my heart on what is TRULY of VALUE, then I will never be disappointed.

What you VALUE is what you will strive to PROTECT.

There are some things I keep in the garden shed; but anything that I consider to be of value I keep in the house, where it’s safer.

Look again at our list of four ‘treasures’ and think about this question: Would you give up any of these treasures for anything else?

The intuitively obvious answer to this is undoubtedly, ‘NO’!

However, a deeper consideration of the matter lets us see that there is one of these treasures that we may be called upon to sacrifice for something else. Can you see which one it is?

The answer, of course, is: PHYSICAL LIFE.

Our physical life is temporary, and it is inevitable that we will lose it eventually, so for that reason it is less important than the other three.

Someone who sacrificed his life for love would be thought of as a hero, but someone who sacrificed his love to preserve his life would not be thought of highly at all.

Here are a few examples of what God has to say on the matter:

By the way, this does not mean that we should never aim for the nice house, the new car, the bulging wardrobe, the career opportunity, the lucrative investment, or whatever else might improve our lives in this world.

The point is that we do not NEED these things, so if we cannot have them, then we should not be disappointed; nor should we be disappointed should we acquire them but find that they do not satisfy. They are all TEMPORARY and should be seen as CAKE and not BREAD.

We have already mentioned the SPIRITUAL and the PHYSICAL as being two levels of our being, but there is a third level which is essentially the synthesis of the other two. This is the level of the SOUL, which is where we all live out most of our lives on this earth.

At this level, the physical is far more real to us than the spiritual, and our bodies and minds and emotions are what dominate our consciousness.

When we live at the level of the SOUL rather than the SPIRIT, we lose sight of the TRUE TREASURE and pursue that which we are able to CONTROL.

When it comes to religion, we love set ceremonies, stained glass windows, and orders of service, but shy away from allowing God to be Lord of our lives and making demands upon our time or our money. In so doing, we lose out on the LIFE and the LOVE which God wants us to have in the spirit.

Time and again, through His prophets, God had to rebuke His people for abandoning life in the spirit for life in the soul, and abandoning the eternally satisfying for the temporarily frustrating:

Rather than looking with their spiritual eyes and seeing God behind the blessings, they looked only at the blessings and lost sight of the God who gave them. Instead, they invented their own gods, made in their own image, to help them to satisfy their desires:

We can see from the beginning of verse 7 that God wanted them to have the good things and to enjoy the fruits of the land, but because they chose to live by the SOUL rather than the SPIRIT, the TEMPORARY NATURAL things became their treasure, and God Himself was pushed aside.

They were like children who get lost in their Christmas presents and ignore the mummy and daddy who gave the presents to them as an expression of their love.

The novelty of the Christmas presents will wear off and they’ll be abandoned, but mummy and daddy will always be there, faithful and true. That is the real treasure.

Let’s give the final word on this to Jesus, who makes clear to us what our priority should be: