31 - The Rediscovered Treasure (Part 4)

Episode Highlights:

Needs are:

-how we’re created.

-what God works with.

-what we have to have fulfilled, or we die.

Our need to belong and our need to matter are more important than food, shelter, and clothing. We will give up food, shelter and clothing in order to belong and matter. The unseen needs are more  powerful than the seen needs.

God gives us the desire of our hearts. We are born with longings.

We long for justice. (We see a small child lying in a bed in a pediatric intensive care unit with bandages and  tubes, and we cry, “NO!” We don’t have to know the child to recognize the injustice of it.) We recognize that we are not made to die of disease. We’re not made to kill each other. We’re not made  for war. We are made for love and peace and eternity and raising each other up. We are made to experience the grace of a hand that can reach into the farthest depths. There is no mistake  that is so far away that God can’t reach us.

We long for a place where we can put our heads against a safe shoulder, where there are arms to go  around us, and there is a voice that says, “It’s okay now, it’s okay. You can rest now.” We long for a place  called “home,” where God lives.

Longings are deep cravings within our hearts that will never be fulfilled as long as we live on this earth. It’s living in the wishing every day. It’s living in the wanting forever. It’s meeting God every day, and God says,  “One day it will all be complete.”

Surrender your heart every day, and it will change. Walk in the surrender every day. Live in the world of  miracles. Tell the truth and live in the truth. Open your eyes to see the joy of what happens when we walk  in the truth.

If we do not deal with our hearts, we end up living counterfeit lives.

We grow into shriveled, little trees, not oaks of righteousness.

We live lives of shame. (We are ashamed of how God made us)

We lower our expectations.

We don’t expect much from people.

We don’t expect others to show up in our lives.

We have counterfeit fulfillment.

We pursue power.

We pursue mood-altering experiences.

We seek relief.

We plan events in hopes they will make things different/better.

We refuse to face where we live.

We pursue all forms of counterfeit fulfilments instead of believing that God can fill us. Sadly, we end up practicing hopelessness. We practice hopelessness as a way of not taking a risk to believe  that our heart’s yearnings are real. We refuse to believe that our feelings really matter. We refuse to be  vulnerable. We refuse to surrender our lives to the God Who made us.