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Running on Need

I’ve been running on need.

I need to be here. I need to go there. I need to get this done. I need to better at that. I need to be enough.

And I’m tired. I’m stretched thin and feeling weary. Running on necessity has drained me from productivity and rest. Sure, it keeps me moving. Its also unavoidable at times (particularly with multiple children). Yet when we attempt to remain in the constant motion of “needs” we lose our ability to rest and recharge. We forget the joy we once found in certain activities and people.

It’s the taxi cab momma who forgets the idle chat in the car is important to her daughter. It’s the working woman who brings home take-out instead of remembering her love of cooking. And it’s the woman inside each of us who believes if she can just meet this need she will be more valuable somehow.

Running on need is robbing us of being a daughter of the one who made us. Its robbing us of joy and laughter. And it’s robbing us of just being.

When God’s people had finished rebuilding the wall in the days of Nehemiah, Ezra assembled them in unity and read to them from the Law. They had worked tirelessly to rebuild the wall and the nation, yet after hearing the Law read they wept and mourned. Time spent on the needs left them feeling not good enough for the God they were working to affirm. But Nehemiah, Ezra, and the Levites told them not to weep and mourn, for the day still belonged to God. “The joy of the Lord is your strength,” they reminded the Israelites (Neh 8:10).

Are you buried in your need list, feeling like you just don’t have enough?

I am.

Sister, you are enough. You are not a sum total of your “needs”- you are so much more. You have joy today simply because our God is still God.

I know your needs can’t be brushed off as not important. Mine won’t either. But you and I both can find moments of joy to give us the strength to keep going.

Run on joy, not need.

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