What If... Belief in Need

Ann Voskamp, author of "One Thousand Gifts" and bodacious blogger over at A Holy Experience, asks the heart-wrenching question:

What if we believe we have everything we need?

Does that question scare you? Does it make your heart beat a little faster? It does mine.

Personally speaking, I know that I live as if I don't have everything. I constantly worry about what I don't have enough of: money, time, talent, faith, happiness. You name it and I worry.

After reading Ann's book (you simply must read this book), I learned that, as Dan Zadra says: "worry is a misuse of the imagination." Worry is a waste of time. Worry is a waste of space. And yet I worry about worrying too much. Do you see why I tear out my hair?

So what if we believed we had everything we need? And that God, our great creator, was the one who supplied us with all our needs. "Supplied" is too sterile a word to use in this context. Provide. He provides us all our needs; what if we believed that? Do you believe that? Does that scare you? Does that comfort you?

Is it in our nature to always want more, therefore making us feel like we never have everything we need? Where will that kind of thinking get us?

I don't have any answers for this one, my friends. Ann doesn't have answers, exactly, either, but do go to her blog post and read her beautiful reflections.

To know that you are totally taken care of by God, that all your needs are met, takes great faith. I'll capitalize that: it takes great Faith. It takes the kind of Faith that seasoned Christians have. I am only a neophyte. Therefore, no. I don't feel like I have all that I need.

Does that show a disrespect toward the Lord? I don't know. I don't want to deny all He's given me in my life and, especially, since my "dawning" in November of 2010.

I count my blessings every day, making a list of 1000 blessings and beyond just like Ann Voskamp and hundreds of women across the globe who have embraced her book. I am thankful, grateful, and yet I don't feel like I have all I need.

Is suffering tied into this? Suffering runs through my veins like blood and convinces me that I need it. That I crave it. That I can't survive without knowing I can survive. The survival of suffering shows me that I am alive.

But I needn't suffer any longer, I tell myself. Jesus suffered for all of us. We need to live as Christ-like as possible: with love, grace, beauty and in God's glory, for God's glory.

I wish I had an answer to this question or at least pondered as poetically as Ann does. But I'm content, at least for now, to be a neophyte and be in the place of absorption. Absorbing my Christian mentors' blogs, reading the Bible, discussing Faith (and faith) with Pastor, my husband, and friends, reading supplementary books about the Christ-life.

I know that, now being a Christian, I feel like I have more than I had before - and that must show that I feel more confident about having what I need.

It's a step.

What are your thoughts?

Bless you.