During the gymnastics meet season, the coaching staff is focused on the needs of each athlete. This focus can encompass a wide range of concerns, from the coaches’ insisting on adequate nutrition, to practicing the necessary number of skill repetitions, to giving extra time on events for which gymnasts show a weakness, or to taking time off from training. Coaches address an athlete’s weaknesses and deficiencies and create a course of training that addresses these needs.
We humans are always assessing the needs in our life. We are usually focused on them to the point of obsession. But most of our needs are not needs at all. They are physical desires that we pursue in an attempt to overcome our spiritual deficiencies caused by sin. We are broken people using objects or experiences to try to ease our guilt and cover our shame before God. Sin has destroyed our lives and left us lacking the righteous essentials we need to reconcile with God.
We spend thousands of dollars every year trying to soothe our weary, sorrowing soul with the tangibles of life, only to tangle it more deeply in hopelessness and despair, because the real need of every person is grace, forgiveness and redemption from God.
Through Jesus Christ, God has provided these essentials. In Christ, “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:14). Through Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection He has satisfied for us our deepest need, and this “is by grace . . . through faith” (Ephesians 2:8).
Our fixes won’t remedy our deepest affliction. Christ’s cross is our cure.
Denise Larson Cooper has a passion for Christ and sharing His Word. A wife and mother of two daughters, Denise currently works as a gymnastic coach.
Subscribe to Ordinary Days on iTunes!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ordinary-days/id1339262108
Check Out Denise’s Books!
Godnesia: Keeping God in Mind Each Day http://amzn.to/2GSquOD
Ordinary Days With an Extraordinary Savior – http://amzn.to/2mFGASBLife Is a Metaphor: Recognizing God in the Everyday – http://amzn.to/2De1rU2
Please pray with me today. I had been suffering from inflammation, pains, smell, and discomfort on my lower right side for a long time. I see an ENT today to look on the inside. God reveal today what has been causing my discomfort. Give my doctor wisdom to know how to treat my conditions. Show the ungodly spirits that swelled on my inside. Amen. In Jesus name I pray. Amen