INBUILT WITHIN our humanity is the
need to be right, happy, prosperous, and free. Our spirits are hardwired these
four ways and we defeat only ourselves if we deny these spiritual urges.
If we want to be right, we need to
be honest. If we want to be happy, we need to have courage. If we want to be
prosperous, we need to be diligent. If we want to be free, we need to let go.
An important differentiation:
these needs are achievable any time. God makes it possible, but it depends on us.
Corner One: Being Right
Nobody likes to be wrong. Pride is
what we feel when we are resistant in our wrongness; shame is what we feel when
we admit to the wrong.
God designed us to seek and
promote truth, and when we don’t achieve this there can be a sharp dissonance
felt. People also want to feel right even when they are doing wrong. The urge
is still the same; even if they know they are wrong.
Being right is not an “I told
you so” issue so much as
it’s a matter of being in alignment with ourselves and, further, with God.
A simple truth: We can be right
more often when we’re honest.
Corner Two: Being Happy
The thought of incongruence is
sadness. We yearn to be happy, yet many people strive to reach happiness,
forlornly, without such a necessary input as courage.
God can’t give us happiness—the blessings
of joy—without us, in turn, committing to do those things that help us achieve
contentment.
Being “happy” is not the
motivation, but the by-product of courage to identify and run after the only things that can make us happy. Material things take us away
from happiness; spiritual things, on the other hand, heap happiness all over
us.
It takes courage to sacrifice
those things that promise happiness but fulfil little within us. We know those
things that make us feel empty will not provide happiness.
Corner Three: Being Prosperous
Let’s get off on the right foot;
this type of prosperity is nothing to do with material wealth and the accumulation of things. We
are talking about the prosperous spirit, which is the feeling of prosperity.
Yet, we cannot ever be prosperous
without being diligently active to create or enable the prosperity that God
wants to give us; indeed, that which our Designer set aside for us—even before
we were conceived.
It’s peculiar. Spiritually, we are
already prosperous if we know God; yet we may not see it. A committed plan to
do the will of God, in diligence, will create feelings of prosperity within.
It’s the only prosperity that matters.
Corner Four: Being Free
We don’t, generally, like the word
“sacrifice.” But if we want to be free we need to learn to let go. Like the
constant evaporation of water on a lake, life is a continuous stream of losing
things and gaining new things—if we can let go.
Whenever things have their way of
holding us, we are bonded—captive to an inanimate object or an idea. This is
madness because we want to negotiate our freedom against the eternal laws of God. Upon our insistence,
we lose.
The only way of being free is to
let go. “Of what?” you might
say; anything and everything that compromises our pure focus on God. Only God
can fill out deeper needs.
***
These four corners of human
need—to be right, happy, prosperous, and free—point us in the indelible
direction of God.
The Lord made us with these needs,
and these are achievable much easier than we think; easy when we trust and obey
the Creator. We were built this way. It is best accepted.
Of these four needs, which one
presents you with most opportunity for better satisfaction?
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
Graphic Credit: Howard
Stanbury.
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