“Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay.” ~ Psalm 40:17
As God allows me to write I can only focus within my spirit of how deficient humanity is within the context of our necessity/dependency on God. Our world today is filled with the “self made man” complex where the perpetrated acts of our mentality are deemed independent of the existence of the God who created humankind and everything we know (or don’t know) concerning the human race.
Within my experiences as someone who has worked in corporate America, it is amazing to listen to executives on how they have achieved so much, how much money and investments they have acquired, and why they feel they are entitled to power, luxury, and control. It is even more noticing to witness some politicians give up the honest and integrity of their positions for the sake of abusing authorities that they feel are “rightfully” theirs.
Within Psalm 40:17 contains a notion and understanding of dependency that stretches far beyond the scope of the way the world has defined it. While writing this, David comes to the realization of who he really is in the presence of God. It is not to say that David is poor and needy in regards to man providing for him, but he understands that God owns everything because man could not provide something that he did not create or possess.
Man can not satisfy your need for spiritual salvation, only God through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ can do that. If we can come into the realization and ultimate dependency in this, we will find the reality of freedom that God intended for us to experience. Spiritually, we are poor and needy and we need God to infuse us with his power in order to live our lives with purpose, drive, and fulfillment. If we believe God to do this, then we can also believe him “to supply all our needs according to his riches in glory” (Philippians 4:19).
Humanity possesses nothing in order to sustain itself, but God owns everything humanity needs in order to live freely. David was right when he said that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1) which places us as people in the proper context of our deficiency and need for God.
So, I encourage you my brother and my sister to be free in God through Jesus Christ and not by the attempts of your “own” merit for “if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed” (John 8:36).
~ Rev. E. Shon Hagwood
