The Gift of Your Needs

The church needs you.  And not just because you have a particularly useful set of talents (though you do), nor just because God has made you uniquely to fill a particular role (though he has).

The church needs you, because you have needs.

I have several friends who suffer from depression, who are in despair, who see within themselves no capacity to pour out and no desire to serve.  They are trapped in themselves.  Depression is a self-centered position, entirely introspective and implosive.  I oft' times live in melancholy, and depression is never far from me.  My senior year of college was by far the darkest season of my life (thus far), and for nine or ten months I idled in depression.  Occaisionally I shifted into first or second gear, serving or worshipping or writing.  But generally, I 'rested' in fear and anxiety.  And if I'm not careful, I can slip into anxiety again, in but a moment's time.  Because, I am self-centered, self-concerned and introspective.  God is teaching me how to step out of that, how to love and worship and look outward, not inward.  But it's a slow process.  Time, the ultimate tool in the Lord's sanctifying workshop.

Smack dab in the middle of my depression, I interned at a church in Greenville.  God used my community there the push me out of my self and into gratitude.  I hated it.  But, they were right in many ways.  Though I felt nothing, I had to choose.  Though I perceived nothing, I was called to worship.  Faith in darkness: another blog, for another day.

At the end of my internship, we took a trip to the beach, and shared what we had discovered as each other's greatest strengths, our greatest gifts to the community.  I was ready to hear that, perhaps I was a great encouragement, that I had excellent discernment or wisdom.  But instead, the group almost unanimously agreed that I was the greatest single force for unity in our community.  Why?

Because I was a mess.  I cried, I groveled, I was vulnerable.  I knew that I was in a horrible state, and I laid it all out before the community.  I begged for help, I asked for advice, I complained, I whimpered in despair.  And in doing so I provided the church with an opportunity to do God's work.  They prayed with me, encouraged me, prayed without me for me.  They loved me with creativity, and they rallied around me.

And somehow, in the midst of the catastrophic spirals of my existential doubts, my weakness became a strength for the group.  My total ineptitude became a blessing to the community.  My depression strengthened the church.

This puts 1 Corinthians 12 in a different light for me.  God's strength was made perfect in my weakness.  How?  His strength was manifest, made present to both me and my community, in the work and love of my church.  And, as God used them, they were grown, and strengthened, and unified, and encouraged.

The church needed me for my needs.

When you feel least able to serve, least able to be a blessing, least able to offer anything good at all, offer your weakness.  Offer your hopelessness.  Offer your needs.  As you allow the church to minister to you, whether you feel encouraged or not, you bless the community.  For in your weakness, hopelessness, needs, God's power in the church is made perfect.  The church is refined, gifts honed, compassion deepened.  Don't waste your despair; don't be the 'noble' martyr, suffering alone.*  Counter-intuitive though it may be, keeping your troubles to yourself is a selfish thing, for it robs the church of it's work.  Let us bear one another's burdens, and so better know the ministry and nature of our God who has already borne them.  Let us offer the church the gift of our needs.

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*The position of noble, solitary martyr has already been filled, that you might be fully incorporated into His body.  Don't cheat His body of the opportunity to serve you, for it is part of His desire in placing you within it.