"Captivating" part 1: Does God Need Me?

This is part of a series of reviews on John & Stasi Eldredge's book "Captivating." To start at the introduction, click here.

It’s nice to be needed. I can say fairly confidently that my husband needs me, and my three children need me. Hopefully, a few friends would say they need me as well. But how badly does God need me?

This becomes a theme throughout “Captivating” – the image of a weak, impotent God, dependent on decisions I make. Consider the following statements:

How many of you see God as longing to be loved by you? We see him as strong and powerful, but not as needing us, vulnerable to us, yearning to be desired (pp. 28-29).

From beginning to end, from cover to cover, the cry of God’s heart is, ‘Why won’t you choose me?’ (quoted on p. 29, from John Eldredges’ book “Wild at Heart”)

It might come as a surprise that Christ asks our permission to come in and heal . . . In order to experience His healing, we must also give Him permission to come into the places we have so long shut to anyone (p. 100)

Even as I type these words, I cringe at the error they contain. Any need for relationship that God has is perfectly fulfilled by the Trinity. Throughout the gospels, Christ repeatedly speaks of the love and perfect unity He and His Father share. When he exhorts us to seek Him, it’s for our benefit, not His!!

Read Ephesians 1:4-5. “HE chose us in Him before the creation of the world . . . HE predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with HIS pleasure and will (not ours!).

One more quote to think on:

Reading George MacDonald several years ago, I came across an astounding thought. You’ve probably heard that there is in every human heart a place that God alone can fill . But what the old poet was saying was that there is also in God’s heart a place that you alone can fill. ‘It follows that there is also a chamber in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual.’ You. You are meant to fill a place in the heart of God no one and nothing else can fill. Whoa. He longs for you (p. 120)

From childhood I have been a huge MacDonald fan, but I have to acknowledge that the Bible clearly contradicts his teaching on this point. Read Acts 17:25. “And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.”

God doesn’t need us – we need Him, and desperately. We should be falling at His feet, begging Him to heal us. Thinking the reverse morphs the Creator of the universe into a weak, needy God – certainly not the all-powerful God seen throughout Scripture.

This is not to say that God doesn’t love us as powerfully as a father loves his children. He is not distant, removed, watching us with a cold eye as we bumble through life.

On the other hand, He isn’t some jilted lover:

As the old saying goes, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ That’s just how God acts when He isn’t chosen . . . A woman’s righteous jealousy speaks of the jealousy of God for us (p. 30).

God doesn’t collapse in helpless rage when He isn’t chosen. When Israel, His own people, rejected Him repeatedly, He firmly but lovingly brought them back to repentance time and time again. Oh, how thankful I am for His justice, His mercy, His grace. He is totally in control, yet totally approachable.

“For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received a spirit of sonship, and by Him we cry, “Abba (Daddy), Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children” (Romans 8:15-16).

Wow! An all-powerful God looked down upon me in my filth and ugliness and chose to love me as a son . . .

Coming soon: Women and Beauty