9/17/26

Every year before Christmas, I receive calls from family, parents, and children asking what we might want or need for Christmas. The answer is almost always. We don't need or want anything. The reason for this is that, in this wonderful country, we are so blessed that if we need anything, we usually just go buy it. If we want something, normally we will go buy it or save and then go buy it. As a nation, we have been so blessed with earthly things that we have lost the understanding of need.

Speaking of life in general, a need is a fundamental necessity required for an organism to survive, maintain health, or achieve well-being. Needs exist independently of social context.

To be fair, there is such a thing as needs to maintain a standard that society has set. While this is not an actual need. It is required to maintain your cultural life. These could include transportation, communication devices, and the internet.

Society, and for the most part the church is included, has started to believe that all of the above are needs (fundamental necessities for us to survive)

Philippians 4:11 NASB95 Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.

Many times, a family or person who has decided to live a life of simplicity by choosing to vastly limit their wants and luxury items, relying on basic necessities instead, gets labeled as extremists or crazy. Even in Godly, loving churches, they are oftentimes looked at as lesser people simply because they have chosen to survive on needs and occasionally slightly more.

Could it be that they have simply learned a lesson that Paul speaks of in our Scripture? They have learned to be content in whatever circumstances they are in.

If we truly break down Scripture, we would see that life is more than breathing, eating, and clothing ourselves. While these are needs or necessities, the one necessity that gets left out so often is God. Simply put, there is absolutely no life without the presence of God. It doesn't matter if you are talking Spiritual or physical; if it were not for the Lord our Creator, then there is no life! Genesis 2:7 NASB95 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

It is His breath that caused man to become a living being. Without the Lord God our Creator, there is absolutely no life.

The same goes for the Lord God our Sustainer. Psalm 54:4 NASB95: Behold, God is my helper; The Lord is the sustainer of my soul.

Without the Lord God, mankind would cease to exist. There would be no life. He sustains us.

Paul has learned (and it's something we who make up the church, especially in the United States, need to learn) that all he needs to be content is air, food, water, covering, and Jesus! All other things provide nothing more than affluent circumstances in life. Some good, some bad, but they are nothing more than affluent circumstance providers.

They are not necessarily a bad thing unless they cause us to forget the main thing life can not exist without. That is Jesus.

Paul says Here is what I have learned. Philippians 4:12-13 NASB95 — I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. (Him being Jesus.)

I pray we will remember this lesson as well.

Love Brother Scott