Exposing Holes in Pursuit of Wholeness: Part 2 (Security)

This is week two in a five-week application of the first chapter of More Than Forgiveness by Steve DeNeff.

Every person is driven by needs; five of them as suggested by pastor and author Steve DeNeff. They are not distinctive to Christians and they cannot be eliminated. "These needs are the human being's trademark. They give him meaning and purpose. They make him human." These five needs are significance, security, innocence, intimacy and hope. And because we are affected by the Fall we seek to fill these needs in perverted and foolish ways.

In this five-week application, we take one need each week and examine how we fill it - through the fall or through holiness. The goal is not to achieve holiness in five weeks. The goal is to become self-aware and to begin building new habits that lead to subconscious transformation. At the end of each night, reflect on your day, making note of the holes that keep you from wholeness.

In week one we examined how we fill our need for significance.

This week, we look at security:

We are a people driven by fear. Not fear of spiders or heights, but deeper fears; fears that influence our decisions and actions and plans. We fear God. Only it's not a reverent fear as in "hollowed be thy name"; not the fear that inspires us to obey him. It's the fear that causes us to feel shame when we recognize he's watching, which results in us fighting for fleeing God.

When we fight him, we argue with him, redefine him, rationalize our actions or explain him away. We turn to science for answers and only to God to fill in the gaps. We turn to catch phrases like, "Life's not fair," or "That was then, this is now," and convince ourselves that's the truth. We make deals and promises we can't keep.

When we flee God, we ignore or avoid him. We plan our lives without factoring him into the equation. We use insurance to protect us from accidents, surveillance to protects us from terrorists and laws to protect us from each other.

The bottom line is we have come to fear the one thing we were told not to, "those who kill the body," and diminish the authority of "the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell".

All of this to fill our need of security. But as mentioned before, we can't make the need just go away. We must find a new way to fill it; through holiness. So instead of filling our need for security through greed and guarantees (through the Fall), we need to replace it with trust (through holiness). We must turn our fear into trust; trust in the one who knows "the plans I have for you...plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

This week, focus on ways you fill your need for security through the Fall. Here are some potential red flags:

-You demand a guarantee for something or from someone before moving forward
-You make a decision based on its long-term reliability
-You take more than your daily bread to save for tomorrow
-You avoid the path untraveled because it wasn't a "sure bet"
-You protect your treasures on Earth as if they actually belonged to you
-You take from someone else (tangibly or intangibly) in fear that they make take from you
-You refuse a challenge you are called to when the odds are against you rather than trusting that the Lord is on your side

Any others?