God has a Need, Josie Johnson

I was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I was raised in a Christian home and I received the Lord Jesus as my personal Savior and Lord before the age of nine. Under the Lord's sovereign mercy, I was quite influenced by a sweet, elderly sister in the Lord. She was filled with a simple and sincere love for the Lord who died for her, and at a young age I too began to love the Lord dearly.

Over the next several years I did not meet many Christians who shared the same love for the Lord that I had. Also, although I had the assurance that I would be with the Lord for eternity, my life here on earth seemed to lack direction and meaning.

Then, in high school, a friend invited me to an informal, interdenominational gathering of Christians on campus. Some of us later began attending the young people's meetings of the church in Seattle. Here I met many people, young and old, who really loved the Lord Jesus and had given their lives to Him. Here were Christians who read and loved the Bible. Under the ministry of Witness Lee they received much light, and their love for the Lord grew strong. I began to get a lot of help in many areas.

Witness Lee's ministry emphasized several key matters. One of these, which at first surprised me, and then touched me deeply, was that the Bible unveils that God has a need. All my life I had been hearing how much we human beings need God to help us and take care of us, but how could anyone say that the almighty, omnipotent Creator God has a need? Surely He is complete and whole in Himself. And so He is. And yet, the Bible shows that within God's heart, since eternity, there has been a deep desire and a good pleasure (Ephesians 1:9). Out of this desire came God's eternal purpose to have a corporate group of people, created in His own image, as a vessel to be filled up with all that He is so that He can have an expression in this universe (2 Corinthians 4:6-7). In order to fulfill this desire, God needs people--He needs us. This is the reason we were created in the first place (Ephesians 3:9-10). Now He needs us to be filled with His unsearchable riches so that we can express Him (Ephesians 3:8).

As I heard and began to see more in the Scriptures about how much God needs us for His eternal purpose, I started to realize that my life on earth is full of meaning. Every day is a fresh opportunity to receive more of this unsearchably rich Christ, to get filled up anew with our wonderful, boun

tiful God!

Today I love Him more than ever, not only because He paid the highest price for me, but also because He is filling me more and more all the time. I now live in California, and meet with the church in Moreno Valley. We are here with this aim: to be among those who are living on this earth to meet God's need and to satisfy God's heart's desire for a people who are being filled with Him to express Him.