Love vs. Need

Once you learn that a pattern is dysfunctional, the smartest thing to do—the only thing to do—is to stop whatever you are doing to keep that pattern going, even if you don’t get whatever it is that you think you need from working that pattern. It’s better to not get what you need than to keep working a dysfunctional pattern. Your addiction to getting your needs met can keep you in a dysfunctional pattern for a long time—for the remainder of your life. The Bible says that God will supply ALL our need, according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. The primary need that we all have, whether we realize it or not, is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love others as we love our self. Love is an energy, like light or pure water, flowing out from the core of your being which has been filled with the Holy Spirit because you have asked Jesus to be the Lord of your life. Need, on the other hand, is a pull inward toward your inner being because you feel empty, void, incomplete. Humans cannot make humans complete. Only God can do that. Loving and needing are not the same thing. The Bible teaches us to look only to God for our needs [even our people-needs], and to look toward others only with love, even if they are not doing what we think they should. This is the pathway of freedom.

To make one's growth contingent upon someone else's growth, for any reason, is an all-too-common act of self-defeat which is, at root, evil in the sense that it is a great delusion. We must never place another person in the position of preventing or blocking our growth toward and into God. We must wake up to our own power and responsibility to grow, which can not be retarded by others except to the degree that we are deluded into believing that it can be. We must detach from growth-encumbering attachments to others; and this must be carefully understood as not detaching from love (care, concern, willingness to sacrifice, etc.) for them. We must not, in our love for others, be attached to a need for them to grow; or a need for them to love us.