By Michael Lawrence

Quite a few years ago, the noted behavioral scientist Maslow developed his “Hierarchy of Needs Theory.” He contends that our elementary needs—such as food, clothing, and shelter plus freedom from harm—must be met before our acceptance and esteem needs can be pursued in earnest. He further proposes that our highest need level, “self-actualization,” can only be realized subsequent to our acceptance needs being fulfilled. Even though, by faith, I believe that his version of “self-actualization” is fundamentally at odds with God’s way to bring about His children’s fulfillment, Maslow’s theory sheds tremendous light onto what motivates the sea of humanity.

For some, an enjoyable pastime is simply people watching. They sit on the benches at the mall and just watch as the foot traffic goes by. I contend that most of what is being observed is a subtle unwitting attempt by many to get their acceptance needs met.

Some who study human behavior break down our acceptance needs into three parts: Our need for a sense of personal worth, our need for a sense of belonging, and our need for a sense of competency. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says, in essence, that God knows our needs—in fact, created our needs and has not created a single need that He hasn’t, likewise, provided the very thing which best meets it. Hungry? There is such a thing as food. Sexual longing? There is such a thing as sex. In need of salvation? God has provided a Savior. Would such a God leave all of us to bang around aimlessly down at our acceptance needs levels, never having them met?

It’s because of Adam’s fall that we come from the womb as non-trusting, insecure individuals. The enemy of our soul wastes no time in using the situation to build a case for our worthlessness and would surely destroy us apart from God, who is rich in mercy and has another idea.

As a lad, due to a number of circumstances beyond my control, I was enveloped by an inferiority complex that seems from this vantage point to have been greater than most. My early experiences with Christianity only seemed to enhance those negative thoughts and feelings.

I remember playing mumblety-peg one day behind a downtown church with a boy who was a friend. We were about ten years old and, in that era, safely had the run of our small town. Barely into the game, we encountered the young pastor of the church who immediately deduced that we were up to no good.

Without even the courtesy of an introduction, he whipped out a tiny Testament from an inside coat pocket and inquired, “Are you boys saved?”

“Yes,” I lied, and my friend readily answered that he was indeed saved, telling the man of his recent church camp experience.

At that moment, I could have not felt more unworthy of being on the same planet with those two. Could it be that the young pastor had been led to believe that his acceptance to God was based on his performance and he viewed us boys as potentially two more “notches on his gun,” so to speak, for God to see? Only God knows for sure. Even so, my self-esteem was not enhanced by the presentation of the man’s gospel.

Another time, I was flattered to be included with a group of boys my age in the “Royal Ambassadors” class that met every Friday after school at another church across the street from our school. I was not without trepidation when I arrived for my first class, and the pastor in charge scared me from just his size alone. Somehow, things were arranged so that by the end of the lesson the other boys were off somewhere, and I was alone with the giant pastor in his study being coerced to “accept Jesus as my Lord-and-personal-Savior” or else, the way I perceived it, remain a worm forever. I succumbed to the offer. Then to top it off, he said that for my conversion to stick, I would have to get up in front of a bunch of mostly strangers that next Sunday and tell what had happened to me. I worried without ceasing until I finally cracked Saturday night and told my mom everything. She said, much to my relief, that I could stay home Sunday morning. The pastor and his assistant came to visit Sunday afternoon but were summarily dismissed in no uncertain terms by my mom. Those well-meaning folks were unwittingly in cahoots with the very devil they were intent on saving me from. His plan was to convince me of my unique unworthiness via deceptive interpretations within my own thoughts and circumstances. That devil had been completely defeated, but how did I know?

I was twenty years old, married with a toddler, when I took a job and moved to Springfield. I went to work for a mom-and-pop operation. Mom and Pop were Christians. They invited us to their little Baptist church, and my wife, also a Christian, was delighted. It was easy to become a Christian. After all, I was invited to do so every Sunday morning. The acceptance need is strong, and I believe that on a subconscious level I had concluded that to be accepted, I was going to have to become one. Just as well jump through that hoop and get it over with. So I did—tried to anyway—thought that I had. Since I wasn’t actually being drawn by the Spirit and had no clues about the matter, I just went through the motions as led. Trouble was, I had a conscience that was now deeply troubled. I knew something was amiss but was told that I was born again regardless of my feelings to the contrary. Great mental and emotional anguish would ensue for several years until I buried my feelings and began to move on and away from the church.

More than a decade later, with my wife and now two children in tow, I was back at the same church—only this time, God’s Spirit was drawing me. Norman Vincent Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking was the vehicle He had used to get me there. I had a genuine desire to know God. The pastor was new, but the moment he introduced himself, somehow I knew that he accepted me—that I could tell him anything and he wouldn’t reject me. It was not long until the Spirit brought me under conviction. Depending on the shape of one’s conscience and the life that one has led, conviction can be quite severe at thirty-three. It wasn’t long until I was baring my heart and soul to the pastor. In his presence, I prayed directly to Jesus and asked Him to lay His hand upon me so that I would know that I was saved. The pastor mildly rebuked me for putting conditions on my surrender, but Jesus knew what I was asking for and had no qualms about delivering it. I had the inward assurance that I was His and He was mine.

In the months following my rebirth, I foolishly tried to undo all that I had done in the past and eventually collapsed from the weight of it all. Our marriage failed. I moved back to my boyhood town. I saw the children only every other weekend. What I had come to know as my identity was being taken from me. Unbeknownst to me, God was taking me down the road to the end of that old self. If there was going to be any “self-actualization,” it was going to take a new self to bring it out.

I became depressed to the point of having to fight against nearly constant suicidal thoughts for several horrific months. I could no longer work and was unable to concentrate well enough to read. I became paranoid and afraid to leave my apartment. I had entered what seemed to be a bottomless pit of no return. Nevertheless, even at my lowest point, I still somehow had the weakest spark of hope within me and miraculously began to improve. I mustered up what strength I could to attend Thanksgiving dinner with my folks. I met a man there who would later give me a book to read. I found that I had improved enough to be able to concentrate and read.

I can still see myself on that old couch reading the book. When I came across a stick figure drawing in the book depicting my new self joined inseparably—past, present, and future—to Jesus, truths I had formerly heard that had confounded me concerning my spiritual life became clear to me in a split second. I could not immediately put them into words. My remaining symptoms had vanished. I believed that I needed more understanding to sustain my healing. My new friend who had given me the book recommended a counselor.

I told the Spirit-led counselor my story. He turned to a passage in Scripture that I had never really noticed before. Turning the Bible so we could both see it, he started to read:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved (Eph. 1:3-6).

That’s when I broke. I saw in the same clear way as with the drawing in the book that I was acceptable to God because of a unique relationship that He had initiated and brought to pass, and simply because He willed it so.

I apologized to the counselor that my tears had stained his Bible. He said that he would cherish the stain and always remember the wrinkled spot as where the Lord had shown me His acceptance of me as a person of worth. That was the beginning of a healing process for me to be established in the revealed truths from Scripture that bring freedom from all the residue of rejection—both real and imagined.

My need for a sense of personal worth? What could be of more value to Father God than His Son, Jesus? Yet, Jesus testified: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me . . .For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (John 6:38; Mark 10:45). If God sent Jesus to be a ransom for me, does that not prove that I am of great value to Him?

My need for a sense of belonging? Did not Jesus say to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb: “. . . go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God’” (John 20:17b)? Does not the writer to the Hebrews declare that “He (Jesus) is not ashamed to call (us) brethren” (Heb. 2:11b)? Does not being told so explicitly that I am part of the family mean that I belong? John records Jesus saying: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23b). Does not promising to take up residency with (or within) me mean that I belong?

My need for a sense of competency? Our sense of belonging to and being of value to God must precede our sense of competency so that we can say with conviction like the Apostle Paul: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me . . . (and my) sufficiency (adequacy, competency) is from God who also made (me) sufficient (adequate, competent)” (Phil. 4:13; 2 Cor. 3:5b, 6a). If . . . “of (God I am) in Christ Jesus, who became for (me) wisdom from God,” does that not make me very competent indeed whenever I in good conscience and by faith “walk after the spirit” (1 Cor. 1:30a; Rom. 8:1)?

C.S. Lewis was right. God created our deepest need—our need for acceptance—to ultimately draw us to Himself. His provisions to meet this and every other need are revealed to us in Scripture.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him (Matt. 7:7-11)!

Michael Lawrence owns
and operates Lawrence Electric
Company and is a freelance writer.