Articles
God Is All We Lack
“Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).
AS OUR PERFECT AND INFINITE CREATOR, GOD IS EVERYTHING THAT WE ARE NOT. He is the Answer to our every question, the Sufficiency who can supply all our needs. Perhaps our greatest need, then, is to recognize our need and to seek in God the perfection that we don’t find in ourselves. He is all that we lack . . . and He is even much more than that.
If there is one thing that is obvious about us, it is that we are incomplete. Whether we speak of our needs and our longings or we put it in terms of our tendency toward growth and development, somehow we are always using language that implies our imperfection. We are, as we say, “works in progress.” There are things about us that we need but do not yet have.
Whatever these things are that we need, God is all of these. There is no necessity that He cannot meet; there is no hole in our hearts that He cannot fill. God is everything that we lack.
But in a sense, God is also the only thing we lack. There is nothing that we really need except God! Whatever other needs we may think we have, these are but manifestations and reminders of that which is our only true need. We were made for fellowship with our Creator. Without that, we’d not be content even if we had all the rest of the world combined. But if we have that, we find that we’re able to do without, if necessary, any of the other things we thought we had to have, including even physical life itself. Our having been created by God means simply this: God is all that we truly have to have. Anything else is a bonus.
But there is, in fact, a great deal of bonus in God’s dealings with us. As we’ve said, He is all that we lack, and He is also much more. One of the most marvelous aspects of God’s nature is His bounty. He is a God whose grace super-abounds and overflows. When we drink at His fountain, He not only quenches our thirst, but He gives us additional gifts. We are told that He is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). Our Maker is a God who takes great delight in surprising us with the riches of His infinite goodness.
“How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none” (A. W. Tozer).
