This is week 6 in the series about our 5 Emotional Needs. The goal for the series is to look at each of these needs and find out what it looks like to fulfill them with an Empowering perspective and what it looks like when we fulfill them with a Limiting Belief perspective.
This week the focus is on the need of appreciation.
Earlier this week, I made a post about keeping our motives in check while we are out there helping to heal our world. The reason I made the post was to help keep our ego in check (mine included).
We have a communal relationship with our world, and we have an internal desire to provide a benefit to those around us, to feel useful.
And if your love language is Acts of Service, doing for others is how you express love and it means the world to you.
This emotional need for appreciation can be wounded if you are constantly putting out love and rarely getting any appreciation for it, as well as if you are expecting to get something back in return.
I mean, in a perfect world without sin, we would all just do things for each other out of sheer love with no expectation of anything in return – not even a thank you.
But let’s be real, that is not the world we live in!
Day after day, month after month, over an extended amount of time of not being appreciated, we lose the feeling of being needed. Something comes over you when you are not appreciated. It’s kind of like you become invisible.
That is a rough place to be.
Here is the thing about all of these emotional needs – if we are constantly expecting the world to fill them for us, we will always end up disappointed. Even if we think we can fill our own emotional needs, we are going to be disappointed.
The reality is that God is the only one who can fill our needs.
God is our Provider (Jehovah-jireh) – He is our Helper (Jehovah Ezer) – He is the God who sees all our needs (El Roi).
He is the one who can love us unconditionally. He is the one who will tell us, “Look, I literally died for you. That’s how important you are to me!”
He is the one who knows what we need even before we know what we need.
So, in wrapping up this series, my hope is that you understand that our relationship with the Lord is what allows us to fill all these needs.
And then…!!!
Once we have learned how God loves us and we learn how we can love ourselves and run to Him to get our needs filled, then we can go out into the world and share that love.
We can help others learn about God’s unconditional love and help them see that He is who fills their emotional needs.
And that is how we help heal this hurting world!
I would love to hear your feedback on what this series has meant to you.
<>< KC