Date of message: 28 March 2004 Issue
132
Subject: The Lord Will Take Care Of Your Wants As Well

Shalom, Boker-tov (good morning),
The Psalmist David in writing Psalm 23:1 acknowledged that the Lord was his Shepherd and because of that relationship, he had no wants. I often wondered at that. How could David say that the Lord satisfied all his wants? I can understand if he wrote, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not need.”
For a long time, I grew up with the teaching that God can only supply all our needs and that we cannot be greedy and go to Him and expect Him to supply all our wants as well. Needs and wants are different; ‘need’ refers to everything that we have to have for survival while ‘want’ refers not only to everything we need but also all those things that we desire deep down in our hearts and may not have been made known.
And so for a long time, I had the impression that the translations were wrong and that the correct word should have been ‘need’ and then everything would have been crystal clear and we can move on. And so I used to question myself each time I bring up a request to the Lord whether my prayer request was a ‘need’ or a ‘want’ and I had to restrain myself from making bold requests of the Lord.
However, recently I decided to go to the PC Bible and check out the difference, if any, and satisfy myself once and for all and, boy, was I amazed by what I found.

(Source above is from http://bible.crosswalk.com/)
In the original Hebrew, the two words are different and within the word ‘need’ they have various words too depending on the usage. Although the English definitions (see above table) looked very similar, certainly we now know that the meanings are different and to me that settled a big part of my struggle; that the translations were correct and that the true meanings were kept intact.
And so I am now comforted and do not have to contend within myself this issue of asking the Lord for “everything under the sun”. Indeed, if you know the special position that you are in, as a child of the Living God, would you not be bold then to ask the Father for things beyond your subsistence level?
I would and I certainly did that again just last week. As some of you may have been aware, I was in Karachi City last weekend working with the Karachi branch of Deutsche Bank. I arrived on Saturday evening 20 March at around 10:30PM local time and I had asked the branch staff, prior to my departure, to get the hotel to send a car or mini-bus to transfer me to the hotel on arrival. Well, guess what, I received a telephone call on Friday evening March 19, from the head of the branch premises department that he would come to the airport himself and fetch me to the hotel instead of the hotel staff. Now that was in my heart as a want but in my official communiqué with them I did not insist that they had to do it for me. I was pleased that the Lord answered my want and not just my need.
Next ‘want’ that I had was over meals. Because I stayed in the hotel right next door to the branch, I could have just gone back to the restaurants in the hotel and taken all my meals there and that would have been fine with me. Praise the Lord for He answered my ‘wants’ again in that the senior staff of the branch took turns to bring me out for dinner at different restaurants all over Karachi City and again, they need not have done those actions but I thank the Lord that He took care of my stomach and security as well.
Now, as if you would think that I had enough ‘wants’ taken care of during this recent business trip, I am here to tell you that the show-stopper was on the last day. The Lord knew that I needed to buy a new pair of leather shoes for office wear because the pair that I wore to Karachi gave way (of all places) on my last day there (March 23). As it was a public holiday (Pakistan Day), most of the shops would not have opened for business and so when my two Pakistani colleagues brought me to this shopping complex, I half-expected not to be able to buy anything, much less a pair of leather shoes! But praise the Lord He directed us to this particular shoe shop on the second floor and this particular pair on display caught my eyes and it was exactly the design and cut that I needed and was also the size that I needed.
And then that evening the Lord gave me another demonstration of granting me my ‘want’ instead of my ‘need’. My flight out of Karachi City was at 03:30AM on Wednesday March 24 and because of the late hour, I had asked the secretary of the Chief Country Officer in my Karachi branch to arrange for the hotel to extend my late checkout to the evening (normal check-out time as we all know is at 12:00noon) and she did confirm with me that she had already left instructions with the hotel management and that I should be accorded the extension till midnight at no charge at all.
Imagine the reaction of the hotel front desk when I checked out at 11:00PM. They did charge me a full day room rate with the explanation that their check-out policy was at noon and that I was already over-staying by half a day. But when I reminded them of the special arrangement and after verification, they had to reverse the charges and the comment they made was “you are a very special guest because no one had ever been accorded free extensions for that long a time”.
Certainly we are special in the Lord’s eyes and let us not forget that. If the Lord could do all those things for me on that trip, I know for sure that He will do the same for you. Trust Him and believe that He will. Would He give His children anything less than His best? I do not think so. I would like to encourage you to be bold and see the goodness of the Lord in your life.
The Lord wants to be your Provider right now and the only way for Him to do that is that you receive Him into your heart and become one of His children. I would encourage you to do so and immediately you will begin to experience His love and care for you in your own personal life. Once you have invited Jesus into your heart, He will immediately come into your life and make it His throne. Our Lord Jesus died for us so that we can have His eternal life as an exchange. We take on His righteousness and He bore our sins on the cross. Our Father is a Righteous God and He will honor His Covenant with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus loves you so much that He already demonstrated His love for you on the cross. He died that we may have life in abundance. Pray this simple prayer to invite Jesus into your heart and immediately you will experience His peace coming your way.
Our Daddy God, our Heavenly Father, thank you that You love me so much that You sent Jesus Your only Beloved Son, to die for all my sin and to be raised from the dead so that I can be forgiven of all my sin and now I am set free.
Lord Jesus, thank you for coming into my heart and for giving me the Holy Spirit to be my Friend and my Guide. Thank you that the Holy Spirit is with me, constantly reminding me of my very special position as a child of God the Father. Thank you that as Your child, I can now start enjoying all Your blessings for my life - Divine Healing, Divine Health and Divine Life in You. Thank you also for the wonderful gifts that the Holy Spirit brings along with Him and for imparting those gifts into my life.
Lord, because You were raised from the dead, I am now eternally forgiven of all my sin, greatly blessed among all men, a highly favored child of God, deeply loved by the Father and completely protected in the Lord and in the most precious name of Jesus Christ, Yeshua Ha’ Mashiah, I pray. Amen
If you have prayed this prayer for the first time, welcome to the Family of the Father (and it is a very large universal family). It is important that you are not alone facing your personal challenges but that you can obtain good help wherever you are. Why not take the time to find your own local Christian family (local church) and worship the Father together? You will be greatly encouraged when you meet together to worship the Father, for fellowship and for the study of the Word of Christ.
Start receiving the blessings of the Father as you walk with Him in faith. It is your inheritance in Christ and He wants you to start enjoying these blessings right now; you do not need to wait until you reach heaven and there is more from where they come from.
And, my friend, continue to exercise the gift of praying in tongues and with the usage, more gifts of the Holy Spirit will be imparted to you.
The Lord blesses you and keeps you,
The Lord makes His face shine upon you and be gracious to you and all your loved ones,
The Lord lifts up His countenance upon you and gives you His shalom peace. Numbers 6: 24–26
Have a blessed week ahead, Shavrou-tov
Shalom,
Andrew L W Lee

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