Saturday, we celebrated our family Thanksgiving with incredible food, laughter, family pictures, and conversations about Christmas. I was sitting beside our 8-year-old granddaughter as she searched Amazon on Meme’s phone for her Christmas wish list. Not much has changed in 70 years except when I was her age, we used the Sears catalog. We would dog-ear the pages for items we wished for, while our granddaughter clicked to put an item in the cart. When she showed me the purse I said, “Is that what you need?” “Grandpa, I don’t need it, but I want it,” she said.

It struck me that my 8-year-old granddaughter can distinguish between needs & wants while others of us can’t. I went to Google AI and found this, “The key difference is that needs are required for basic functioning, whereas wants are optional and often motivated by comfort or pleasure.” Simply put, “needs” are the essentials and everything else is a “want.”

A clear example, like everything in life, is found in your Bible. In Exodus 15:22-24 we find, “They traveled for three days in the desert. They could not find any water. Then they came to Marah. There was water at Marah, but it was too bitter to drink. The people began complaining to Moses. They said, “Now what will we drink?” It was just 3 days ago the people experienced God parting the Red Sea, a miracle of gigantic portion and now they think God can’t provide water, a basic need. But it gets better.

Just one month after being rescued by God from slavery in Egypt… after witnessing God demonstrate His Power (Exodus 7 – 11, of turning water into blood, infestation of frogs, then gnats, followed by flies, then livestock pestilence, there were boils, hail, locust, darkness and the death of the first born that did not have the protection of the blood of the lamb) now they complain about the food! In Exodus 16:2-3, “They complained to Moses and Aaron in the desert. They said, “It would have been better if the Lord had just killed us in the land of Egypt. At least there we had plenty to eat. We had all the food we needed. But now you have brought us out here into this desert to make us all die from hunger.” Are you kidding me… they were slaves!

God the Father provided for the needs of His people throughout their 40 years in the desert. He provided for their daily meals with manna (bread from heaven), made water pour from a rock for 40 years, and get this, in Deuteronomy 29:5. “He (God) led you through the desert for 40 years, and in all that time, your clothes and sandals did not wear out.” God provided for their needs, but they had wants. They were never thankful.

This sad example is repeated throughout the Bible and life today.

What started in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 when Adam & Eve chose their wants over God’s miraculous Way of meeting their needs and what God was specifically forbidden, continues today.

No one is immune from the power of the “WANTS”! Everyone is vulnerable. Our only protection is being in a close relationship with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. Paul told us this in Philippians 4:19, “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus.”

Simply choose the bondage of the “wants” of this world or the freedom found in Christ Jesus. When we choose Jesus (Romans 10:9) God gives us what we need while we are on earth and our hearts desire when we join Jesus in eternity.

It’s your choice. For me, I NEED Jesus.