Some time ago, I was scheduled to fly to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to speak in a meeting. Before I left home, I tried to talk to the Lord about some critical needs in my life and ministry. Instead of answering the way I had expected, He told me, "When you get to Tulsa, I want you to give away your van."

I dropped the subject.

On the plane, I again approached the Lord about my pressing situation: "Father, I really need to talk to You about my needs," I told Him, "It just seems they have become overwhelming." Again the Lord spoke to me and said, "When you get to Tulsa, I want you to give away your van."

So again, I dropped the subject.

A while later, I got into a conversation with Meadowlark Lemon who was traveling with me. We were looking at some sports articles in USA Today and discussing them. Then, in a quiet moment, I once more took up my "case" with the Lord: "Father, during this meeting in Tulsa, I am going to have a little time between services, and I really need to talk to You about my needs."

Once more there came His response, "When you get to Tulsa, I want you to give away your van." But this time He went on: "Also, there are five preachers in Tulsa who have become discouraged and are about to give up the ministry. I want you to give each of them a suit of clothes."

So once more, I decided not to continue the discussion.

Finally, I just couldn't hold back any longer. I said to the Lord: "Father, I've just got to talk to You! You know we've been building our international headquarters in Fort Worth this year. We have moved into them, but there are still lots of things we need. More land, for instance, and more buildings. But we just don't have the money to get what we need...."

"When you get to Tulsa, I want you to give away your van and five suits of clothes."

The Seed Comes First
It was then that it finally hit me what was happening. Every time I tried to talk to God about my need, He talked to me about seed.

Now that's not deep. As children of God, all of us should understand it. We are seed-planting people. But, if you are like me, you have probably noticed that over the past couple of years your needs have grown larger and larger. You must be wondering, as I was on that plane, where in the world is the money going to come from to meet my steadily increasing obligations?

I believe the Lord showed me the answer to that important question while I was in that airplane on my way to Tulsa. What He revealed to me is what I am sharing with you now. After telling me several times to give, when all I wanted to talk about was receiving, the Lord told me:

In the days to come, the needs of the Body of Christ are going to become so great that, in the natural, they will appear to be impossible to meet. But I am telling you now: don't wait until then to get busy sowing seed into the Kingdom, because your needs are already enormous. Don't wait until you get an answer to your present needs before you begin to prepare for your future needs.

Then He made a statement that suddenly put the whole subject into perspective for me: "You must become seed-conscious, not need-conscious."

Becoming Seed-Minded
If you and I are going to successfully deal with the issues of life on God's level, then we are going to have to get His viewpoint and perspective. We are going to have to learn to operate the way God operates. We must learn to think and act the way our heavenly Father thinks and acts.

That's why He showed me that every time I tried to talk to Him about answering my need, He spoke to me about planting seed: the Lord will only discuss solutions, not problems.

Our Father is well aware that the needs of the Body of Christ are growing at a tremendous rate every year. He realizes that the entire Church is consumed with needs. I know that, personally, I have never had so many needs in my whole life as I have been experiencing the past year or so.

I mean, I'm working harder now than I ever have before. It almost seems that the harder I work, the more needs I produce. Every time my faith grows, my need grows right along with it.

The same is true of you: every time your faith reaches a new, higher dimension, so does the need that faith venture produces. What it took to keep you going last year is not nearly enough to keep you afloat this year. Why? Because your needs increase as your faith, your ministry and your sphere of influence grows and expands.

That's natural. The danger in all of this otherwise healthy growth and expansion is that if we are not careful, we will become need-oriented.

Don't Make Needs Your Focus
That's what I believe the devil is trying to do to the Body of Christ today: make us need-conscious. He doesn't so much place new needs upon us; they come as a natural result of our growth, expansion and outreach. The deeper we penetrate into enemy territory, the more resistance we meet from our enemy and the greater our need for larger and larger amounts of supplies.

So our adversary, the devil, seeing he can't stop our advance, sets in to cause us problems. He begins throwing up obstacles in our paths, setting "booby traps," laying ambushes, sniping away at us from all sides—doing his best to disrupt our vital supply lines.

In short, Satan is going all out to pressure us into taking our minds off our objectives and goals, and focusing them on our problems.

In our Christian battle, you and I must not become need-oriented. If we do, we will give into pressure and become discouraged. If we keep our attention and our eyes trained on our seemingly impossible needs, we will be tempted to give up the fight and quit. That's exactly what the enemy wants us to do.

Copyright © Jerry Savelle Ministries International
All rights reserved. Used by permission.