{"id":54610,"date":"1997-12-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1997-12-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/meeting-needs-or-meeting-god\/"},"modified":"1997-12-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1997-12-01T00:00:00","slug":"meeting-needs-or-meeting-god","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/meeting-needs-or-meeting-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting Needs or Meeting God?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the church today gets more and more hip&#8211;more and more need-oriented, responding to the buttons that people push in their pews&#8211;I find myself longing for more of a historical faith. I find myself not wanting to have everything explained to me in simple terms.<\/p>\n\t\t<p>I&#39;m not even sure I want all my needs met as much as I want to meet God, and sometimes I wonder if he&#39;s really interested in the noise of our contemporary clamoring. Like my dog who can&#39;t seem to get anywhere because he keeps having to stop and scratch his fleas, I wonder if we are so busy scratching where everybody itches that we aren&#39;t taking anybody anywhere significant.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3601,3671,3824,4531,4688,4796,4907,5302],"tax_ctp_topics":[378],"class_list":["post-54610","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-church","tax_ctp_tags-confrontation","tax_ctp_tags-doctrinal-preaching","tax_ctp_tags-needs-of-hearers","tax_ctp_tags-preaching","tax_ctp_tags-relevant","tax_ctp_tags-seeking-god","tax_ctp_tags-worldliness"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Meeting Needs or Meeting God? - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/meeting-needs-or-meeting-god\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meeting Needs or Meeting God? - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the church today gets more and more hip&#8211;more and more need-oriented, responding to the buttons that people push in their pews&#8211;I find myself longing for more of a historical faith. 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