Heart of Relationships: Basic Needs

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

This podcast is brought to you by Sage Hill, a social impact organization. Our mission is to help people be who they're made to be so that they can do what they're made to do. Find more resources to live fully, love deeply, and lead well at sagehillresources.com. Feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope. What is a need? A need is something you have to have fulfilled or you will die. And most of us have learned the idea that, you know, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, food, water, shelter, and clothing. Whole lot of the animal population, The two greatest needs of the human being is the need to belong and the need to matter. Not food, water, shelter, and clothing. Children give up the need for food, water, shelter, and clothing all the time to belong and matter. Children in abusive situations, home lives, will cling to the abusive parent to stay in the inability to not be able to dissociate fully from you're made to care about me and I'm made to be with you. My nurturance for life comes from you. And if you don't do it, then where will I go? I'll die. But it doesn't make any sense because there's food, water, shelter and clothing, safety, warmth somewhere else, away from this person who's burning you or harming you or kicking you. So I want you to know that child's not being irrational. That child is being who God made that child to be. So but it's illogical. So the way we're created is illogical according to man's standards, but it's very rational based upon God's creation. The need to belong is the need to be accepted, appreciated, and cared for as you are. Jesus said called a child to him and said, unless you change and become like one of these, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. To such as these, I have come. Unless you have faith like a child, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. It's like, Jesus was really big on how we were made. So the need to belong is the need to be affirmed for how you're created. Somebody to say yes to your tears, yes to your hurt, yes to your loneliness, yes to your celebration, less yes to your thrill, yes to your heartache, yes to your anger, yes to, I don't like God. It's raining, and I can't play baseball. Like, what? And I can remember when when I talk about William today, I've talked about Tencent before, but I remember William saying, he was literally, he said, Dad, I don't believe in God. But I don't see I can't see God. I believe in you. I'm like, okay. You. Like I said, oh no, you've got to believe in God. Because I was scared. You know, you've got to believe in God. Just because you can't doesn't mean you can't believe it's just like, okay. Scary. It's like, well, there's God. Like, you can't see your mom right now. She's not in the room with us right now. But do you believe your mom loves you? Yes. Is she in there? Yes. Then do you believe in mom? Yes. But, dad, I've seen mom. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well in other words, it wasn't gonna be anything I could say. I just need to be with him while he was doing that. It's okay to have questions. You belong with me anyway. But I turned his questions in my mind to when he's 18 and when he's 29 and what's gonna happen to him. He was five. I mean, bam, we went to the future fast in my mind. You know? I was scared. I wanted to stop him, but instead, I had the willingness to listen pay attention to my feelings so my feelings didn't become his harm. Anyway, so the need to belong is to be affirmed for how you're made. The need to matter is to be affirmed for what you bring. Because not only were nine 99.9% the same, we're point o 1% unique, different. Look around the room. Even twins who are known by people look different. I remember the first time I first met these twins when I was at Swanee at Harry and Larry. It's like, I I didn't know them apart. And then Harry and Larry is, like, so obvious. I can see them in my mind now. It's like, who would ever think they look alike? So once we got to know them, you see? So everybody brings that which is their mate to sort of focus on desire, be interested in.