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New Testament Women: Trust Jesus to satisfy your heart needs

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New Testament Women: Trust Jesus to satisfy your heart needs

Did you know the Bible teaches that God creates every woman with a built-in spiritual thirst for a relationship with Him? This spiritual thirst is as real as physical thirst. But the way to have it satisfied is not as obvious. Here’s the truth: A relationship with another human cannot satisfy a spiritually thirsty heart. Only God can satisfy that need, and His plan to do that included coming to earth to take on a human body and live as a human among us. Enter Jesus, the one who demonstrated God’s love for women. Jesus promises that a relationship with Him will satisfy your thirsty heart. In this post, we will look at why you can trust Jesus to satisfy your heart needs. This is post #1 in our New Testament Women series.

Listen to this post as a similar podcast from our two Bible Studies of New Testament women: Live Out His Love (11 lessons) and the shorter version Satisfied by His Love (6 lessons):

The quest to have a satisfied heart

My daughter and I were recently talking about how women in our western culture are driven by the quest for satisfaction. It is promoted by all the media we watch and read. Yet, the truth is that achievement and success have not delivered the payoff of personal satisfaction that women seek. My daughter has seen it in her work place. I have also seen women who are frustrated and disappointed because those external accomplishments do not satisfy their deepest inner longings. Is that your experience?

Did you know the Bible teaches that God creates every woman with a built-in spiritual thirst for a relationship with Him? This spiritual thirst is as real as physical thirst. But the way to have it satisfied is not as obvious. Yet, the desire to satisfy this thirst draws women toward the spiritual arena. I was that woman when I was invited to join a small women’s Bible study group years ago. There, I met Jesus in the pages of the Bible. As my relationship with Him grew, I recognized a deep sense of being satisfied. My longing to know God was being fulfilled. It still is.

Here’s the truth: A relationship with another human cannot satisfy a spiritually thirsty heart. Only God can. And His plan to do that included coming to earth to take on a human body and live as a human among us. Enter Jesus. As the radical rabbi, Jesus treated women as no man had ever before treated them. His warmth, personal attention, tenderness, sound teaching, and compassion toward women were revolutionary. He openly demonstrated His love for each individual He met—both men and women—for whom He would ultimately die. Jesus promises that a relationship with Him will satisfy a woman’s thirsty heart.

Jesus demonstrated God’s love for women

To fully appreciate Jesus’ approach to women, we need to step back in time—into the shoes of the first century women. It was tough to be a woman living around the rim of the Mediterranean Sea at that time. In both Greek and Roman cultures, women held a second-rate status with few legal rights.

Because of Old Testament teachings, Jewish women fared better than their Roman counterparts. Married women with children held a place of honor as wife and mother. But even that position was tied to her ability to produce male children. In an agricultural society, fathers needed sons—and lots of them!—to help them work the land. At the birth of a son, all celebrated but not so much at the birth of a daughter.

Jesus Christ entered into the midst of this culture with a radically different value system in the way He regarded women. His compassion for women elevated their position in society and gave them equal relationship with Him. Reading through the gospels, you can see that…

  • Jesus spoke to women publicly when a rabbi wouldn’t speak publicly to his wife.
  • Jesus let them travel with Him during His public ministry and support Him with their own money.
  • He taught women openly and continually when the rabbis didn’t consider them able to be educated.
  • Jesus defended them when they were criticized.
  • He was sensitive and compassionate toward them and healed their loved ones.
  • Jesus made them the first witnesses to His resurrection when women were considered to be unreliable as witnesses.

Jesus never spoke condescendingly to women, never made derogatory jokes about them, nor did he ever humiliate them. Women who knew Him loved Him. They wanted to follow and serve Him!

Jesus treated women as no man had ever treated them before His time. His warmth, personal attention, tenderness, sound teaching, and compassion toward women were revolutionary. And why shouldn’t He be compassionate toward women? Jesus is fully God. He created us and is the one who understands women.

I was first introduced to the above wonderful truths about Jesus by Vickie Kraft. What I learned from Vickie Kraft about my Lord through her solid biblical teaching and insight into the women of the Bible has influenced my own learning and teaching for the past 35 years. I am fully convinced that Jesus is the one who understands me as a woman.

Jesus is the one who understands women

He was there in the beginning when God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26). As Creator, He designed us with a mind to know God, emotions to love God, and a will to obey God. Our female minds need to be filled with the knowledge of Him so that our hearts may respond with great love for Him and our wills can choose to obey Him.

Jesus knows us backwards and forwards. He knows our emotional nature, our need for security and significance, and even our hormones! He understands our need to nurture and to be loved—both from those humans closest to us and from our Creator God. And even though His culture neglected to give women the worth they deserved, He could do no less than show that He loves men and women equally—for whom He would ultimately die. We experience His love and are privileged to live it out in our daily lives so that others can experience His love through us.

Here’s a key truth I want you to grasp. A relationship with Jesus satisfies every spiritual need that you  have. Every one of them. You don’t need to go anywhere else to get those deep needs satisfied. Jesus dearly loves you.

Jesus is the one who meets your spiritual needs

I love how the writer of Psalm 103 lists the many ways that God satisfies our thirsty hearts. Read these beautiful words and let them sink down into your soul.

Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all His benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Psalm 103:2-5)

Do you need forgiveness? Jesus does that. Do you need healing and hope for dire circumstances? Jesus does that. Do you feel like you are in spiritual bondage? Jesus can free you from that. Do you need assurance that you are loved? Jesus crowns you with His love and compassion. To be crowned with compassion means to be surrounded with it so that you have a sense of God’s favor and protection. A satisfied heart can go forward with complete assurance that your God knows how to love you well!

God promises to satisfy your heart’s desires with good things. You will be so satisfied that you will feel renewed and released to soar like an eagle. Have you ever watched an eagle soar on an updraft of air? I have. It’s exhilarating to see it. You and I can soar as our God lifts us up from the pit where our souls are so hungry and thirsty. And He fills us with everything we need to feel satisfied. We can be satisfied by His love for us.

Our God created us with a spiritual thirst for a relationship with Him. A relationship with another human cannot satisfy that thirst. Only God can satisfy the thirsty heart through a relationship with Jesus Christ. The Bible promises in Psalm 107,

 He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. (Psalm 107:9)

Where in your life do you need Jesus to “satisfy your desires with good things?” Ask Jesus to satisfy your heart through knowing Him.

Why study women of the Bible?

Bible women were everyday women like we are today. Their stories-snippets of their biographies-are preserved for us to get to know them, and to know their God who is also our God-an ever-faithful God whose character never changes. We get to see how much our God loves us as women today.

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