19 Bible Verses About Needing God

Acts 17:28

“‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

Reflection: Paul is speaking to the meeting of the Areopagus in Athens, where he had found an altar inscribed “to an unknown god” while walking through the city (verse 23). Three verses earlier he says God “is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything,” and that “he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” The line about living and moving in him applies that to his whole audience, most of whom did not worship Israel’s God, and he backs it with a line from their own poets.

Psalm 127:1

“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.”

Reflection: The psalm names ordinary work, building a house and guarding a city, and says both are wasted effort unless the Lord does the building and the watching. The next verse carries the point into the working day: “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for he grants sleep to those he loves.”

John 15:5

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Reflection: Jesus says this to his disciples on the night before his death, in the picture of a vine and its branches. Verse 4 makes the same point: “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.” “Nothing” here refers to the fruit a disciple bears, and verse 6 describes the branch that does not remain as thrown away and withered.

Psalm 42:1-2

“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”

Reflection: The psalmist is away from the temple and remembers leading the festive crowd to “the house of God” (verse 4). Meanwhile people taunt him all day long, “Where is your God?” (verse 3). What he thirsts for is God himself, “the living God,” and the psalm answers its own despair with “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him” (verse 5).

Psalm 63:1

“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.”

Reflection: The psalmist describes his need for God in terms of a body in a land with no water: thirst, longing, a “whole being” that craves. Later in the psalm the thirst is answered: “I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods” (verse 5), and “I cling to you; your right hand upholds me” (verse 8).

Isaiah 55:1

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.”

Reflection: God calls out like a seller in a market, except that the buyers need no money. The next verse asks, “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” and verse 3 names what is actually on offer: “Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live.”

John 6:35

“Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’”

Reflection: The day after Jesus fed the crowd with loaves, people followed him and asked for a sign like the manna their ancestors ate in the wilderness. When he spoke of “the true bread from heaven,” they replied, “Sir, always give us this bread” (verse 34). This verse is his answer: the bread is Jesus himself, received by coming to him and believing in him.

Matthew 5:6

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Reflection: The fourth blessing of the Sermon on the Mount uses hunger and thirst for a longing for righteousness. Jesus promises that such people “will be filled.” The verse sits in the same list as the blessing on the poor in spirit, three verses earlier.

Matthew 5:3

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Reflection: Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount with this blessing. The kingdom of heaven is promised to the poor in spirit in the present tense: “theirs is” the kingdom. The blessing that follows is on “those who mourn.”

Romans 7:18

“For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

Reflection: Paul describes wanting to do good and failing to do it: “what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (verse 15). The passage ends with a cry for rescue, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” and its answer, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (verses 24-25).

Proverbs 3:5-6

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Reflection: A father teaches his son, and the call to trust the Lord with the whole heart comes with a warning against leaning on one’s own understanding. Verse 7 repeats the warning: “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.” The straight paths promised in verse 6 follow from submitting to God “in all your ways.”

James 4:8

“Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

Reflection: James writes to believers whose fights and quarrels come from desires they cannot satisfy, and he tells them, “You do not have because you do not ask God” (verse 2). He quotes “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble” (verse 6), and the call to come near to God ends with “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (verse 10).

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Reflection: Paul had asked the Lord three times to take away “a thorn in my flesh,” given to keep him from becoming conceited (verses 7-8). The request was refused, and the Lord’s reply opens this passage. The rest of it is Paul’s response to the refusal: the weakness he wanted removed becomes something he boasts about.

Isaiah 40:29-31

“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Reflection: Israel had complained, “My way is hidden from the Lord” (verse 27). The answer begins with God himself, who “will not grow tired or weary” (verse 28), and then turns to people: even the young and strong wear out, and those who hope in the Lord renew their strength. The last lines of the chapter picture them running and walking without growing faint.

Psalm 73:26

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

Reflection: The psalmist had envied the prosperity of the wicked until he entered God’s sanctuary and saw their end. Just before this verse he asks, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you” (verse 25). With body and heart failing, he calls God “my portion forever,” and verse 28 sums up: “it is good to be near God.”

Philippians 4:13

“I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

Reflection: Paul is thanking the church at Philippi for the gifts they sent him (verse 18), and he tells them he has learned to be content “whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (verse 12). “All this” means that range of circumstances, having too little as well as having enough. The strength he names is strength to be content in either state.

Psalm 121:1-2

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Reflection: The psalm opens with a question and answers it by naming who helps: “the Maker of heaven and earth.” The following verses describe that help as constant attention, a keeper who “will neither slumber nor sleep” (verse 4) and who watches over “your coming and going both now and forevermore” (verse 8).

Psalm 18:2

“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

Reflection: The psalmist piles up names for God as a defender: rock, fortress, deliverer, shield, stronghold. The psalm opens, “I love you, Lord, my strength,” and verse 6 tells what happened when the cords of death entangled him: “In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice.”

Psalm 23:1-3

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.”

Reflection: “I lack nothing” is the first thing the psalm says about having the Lord as shepherd, and the next lines list what the shepherd supplies: rest, water, a refreshed soul and the right paths. Verse 4 extends the care to “the darkest valley,” where the reason given for having no fear is “for you are with me.”