At this time of year, there’s a lot of talk about it being a new year, and a new start. The old year is gone and it’s time for new plans, new hopes and dreams for something better. For many people that will be true, but for others it will just be more of the same old thing. Why is that? It’s because many of us do the same things, the same way that we’ve always done them but we expect different results. And then we’re disappointed that things in our lives turn out the same old way and we never seem to get anywhere.
Tonight we are going to talk about what I call wishing well Christianity and a wishing well lifestyle. At some time in your life you’ve probably experienced a wishing well or a fountain and thrown coins in the water. You make a big wish and hope it comes true. When you’re a child, you really believe the wish is going to come true but as you get older, you get a little jaded. You still wish but you don’t really expect anything.
A wishing well life is when you wish for things out of life but you don’t do anything to make it happen. You live your life forever tossing those pennies into the wishing well and then just sit back and wait on something to magically happen.
- I wish I had a job that pays more
- I wish the boss would notice what a hard worker I am and give me that promotion
- I wish the pastor’s wife would notice that I really love children and ask me to work in the children’s ministry
- I wish the pastor would notice that I’m a really good at preaching and ask me to speak to the congregation sometime
- I wish the worship leader would notice what a great musician I am or a great singer I am and invite me to be in the band
- I wish I could go on a mission trip sometime
- I wish I could live here, I wish I could live there…
I wish, I wish, I wish!!
For years I lived the wishing well lifestyle. I remember when I was a child and was terribly shy. I would watch the other kids play and having fun. I wanted to join in, but I wouldn’t make any move to let them know that I wanted to join in. Or, even if they tried to get me to participate, I would often sit back and not do it, even when I wanted to. I wanted to take part in different activities but was too shy to do anything about it. All I did was wish. I’d wish for something and pray about it, but then I would sit back and wait on God to hand it to me.
Maybe you wished for different things. To get invited to join that organization at school. To get a great job, be successful. To know the bible better and recite verses off the top of your head. To work more in the church and just be a better, stronger Christian. Maybe you want to be a great cook. To take a dream vacation.
But wishing alone doesn’t get you anywhere. You have to take some action towards making things happen in your life!!
Sometimes, that desire in our heart is the beginning of an opportunity! God plants the seed of something in our hearts and it’s up to us to follow through on it.
Right now you may be thinking, “Wait a minute there. Just hold up a little. We’re supposed to let God’s will be done in our life. If God wants me to have it, He’ll give it to me. I trust God to give me the things I need, and if he doesn’t give it to me, I don’t need it.”
And to that I say, yes He does give us the things we need!! We should always seek God’s will for our lives. In fact his word says that we need to be careful to not boast about tomorrow:
James 4:13 – 17, “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” NIV.
God definitely has a plan for us. In Jeremiah 29:11, “‘for I know the plans I have for you’ says the Lord, ‘they are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” NIV.
Isn’t that exciting? Stop and dwell on that for a minute. God has plans for us and HE KNOWS what His plans are. WE may not know what those plans are but HE does! We can trust Him to guide us down the right path and to steer us away from the wrong path if we just seek Him.
Not only does God have a plan for us, He watches over us too. In Psalm 33:13-15 it says, “from heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind: from His dwelling place He watches all who live on earth – He who forms the hearts of all, who considers all they do.” God considers you and what you do in life. To some of you that may be intimidating! My mama used to always tell us that Jesus was watching us when we were growing up to try to make us behave. It didn’t always work!
So take some action to achieve some of those things you’ve been wishing for but never received out of life. God is a God of action! His scriptures are full of Him telling us to take action:
He uses action words like:
Go – He told Abraham to go to a new land
Lead – He told Moses to lead His children out of bondage in Egypt
Sing – the psalms are full of instructions to sing praises to God
Tell – tell the good news of the gospel to the world
Call – “Call to me and I will tell you great and wondrous things that you do not know…”
Study – to show yourself approved unto God
Ask – and He will give
Pray – without ceasing
Seek – and you will find
When I started taking steps toward achieving the things I wanted, guess what? Things I had wished for started becoming reality. When I started doing something, God opened doors of opportunity for me and smoothed the way for my progress. Sometimes, He put obstacles in my path so that I turned away from a particular pursuit. Either way, things happened in ways that I couldn’t even comprehend!
- I wanted a better paying job so I started at looking at ways to get more education and training. And you know what? I found out I qualified for grants and scholarships and didn’t have to pay a penny for my four year degree. Having a degree meant I earned a higher income.
- I wanted a promotion at work so I applied for and was accepted into a leadership training program. It was in that program that I learned to be better at the job I had. And that helped me to effectively deal with some difficult situations that I thought were going to give me a stress attack. But being able to handle them is what eventually led to the promotion that I had wanted for years.
- I always wished I knew more of the bible, so I started actually reading my bible. Who would have thought that would work?!? Now, when I need guidance from God, a bible verse will float through my head. Or maybe just a piece of one, and I’ll have to look it up and in the process find more scriptures that pertain to my situation.
- I have friends that wanted to be missionaries but they operated a huge farm and had no time for mission work. But one day they took action – they put their farm on the market and sold everything except for the house and lived off the money while they went to the mission fields for what they intended to be a few months. Now, they have a mission ministry and travel all over the world helping to plant churches in foreign lands and when they come home, they still have a home to rest in. When they started taking action, things started happening that could only have been of God’s doing.
If we aren’t careful, we can be guilty of letting our Christian walk consist of a trip to the wishing well. We will toss in our pennies and make wishes for God to do something in our life, but don’t take any action to achieve it. And then, we sit back and wait, and wait and in the meantime Satan steals away all the things we were intended to accomplish and achieve in this life.
John 10:10, “The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.”
God intends for us to have an abundant life. A full life. Not a life full of wishes, but a life full of accomplishments and achievements to His glory! Amen!
Five main points:
1. Seek God’s will for your life
2. Accept that God has plans for you
3. God watches over you
4. Take some action
5. Remember, that desire in our heart may be the beginning of an opportunity
