I want to win the Lottery!  No I don’t, yes I do, no I don’t, yes…no!, maybe?  In my town there are lottery ads on every billboard, sometimes the pot gets up to 350 million dollars!  What in the world would someone do with 350 million dollars?  We haven’t a clue.  But our desire is to win the lottery.  It would solve all my problems.  I could buy a new car and never worry about it breaking down and not having the money to fix it.  I could go to the grocery store and not have to pinch pennies or hand over any coupons. I could go on dream vacation after dream vacation.  We would figure out a way to spend it.  But do I really want to win the lottery?  We’ve all heard story after story of how people who have actually won the lottery have ruined their lives.  It has destroyed marriages instead of strengthening them, it has caused family relationships to get worse not better, all that money makes people do things they would never have done.  Most of the money is just wasted.  Studies have shown that many people who win the lottery end up broke and lonely.  But that would never happen to me…right.  Winning the lottery probably would destroy my life.

But because I still have this desire to win the lottery, I am forced to examine my desires.  Each day I have different desires.  Here are some that I have had lately:

• I want a new car
• I want a house on a lake
• I want a super vacation to Acadia National Park (our family is going but I really don’t have quite enough money and I’m worried I will come back with a big VISA bill)
• I want to accomplish something great and have everybody know about it
• I want to go on a trip to the Holy Land
• I want a perfectly manicured lawn

 The list could go on and I am sure that you have some things you have been thinking about lately as well.  But, what I was created to desire does not match up with these earthly desires.  I struggle each day to desire the things that God wants me to desire rather than my own personal lusts.  I believe we can find out what God wants us to desire from studying the Scriptures.  I decided to test this idea this morning.  I said, “I’m going to read Ephesians 1 and find out if it says anything about what God desires for  me to desire.  Here are a few things I found:

• God wants me to desire to be faithful to Christ
• To desire experiencing peace with God through Jesus
• To desire spiritual blessings from heaven (not from earth)
• To desire holiness
• To desire the riches of his grace (not the riches of the lottery)
• To desire an eternal inheritance (not an earthly one)
• To desire to love the saints
• To desire to give thanks
• To desire prayer
• To desire a spirit of wisdom
• To desire Christ’s power exhibited through my life for his glory (not my own)

I can’t wait to continue to pour over the Scriptures and find out more desires that God has for me.  The earthly desires of what I want need to be replaced with the heavenly desires that God wants me to have.  I was created this way.  My desires need to be God-centered not self-centered.  I truly believe my life will be rich and full and satisfying if I desire what God has in store for me rather than what the lottery can buy at the store for me.

 All for Jesus,

Fletch

My pastor preached a great sermon yesterday on Ephesians 4:1-6. (Wait, I thought you were the pastor?  I am a pastor, actually I am “the Assistant to the Pastor until Feb 28th when I get officially ordained, then I will be the Assistant Pastor.  So since I am the second guy I only preach about once every 7 weeks or so).  Anyway, at one point during his sermon he started talking about the unified hope that believers have in Christ and in His promises.  I started thinking about hope and what makes our hope, as believers, different than other people’s hope, so for instance like hope that Obama will change our country for the better (which I am highly skeptical about, since one of his first acts as President was to repeal a funding ban on abortions, so right now, thanks to Obama, more and more babies are being killed).

So how is our hope as Christians different than other people’s hope?  Our hope is a Biblical hope.  Hope is the certainty of belief in something we cannot see and has not happened yet.  But where does the certainty come from?  The Christian’s certainty of hope comes from the Bible which displays the integrity and character of God.  Therefore, our hope is based on God’s character.  When God promises to do something He delivers.  History has shown it through the prophets.  If you are interested just read Psalm 22, written by King David about a thousand years before Christ was crucified, then go and read one of the gospel accounts of the crucifixion, like Matthew 27.  Look at how many prophesies are fulfilled just between these two passages alone.  God fulfilled His promise to redeem His people from their sins through the death of Christ.  And there are hundreds of other prophesies and promises throughout the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the New Testament.

Think about it this way…God does not live within the limits of time because He is an eternal Spirit.  We are limited by time and therefore cannot see what will happen in the future.  So our hope in human beings is extremely flawed.  It’s like saying I hope I win the lottery.  There is such a miniscule chance that it will actually happen.  But with God, our hope is secure.  Look at what Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man that He should lie, or the son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?”  God does what He says He will do.  And this is not just because God can see into the future, He is already in the future.  Remember, He is not bound by time. But God providentially causes things to happen according to His plan.  He does not react to human situations, He already knows what will happen, God is never surprised.  God has made us certain promises in the Bible and He will providentially deliver those promises, He has a proven track record, so far He’s been 100% in fulfilling what He says He will do.  We can be certain that our hope is not in vain.