What’s On Your Wish List?

This is the season when we make lists of gifts that we would like to receive. As a child, most of my wish list came from catalogs. I gave my parents an extensive Christmas wish list that included catalog page numbers, just so it was very clear exactly what I wanted. Yes, I vividly remember lying on the floor with my colorful marker and a stack of mail order catalogs. While my parents were generous in their gift giving, I never got everything on my list. These days, I find it easy to provide others with a link to the item on Amazon or some other website.

Did you know that in 1845, Tiffany’s was the first mail order catalog published in the United States? Other companies added catalog operations shortly thereafter and by the end of that century, both Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward also began issuing their own catalogs. This year my wife and I get catalog after catalog in our mailbox, both from companies we’ve ordered stuff from in the past and ones we have never even heard of.

Have you watched a kid sitting on Santa’s lap? When asked by Santa what they would like for Christmas, frequently their answers are very specific and rather lengthy. As adults we too make lists for those buying the gifts; sometimes get what we ask for while other times the gift-giver surprises us with something they picked out. Hopefully, either way, you are pleased with the gift.

Why is it that we are not shy about asking each other for specific things, but when it comes to asking God, we either don’t ask Him at all, or we are hesitant to ask for what we really want? We often lack boldness and expectancy when taking our petitions to God.

We read these words in 1 John 5:14-15, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And we know if he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.” 

There is a lot packed into those two verses. Just as I did not get all the things on my childhood wish list, these two verses give a similar message; we do not get everything we ask God for, simply because we ask. It isn’t some golden ticket – ask Him for anything under the sun and shazam, we get it.

But what these verses do tell us is we can have confidence that God hears us. And “hearing” does not mean simply to be listened to, but to be heard favorably. This confidence of being heard is linked to the qualifying clause found right within the passage… “if we ask according to his will.” This lines up with how Jesus taught us to pray when He said, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be you name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9-10)

What does all this mean? It is not just any prayer that is answered, but rather it is the confident prayer of a person who is in fellowship with the Father (1 John 1:3) who asks in Jesus’ name (John 14:13; 15:16), who remains attached to Jesus (John 15:7), and who obeys His commands (1 John 3:22). These kinds of prayers are not just a time of “asking” but of yielding our lives to the will and work of God.

Psalm 37:4, same message, different words – “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

So, in these four weeks leading up to Christmas, take delight in the Lord and allow His will to work in you and through you. He knows what you need, even when it is not on your wish list. 

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