Skip to main content

What We Want

In the book and subsequent movies titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Veruca Salt knew how to get what she wanted; Veruca simply demanded it. When Veruca wanted a Golden Ticket she demanded one from her father. Her father stopped production in his factory and had all of his workers unwrap Wonka bars in search of a Golden Ticket. Veruca made it to the Chocolate Factory, but she was later rejected by Willy Wonka because she was a “bad egg.” Perhaps you can sing Veruca’s song “I Want It Now.”

I want the works
I want the whole works
Presents and prizes and sweets and surprises
Of all shapes and sizes
And now
Don't care how
I want it now
Don't care how
I want it now

Veruca is an extreme example of wanting everything in the world, but all of the kids in the book wanted something. The truth is we all want something. Wants can be a wonderful thing. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” So, what do you want? I will tell you what I want. I want to know what you want. I’m working on a sermon series about what people want, and I would like your feedback. If any of the following categories apply to you or you just have an opinion on the topic, then tell me what you want. I will keep all responses semi-anonymous!

What Youth and Children’s Ministers Want
What Seniors Want
What Women Want
What Music Ministers Want
What Kids Want
What Singles Want
What Visitors Want
What Men Want
What God Wants
What America Wants

Comments

James said…
Scotty,

Beyond my list of possession "wants", here is what I struggle with wanting to know and what I want.

As a father:
"Am I being a good one?" Subjective; yes, immeasurable; probably, but I want to know if I love enough, coach enough, correct enough, discipline enough and at the end of the day provide a good example.
"Do/Will my kids love and respect me and say that they had a "good" dad."

As a husband:
"Am I man enough?"
I want to know if I support, protect, honor, respect and love my wife in everything I do.

What I want from her. The same, and honestly, to sometimes feel like I'm the most important thing in the world to her and that what I want takes precedent over what I do for the family. (Hope that makes sense..I guess sometimes I want to know it's ok to be a little selfish???)

I could put in a couple of more, but I need to get back to work. Hope I answered in the context of your categories, and don't worry about the confidentiality part..I just blew that posting this on the WWW.

I'd love to hear the sermon series.
April 20, 2009 at 9:25 AM
Brian said…
I just want to be where God is, be a part of what God is doing and live a life that is given over to a purpose and a Person greater than me. I'm not interested in being remembered. I drive roads every day that are named for people whom no one remembers. But I want my seconds to count for eternity.

If that's the goal, then I can work backwards to find out how to get there...

Secondly, I want to enjoy every season of life for what it offers- rather than focusing on what it doesn't...
April 25, 2009 at 3:46 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Life Worth Living

We all have an idea of how we hope that our life would go. We all have dreams. We have dreams for our own lives and the lives of people who are close to us. We have goals that we would like to accomplish during our lifetime. We have a measure of what would constitute a complete life for us. When reality does not match our idealized life, we are disappointed and sad. We grieve the loss of a life that we had imagined both for ourselves and those who are close to us. We wonder where God is in all of these situations. The Bible tells us about a man with whom we can identify. Jacob’s life had taken several unexpected twists, yet he came to the end of his life content with God’s will. Jacob was ready to die, when his end was approaching. He was at peace with his life and all that God had done through him even though life had not turned out the way that he had planned. Finally, Jacob said to Joseph, “Now I am ready to die, since I have seen your face again and know you are still al
Post a Comment
Read more

Why people don't go to church

As a pastor, one of the consuming questions with which I wrestle is “Why don’t people go to church?” In particular, the question is “Why don’t people come to my church?” If you doubt that people are opinionated, ask this question to a group of church people on a Wednesday night. I’ve studied church growth for several years, and I have a number of opinions about the matter myself. But, I wonder if we are asking the right question to the wrong people. Several researchers in the last few years have begun asking people who don’t attend church why they don’t attend church, and the answers are interesting. George Barna asked this question and provided the answers in his book, Grow Your Church from the Outside In . The top five reasons that people gave for not attending church comprise 83% of the reasons why people don’t come to church. 1. No time; schedule conflicts; working 26% 2. Not interested; nothing to offer; no reason 16% 3. Don’t know 15% 4. My beliefs are different than the church’s
3 comments
Read more

Technical Difficulty

This blog has been inactive for a while due to some technical issues. It is good to be back and I have learned that my technical ability has declined in the last few years. It is amazing how quickly things change. I have been around computers for almost 30 years. My dad bought a commodore 64 in the early 80’s and bought an IMB clone pc later that decade. I spent part of my childhood playing Impossible Mission and Pac Man while typing the occasional paper. For those of you who did not grow up in the 80’s, yes, typing a paper was a big deal. I’m surprised that I didn’t get beat up more as a kid. I learned how to use pc’s before Windows 3.1 and remember when Word Perfect was better than Word – the WYSIWYG was way better on Word Perfect when printing to a dot matrix. While I was in college in the early 90’s I took computer programming and worked in the computer lab. During graduate studies I continued working in computer labs and began doing contract work for computer vendors
Post a Comment
Read more