Wahoo, Wealth, and Winning: What Truly Fills an Overflowing Life

Summary

Wahoo, wealth, and winning promise fulfillment, but leave lives empty and damaged. Short-term pleasure, material security, and prideful success fail to satisfy the soul and often lead to painful consequences. Scripture warns against these pursuits and points to God’s better way. Only His living water truly fills fragile lives, producing lasting love, joy, peace, and purpose that overflow beyond temporary pleasures.

Our lives are like easily crushed plastic cups. We ignore their frailty and go all in to fill them with pleasurable things. We inevitably wander into the weeds because we’re ignorant of what is truly good apart from God’s intervention.

Chasing Wahoo, Wealth, and Winning

We chase wahoo, wealth, and winning. What do these three represent? They correspond to the downward pull of the lusts of the flesh, and eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16).

The Trap of Living for Wahoo

We pursue wahoo feelings. We want to feel good now instead of putting forth the effort to do good before we feel good. We yield to our fleshly appetites. We often reap serious trouble and pain in the long run. We discover that the pleasure bone is connected to the perpetual pain bone.

At best, living for wahoo distracts us from the ultimately important. At worst, it threatens our very existence. Does your overflowing cup make a mess?

When Good Feelings Turn Costly

For example, people begin smoking as teenagers to feel more grown-up. Long-term health disasters erupt when ephemeral good feelings are long gone, replaced by addiction’s crushing grip.

People drink alcohol to inject joy into their drab lives. The momentary thrill often leads to an addiction and being saddled with various alcohol-induced physical ailments.

The good feelings of recreational drugs often eventually result in premature death. Fatal fentanyl overdoses peaked at over 112,000 deaths in 2023 in the U.S., with young people and people of color affected most.1 

Wahoo often ends with Boohoo. Pampering fleshly appetites is hazardous to our health. We don’t notice until it is too late to do much about the consequences.

The False Security of Wealth

We pursue wealth, thinking it will provide security and bring maximum pleasure. This, despite Jesus saying how much we own isn’t a measure of life (Luke 12:15). We think we know better than Jesus what is best for us.

The Pride Behind Winning

We pursue winning. The mother of James and John wanted her two sons to sit in the most important positions of honor in Jesus’ Kingdom (Matthew 20:21).

Like her, we want the best for ourselves because we think we deserve it. Pride is our automatic steering system. It motivates us to look down on others.

God's Better Way to Fill an Overflowing Life

We fill our lives with wahoo, wealth, and winning, even though none satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls. God would fill the cup of our lives very differently. God's better way to fill an overflowing life with living water causes us to overflow with love, joy, peace, and purpose.

1.     Overdose deaths due to fentanyl spark debate over treatment : NPR

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