As I look at these battered shoes and holy socks my heart aches with conviction. My memory is jogged back to every year before elementary, middle, and high school because I always went back to school shopping. I would get new clothes, new shoes, new school supplies and usually a new backpack. My heart isn't broken because I had the privilege to have these things but because I grew to lose appreciation for it and just expect it.
That's how this feeling of entitlement begins. And once it is birthed, it grows into more and more areas of our lives.
Before we know it we have a sense of entitlement over all "our things; our clothes, our gas, our car, our money, our job."
The only problem with that is that they aren't really our things to begin with. They belong to God and he merely gives them to us as gifts.
"Every good and perfect gift comes from above, coming down from The Father of the heavenly lights." – James 1:17
Think about that for a second. Everything good in your life is from your Heavenly Father. You might argue that you worked for it but I would say God gave you the job that allowed you to make money, therefore even that is a gift.
So why do we, even as Christians, carry this sense of entitlement around? And what can we do to get rid of it?
God has been showing me the answer to these two questions throughout the entire race. There have been many times when even if I didn't vocalize it I screamed in my head, "This is my food. This is my money. Or my most defensive thought, this is my chocolate!"
Abba began ridding me of my sense of entitlement by first showing me that those thoughts were selfish and there is no room for selfishness when God intended for his followers to live in community.
Secondly he allowed his truth from James 1:17 to penetrate my heart. Every good thing in my life is from my Heavenly Father. It first belonged to him and then he loved me so much that he chose to give it to me.
The third and most crucial step in the process of ridding myself of entitlement was when God told me that he blessed me so that I could bless others. He doesn't want the gift to stop with me. He intends for his blessings to flow from me and to others.
What does that look like for me on the world race? It looks like asking myself hard questions such as, "Who else could I bless by giving or at least sharing this food?" "Who else could benefit from this money God has given me?" It goes even as far as asking myself, "Who does God want me to share this chocolate with?"
What does that look like for those of you reading this in America? It looks like asking yourself hard questions too, such as, "Who else did God intend this tax return to benefit?" "How could I use the gift of free time to help someone else?" Or even to the extreme of asking yourself, "Now that my children are out of the house, how could I use that extra bedroom to be a blessing to someone else?"
I'm convinced that if the body of Christ walked into the truth of letting all blessings flow through us there would be no more hunger in the world, there would be no more life long orphans and most importantly the gospel would reach the ends of the earth.
Some may claim that's far fetched and my response would be my God is bigger than any epidemic or social injustice and if every believer lived that truth day to day nothing could stop the God within us.
But before we will make an impact like that we have to allow God to transform our heart from "mine" to "his." I jokingly mentioned sharing chocolate because in the world race lifestyle chocolate is treated like gold. But what is the gold in your life that you aren't letting flow through you?
Allow God to search your heart and make sure your treasure lies in Him alone. If He truly is all that you need like you sing about on Sundays you will see opportunities to bless others instead and even above yourself. Once you begin that journey God will rid you of your entitlement by showing you that while you deserved nothing, he still provided everything you needed. And that provision will only continue when He is found in your heart.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where rust and moth destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves don't break in and steal. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also." -Matthew 16:19-21
