Hidden Entitlement

Hidden Entitlement

I have the right to be understood

I have the right to have things go my way

I have the right to comfort

I have the right to an easy home life

I have the right to be given grace by others.

I have the right...to nothing.

 So much entitlement that gets entangled in our minds, clouding truth. As a follower of Jesus I am called to lay down my life, to die to self and pick up my cross but why is that so hard.” My family should give way to my needs after all I sacrifice so much”, “Why can’t everyone get along”,” I forgave them, they should be forgiving to me”...thought patterns that originate in a place of the” Id”, my inflated view of self. It’s a messy place when we start to look at our egos and start to claim our ‘rights and needs, forgetting to look at the one who provides. I like the verse from Isaiah 45:7 that say’s “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things”. Not me who does these things, not me who laid down her life, not me.

 James 4:1-12

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? ...