You’ve heard the expression that “the grass is always greener on the other side”? To people living in a Third World country, the United States seems rich. We are like the land of “milk and honey.”
If you are an American, it’s easy to focus on the folks that have more than you have. Actually, it does not really matter where you live, there is probably someone around that has more than you.
Do you focus on what you don’t have or are you grateful for what you have?
Entitled and grateful are really two very different and opposing perspectives. I would guess that it is hard if not impossible to be both at the same time. Pick one. Which are you?
If you feel entitled, then it is all about you. You don’t have to earn it. You expect it because you exist. You are “worth it” and you “deserve it” simply because you have life. Since you don’t have it – whatever you feel entitled to, you are unhappy. Guess what? That is the best you have to look forward to in life. Nothing is ever really free. You will have to work for whatever you get if you expect to ever really have anything – with the rare exception of an inheritance or the like. It has been that way since the beginning of time.
If you feel grateful to God, you recognize that everything comes from God. If you have it, God gave it to you. Whether you have it – whatever it is – or not, you recognize that God controls everything. Your focus will tend to be on obeying and worshipping the giver. You will acknowledge that God owns it all. Giving a tithe is just giving back to God what was already His.
Do you feel entitled? Do you feel grateful? Maybe you feel neither.
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
Romans 3:21-28
LIFE APPLICATION
Today’s challenge is to put things into perspective. It is only because God created us that we even have life. We are merely sinners saved by faith. It is only by faith that we are justified. Jesus did it all for us on the cross.
We cannot even save ourselves, how then should we feel entitled to anything?
If we are saved, we are forgiven, but we are definitely not entitled by anything we did on our own. If anything, we are blessed whether we have anything on this earth or not. We are blessed because we can have eternal life.
Whatever we may have here on this earth – or not, let us remember that God does the giving.