There were times early on in my adventure of following Jesus where I felt He was lucky to have me (the arrogance). I thought about all the things I had given up to follow Him, the sacrifices, the money etc. and wondered what I got in return. There were times I was so entitled, thinking that because I gave ‘so much up’ that I was owed happiness, wealth, health or something else.

It’s embarrassing to think back on that

Being entitled causes us to expect preferential treatment. The bizarre thing is that preferential treatment will never happen enough to satisfy us, we will always crave more of it and therefore entitlement will always end in us complaining about how our expectations have not been met. You can tell someone who is entitled because they will always have a long list of grumbles – here are some of my favourite church ones;

• “I don’t like that song”
• “I didn’t get much from that sermon”
• “There are no donuts left”
• “They’re asking me to give again”
• “The kids queues are too long”
• “There’s a new family sitting in the seat we normally sit in”

I have unfortunately spoken some of these out and have also heard many of them spoken and I know that list isn’t exhaustive!

So what’s the alternative. Well, I was just reading from 2 Corinthians when Paul talks about what, as a servant of Christ, his life looked like;

Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. 2 Corinthians 6:4-10

This doesn’t sound like an entitled person at all does it? Paul certainly doesn’t seem to think that he was deserving of preferential treatment. He certainly doesn’t appear to be someone who is complaining. In fact, far from it.

Paul wasn’t entitled, he was surrendered

Paul realised something the younger me hadn’t. He was a servant of Christ. He and I are the ones who were ‘lucky’ to have Jesus, not the other way round. We are the ones who should be overwhelmed by the fact that Christ would become sin for us so that sin can’t win. We are the ones who owe him everything even though every thing we have wouldn’t be enough to pay Him back. We are the ones that have received so greatly that we don’t in fact even have to pay something back. We are the ones that although we should be treated as slaves are in fact treated as family.

We must reject entitlement in order to move towards all that Jesus has for us. The best way to get rid of the entitlement we have is to embrace surrender.