Entitlement is Killing Us

I want to share an embarrassing moment with y'all. Today I started my morning out by laying on the bathroom floor crying just after getting out of the shower. Something about being in your most vulnerable state allows God to really work in your heart.

Laying in a heap on the floor in a towel and sobbing, I gave my life back over to Jesus. I yielded parts of my heart I've been holding with white knuckles for some time now. God broke me of my entitlement, of my own rights, of my own life. Entitlement was killing me. And it may be killing you.

There are things I was holding onto so tightly I was choking my relationship with Jesus. Things I was just not willing to let go of. Things that I was unwilling to forsake for the gospel.

But the truth is that I don't deserve a single thing. Well other than death. I deserve death. I deserve a bloody, painful, embarrassing death. I deserve the shame and guilt. I deserve the death that Jesus died. That is the only thing I'm entitled to. I'm entitled to death, nothing more.

We have no "rights" other than the right to die. We are not entitled to life. We are not entitled to a job. We are not entitled to a marriage, or an education, or a government that values us, or a family, or a new iPhone, or anything. In reality, all these things are blessings.

I am so prone to think that I am entitled to getting married. That it is a right. It's something I deserve. But it's just not. My life is a gift from God, married or not. He is the ultimate gift, not finding a husband. If I view things in my life, including the state of my relationship, as a gift, then my whole view changes.

Everything we have is a gift of grace from God, nothing we can demand to possess. Even our own life is a blessing, a precious gift from God. We are not our own, we were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:19-20)

So act like it. Live as if your life really is a gift, a blessing, not something you deserve, something that can be taken at any moment. If you profess to follow Jesus, than you need to yield your "rights" to him.

Yielding to Christ doesn't mean that you trust Him with something and expect Him to turn right back around and give it back to you, but that you give it to him and you are thankful for the outcome no matter what it is. It doesn't mean "giving your husband to God" and then expecting to meet him the next day.

He has the prerogative to give it back to you or take it away for ever. He is fully justified in doing anything He wants with your life.

Giving things to him and yielding your life means gratitude in everything. Because everything is a gift from God, the good, the bad and otherwise. A yielded life to Christ means thanking God for the grace he has given you.

The most counter-cultural thing we can do is live like this. To live as if we aren't our own. To live as if even the painful, hard, torturous things are gifts from God. To live without "rights" in an entitlement saturated culture.

Lord, let us live fully yielded to You. Help us lay down our 'rights' for Your sake. We know that it is not good for a man to gain the whole world and yet lose his soul. You are worthy of giving up everything! Thank you for being the ultimate example of laying down your rights for us. You laid down your rights to die on a cross for us. You are worthy of our lives!

Meet Angi

Angi loves Jesus, coffee, baseball and baking cakes. She is a missionary to college students and can't think of anything she'd rather do to serve God. Angi first met the Lord while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa but really understood His love and grace as a freshman in college. Her heart is to invest in college students in the same way that many others invested in her. You can find her blogging over at Angi Does Ministry where she tells stories about Jesus, college students, and life. You can also find her on facebook, twitter, pintrest and instagram.

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