Entitlement vs. Gratitude
Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these shall be yours as well. –Matthew 6:33
Nothing allows my old nature to rear its ugly head like lack of sleep.
The last few days, my husband has experienced unrelenting pain — the kind that only lets him sleep for 40 minutes, wakes him with a gasp, and steals the whatever comfort he received from the short nap, leaving him frustrated, restless and tense, no position tenable for more than a few moments.
What happens next, you can guess. We share the same waterbed (yes, the old-fashioned kind that is just a big plastic bag of water), so his gasp-and-thrash routine affects me, too. My fitness tracker recorded an average of 3 hours of sleep for me over several nights.
Enter entitlements!
My weariness and many small, necessary acts of service have opened the door for rebellious entitlements to make themselves apparent. I have asked to be more fully surrendered to God, and these days have paved a very short path to confronting those things I continue to hold as my rights. The Holy Spirit has faithfully reminded me, each time I feel irritation, that it is an indicator of my need to give up one or more “rights”: the right to contiguous sleep, to be pain free, to have my husband be pain free, or to do my work uninterrupted.
The path of surrender of my rights is the path that Jesus took. This is the path I must take to follow Jesus every day in the everyday, to seek His kingdom first.
So I thank God. Through weary eyes I gaze more clearly on the places not yet absolutely given to God. By sore muscles I walk out of my “rights” into submission. Ahead lies freedom.
And gratitude!
If something is my “right,” I am unlikely to thank God for it. I am far more prone to give God thanks when I recognize all good gifts as coming from His generous hand: sleep, relief from pain, clean water, medical care, dish soap, a change of clothes…
By the power of the Spirit of God alone will my flesh give way and bow before the One who paid for my ransom!
Join me in…
Following Jesus every day in the everyday, and let me know where you spot Him.
Christi
0 Comments