Get Rid of Your Entitlement Attitude

‘…through love serve one another.’

Galatians 5:13

The Bible says, ‘…through love serve one another.’ In other words, ‘Get rid of the you-owe-me attitude and develop an IOU mindset.’ Some of us think: 1) A lifetime job with good pay and a guaranteed retirement plan at sixty-five come with just being born. 2) Promotion is just a matter of time. 3) Forty hours a week is the maximum endurance for any worker. 4) The last hour of each day is there to make the transition to home easier. 5) A ten-minute coffee break should take at least half-an-hour. 6) A half-hour lunch break should take at least an hour-and-a-half. 7) An equal share of company profits belongs to all workers regardless of their contribution. What gives us our source of entitlement anyway? Part of it is found in the middle of the word entitlement itself: ‘title’. We think people ‘owe us’ because of the title we hold in their lives: mother, daughter, brother, wife, husband, friend, donor, pastor, employee, boss, etc. We treat our title as if it were a title deed that gives us the right to whatever benefit we expect. But life doesn’t work that way! When the Prodigal Son left home and landed in a pig sty, the Bible says, ‘…no one gave him anything’ (Luke 15:16 NKJV). Humbled and slapped with reality, he became willing to work in the servants’ quarters of his father’s house. Fortunately, his father loved him and restored him. But the point is, life ‘owes you’ nothing but an opportunity to study, work hard, grow, and sacrifice to get to where you want to be.

Is 47-49, Col 1