receiving with gratitude

A timely topic for this season, maybe... but also a critical reminder for any of us struggling under the weight of any load: this does not all depend on you.

I don't know what this is for you. But I assure you, it does not all depend on you. To believe that it does would be to ignore the existence of the Creator who formed us. We have a tendency to do that, and to idolize ourselves, and to depend solely on ourselves - but that does not mean that we should. This does not all depend on us. Our load may be partially a result of our own actions, but not always and not directly. God is far more in control than that.

Perhaps if it feels like it does all depend on us, it is because we believe that we know ourselves better than God knows us. We are discontent - asking for more than what God has given, not in faith, but out of entitlement. We feel misunderstood - that God is not what He claims when He says that He is the God who sees. In her book Mama Bear Apologetics, Hillary Ferrer puts it this way: "The problem, according to self-helpism, is that we are experiencing far less than we think we have a right to experience. We aren't happy enough, and we deserve to be. We aren't achieving financial prosperity, and every one of us should be enjoying the finer things in life. We feel empty when we should feel content. We are enslaved to Oreos, but we should be enjoying perfect satisfaction with both food and our bodies. Bottom line, we are lacking (which brings angst), and we deserve to be flourishing in comfort. Anything short of that is wrong." (p. 87)

Ouch. That's a description of entitlement if I've ever seen one, and I think I just found my diagnosis. The angst.. the word deserve - even if I don't say those things out loud, I know they are floating through my brain, and undoubtedly impacting my everyday life.

Our entitlement puts us at the center of our own lives, and therefore, of course, makes us responsible for everything in our lives. So instead of seeking the Source when we are struggling, we seek within ourselves because we have made ourselves the source. We pursue self-discovery, self-understanding, self-evaluation, and in it all end up just completely selfish. Ferrer puts it this way: "In self-helpism, the most reliable way to test how bad our problems are is to focus on how we feel. We should pay attention to how situations and other people affect our emotions and sense of self-worth and security. The better we are at identifying our triggers, motivators, core talents, personality strengths, dreams, and attractions, the better we will be at determining what's getting in the way of our journey toward living our best life now. And we should expect this to look different for everyone, because everyone's needs are different. What we will discover, however, is that when we scatter a few seeds of self-helpism, along with a few seeds of moral relativism, we won't get happiness. Instead, we will end up with a lush growth of self-centeredness blooming in our hearts." (p. 87-88)

How convicting. How true. So why do we keep doing it?

Ferrer explains later in the chapter that making Jesus the Lord and choosing to follow Him in humility is much costlier. That is why we keep doing what we do. Self-discovery, she explains, is the easy way out. "According to self-helpism, I don't have to deny myself or repent of anything. I only have to find myself." (p. 91)

But it is the inner man, Jesus taught us, that needs to be completely renewed day by day. And so whatever we find there, in our search within ourselves, is probably something that needs to be cleaned out anyway. And so we will continue to find ourselves emptier and emptier as we dig and dig within ourselves - unless we can, in humility, allow Jesus to enact lasting change within us. We cannot hang on to the ugly guts inside our pumpkin of a body and still expect there to be a place to put a candle in our metaphoric jack-o-lantern that can shine through. Sure, we can seek within ourselves and find all the ugly things... but the ugly things do not give us direction for our lives. They are to be thrown away.

And so, we find ourselves in a place where we must be in a posture of receiving, in order to refill our inner man with something to replace all that we are throwing away. This does not mean that we should be entitled, demanding something... it means that we should be expectant, seeking Someone. They are so different.

The Christmas hymn tells us that Jesus was "long-expected". Was it wrong for the people of God, for such a long time, to have an expectation of Jesus coming? Absolutely not, because God had specifically told them that He was sending a Messiah! This was a message of truth passed down through generations.

Our entitlement, on the other hand, adds to what God has actually promised, interpreting what God has promised to us in a very narrow-minded, self-serving way. We see the gifts given to others or even reflect on gifts we ourselves have previously received from the Lord and begin to see them as rights and not gifts. Gifts, as my husband often says, are things meant to be used for the furtherance of the kingdom of God, not to make our lives easier or to be consumed upon our own lusts. They are not rewards for good work - that reward will come on the last day. But unfortunately, we begin to see our own gifts as rewards and thus we feel entitled to them - we believe we've earned them, we deserve them. And we see other people's gifts as rewards also - thinking that somehow, they've earned them, and they deserve them. We begin to wonder what is wrong with us, why we are not also deserving. We begin to feel that we should deserve, because we're no different than that other person over there. We develop entitlement in the blink of an eye, and again, it all comes back to ourselves and our own performance.

It is an ugly cycle to be in and an impossible way to live. We feel that it all depends on us, and we cannot live that way. It actually all depends on Jesus. But unless we receive Him well, we will continue to fall back on depending upon ourselves.

We are entering this season of celebrating His coming as a baby in a manger, a season where we're called to prepare Him room, and receive Him. In order to receive Him, I want to posture my heart to be expectant - expectant and open to what the Lord can do, and does do, and will do. I want to receive with gratitude and openness His good gifts that He gives because He is a good Father who delights in us. I want to see all that He does give, as exactly that - a gift.

But it is impossible to be postured for receiving if I am already putting God on the defensive in my life. If I already believe that He's not to be trusted, and will never give me as much as I deserve or need, that He does not know and does not care, and that I have to earn His favor or His gifts, then I am not postured for receiving.

I think maybe one of the only ways to truly be postured for receiving is to reflect on Who He is and give thanks for what we have already received - because what we have already received from Him is an indicator of Who He is. This is, of course, the complete opposite of what we would expect - the complete opposite of what is currently happening at my house right now where everyone is taking the precious commodity of blank paper from the printer and scrawling out their wish lists, only to crumple that up days later and start over again because the desires have changed. That quickly! It is actually such a good visual of the exact reason why we must let God's will take precedence over our own wish lists - our own wishes are so fickle. I will only half pay attention to my children's wish lists anyway because I know what they need better than they do! It has happened before - that the very things that didn't excite them quite as much when they first opened them, are the things they use all the time now... and the things that they asked for and were delighted to receive at the first, entertained them for only a very short time. Those things that they thought they wanted did not bring them lasting contentment or joy.

It is just the same way with God. He knows. And He does give good gifts, because He is a good Father and He knows us. But the only way to trust that He does give good gifts, is to remember the ones that He has given in the past. We are prone to forget His gifts, and think instead only on the things that He did not fulfill. We are so much like the Jewish people in that way - not able to see the Messiah for who He was because He didn't fulfill them in the way they wanted. We can remember the hard situation, certainly, but we can also remember the grace that came with it. We can remember the loss, yes, but we can also remember the gains that may have followed - maybe that we are intentionally ignoring. We can remember the hurt we experienced at the hand of another person, but we can also remember the gift of compassion for others that that grew in us, and we can praise our God for that.

When my children are in seasons of entitlement, I have stood in our kitchen before and called it out - and said that I'm not saying "yes" anymore. They've developed an insatiable need for more, and me catering to that will never produce contentment in them - only further angst. When there is no reflection on the gift that was given, it is discarded too quickly and underused. Their bodies and their brains want more and more and more, and it causes them to use what they have already been given less and less. Their entitlement produces stinginess in me - not overwhelming love. Thankfully, God does not have my same faults and He's a better Father than I am a mother, but I still don't believe He pours out His gifts on the ungrateful. As I write, I'm listening to a story being loudly read from the CD player to one of my children - the story of The Little Red Hen, who insists that she has done everything by herself and therefore she will be consuming everything by herself. (How is that for a lengthy children's book summarized in one sentence?) As Christian women, we know that we are not the Little Red Hen - we have not done everything by ourselves (and actually neither did she). What we have done came from strength and resources produced outside of ourselves, and so we need to acknowledge those.

When I myself have fallen into entitlement, the solution for that is not more gratification for me, but rather more glory for Him. And then, when we are properly postured, we can receive from Him, or from anyone, without guilt - knowing that, just like every other good and perfect gift, it has come down from the "Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows"(James 1:17, NIV) {or like our fickle hearts}. Expectant receiving begins with gratitude, and there is no better way to spend November than preparing our hearts to give thanks, and to receive the Savior, in every way.