Underneath much of our discontentment in life is an attitude of entitlement. We expect things to be a certain way or to work out as we wanted, either because we’ve paid our dues and deserve certain rewards or because we assume that God or life implicitly promised us a pleasant and comfortable existence. That’s where our hearts go sometimes, and it often takes a very humbling experience to break us out of that place.

The opposite of entitlement is a spirit of sacrifice, not in the sense that our lives have to be hard and painful, but in the sense that life’s greatest gifts are meant to be shared with others rather than hoarded for ourselves. I believe God frequently gives us the opportunity to switch gears—to move from a mind-set of taking in to a mind-set of pouring out. That’s what being at Keswick and seeing its Colony of Mercy does for me; it puts me in a position of having to acknowledge my true priorities. Our tendency is to gravitate toward entitlement, but God uses experiences like this to pull us back into a spirit of sacrifice. He restores in us the joy of serving.