This month on MercyTalk, we’ll be diving into the book, “The Entitlement Cure”, by Dr. John Townsend and examining how entitlement feeds us two primary lies: (1) I am exempt from responsibility and (2) I am owed special treatment. In the first installment of this series, we’ll look at the deeper narrative behind what entitlement actually is.

Hey, everyone! Welcome to MercyTalk! We’re officially knee-deep into summer and have just finished our “How Do We Respond?” series, which included so many important conversations on everything from singleness to divorce. Even though it was heavy at times, it was incredible to step back and ask the question, “How can we, as the church, love one another better?” We’ve really enjoyed hearing how this series encouraged you and would love to hear any feedback you may have for the show. If you’d like to share your comments with us, you can send them to [email protected].

Today is the beginning of a new series for the month of July, and we’ll be diving into the best-selling book by Dr. John Townsend called “The Entitlement Cure”. Entitlement can be broken down into two basic ideas:

On pages 20-21 of “The Entitlement Cure”, Townsend shares some extremely practical characteristics for detecting entitlement:

Townsend also talks about entitlement as being something that everyone struggles with. Either it colors the way we view all of our lives (global entitlement) or it tends to find us in the smaller areas known as “pocket entitlement” (marriage, work, etc.). At the end of the day, though, our relationships, as well as the environment we grew up in, play a big role in the attitudes of entitlement we’ve taken on. This is particularly interesting because Townsend also addresses six “praise and reward problems” that we may have experienced growing up or use with those around us today.

Ouch. This is getting real. It’s so humbling to realize that some of the things we thought weren’t issues are actually things we need to address head on. This brings us to the next part of this conversation—how to combat entitlement. Townsend talks about something called the “hard way principles” (five Biblical principles research also supports in this area). We’ll get into the details of those on our next episode, but for now, here are a few practical things we can do to examine the areas in our own lives that we need to get honest about.

If it all feels a bit hopeless today, don’t worry! We’re headed toward some principles that will be able to help in this area (stuff like vulnerable and consequence-based conversations to start). We hope you’ll join us right here next week on MercyTalk!