I'm not entitled

The other day, my four year old son Kale had just gotten up from a nap and was hungry. My wife Jill was coming over to where we were sitting with a banana for him. Before she gave Kale the banana, Jill asked him if she could have a bite. With all the macho-ness he could muster, Kale said, "NO momma, it's mine!"
Now how could it be his? I'm the one who made the money to buy the banana. Jill is the one who went shopping for it and picked it out. It's not his. However, for a four year old (who has lacked for nothing), Kale felt a certain amount of entitlement to the banana. He felt it was his, he was hungry, and no one was going to have any of it. The only thing that made it his was when Jill handed it to him and he took it.
This little episode got me thinking about how I act when God asks me to give back 10% of my finances. Really all the money I earn comes from God. Everything I have is from God, He created it, it's His. and God gladly gives this stuff to me and all He's asking for in return is a bite. And a lot of the time I've acted like my son... "It's MINE!"
Needless to say I was convicted...
And I have Joyfully been giving God His bite ever since. After all, it's His anyway.

By the way, Kale also gladly gave Jill a bite of the banana a little later...
That's my boy.

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Answers?

As a leader and a pastor I recognize that I have people looking to me for answers... How do you want this? What are we going to do about that? You get the idea. When I have my Pastor Hat on I want to be able to give people an answer to everything. Even to the hard questions like, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" I don't necessarily know the answer to the question, but I try to give an answer anyway.
I think I do this out of fear of losing credibility with the one asking the question. What I fail to see is that most people are looking for an honest answer, and I have to get comfortable with the fact that I don't know everything. And so to some of the questions that are asked, I simply must learn to say (I'm being honest here)... I don't know.
This blog will be my outlet for thoughts, things I see, and hopefully a store-house of lessons learned and nuggets of wisdom.
I know I won't have all the answers to everything in my lifetime, but maybe I can discover a few answers to the tough questions.

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