What our culture feels entitled to isn’t just stuff. It’s the desire to fit in, to feel good or happy all the time; it’s the desire for instant gratification and the demand to receive something just because we want it, hard work optional.

The gifts of salvation, grace, and forgiveness are free for the taking, but they weren’t cheap. They cost Jesus His life.

One of the joys of parenting is seeing the progress.

It is important to love your children, but there is a fine line between healthy parental love and child worship. We know the latter has happened when we begin compromising God’s will for the sake of our children or their activities. . . . Compromise always points to idolatry. It displeases God. He does not like competitors, especially when they are

Camp director Steve Baskin says,

It might sound simplistic, but I believe the cure to our kids wanting more starts with teaching them to be thankful for what they already have.

It leaves me considering this thought by author and therapist Lori Gottlieb: “Could it be that by protecting our kids from unhappiness as children, we’re depriving them of happiness as adults?”[6]

There will be growing pains raising grateful kids upstream in a downstream world of entitlement. It will make our kids feel different. It will get harder before it gets easier. It will make them feel alone. It might make you doubt the course. It will probably cause fights and friction. Who’s ready to sign up?

You are not alone. These four words are the most important ones we can say to our kids, from the first time they experience toddler separation anxiety until we move them into their first apartment.