Excuses?

We have an amazing ability to rationalize our choices often shifting responsibility away from ourselves by making excuses! Well, some people do, but maybe not you. “I cannot do that because I am too (old, young, tired, busy)” is a way to dodge the direct statement - “I will not do that because I do not want to!”   Fear is a real motivation for excuses, too.  Who wants to say “I did not try because I was afraid.”?  We let ourselves out of accountability by focusing on ‘reasons’ for our choices that are merely excuses and often transparent to those who hear us offer them. A half-century ago a Sunday School teacher who urged us to live out our Christian commitment was fond of quoting an old revivalist named Billy Sunday who said - “An excuse is a skin of a reason stuffed with lies.”  She was right. 

In the story of the birth of the nation of Israel, told in Exodus, early on we meet a man called by God to be the deliverer and leader of the children of Abraham. Moses had been raised a prince in Egypt but in a fit of rage killed a man and became a fugitive. For 40 years he worked in obscurity, far from the courts of Egypt, tending a flock of sheep. One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he went deep into the wilderness near Sinai, the mountain of God. Suddenly, the angel of the Lord appeared to him as a blazing fire in a bush. Moses was amazed because the bush was engulfed in flames, but it didn’t burn up.  “Amazing!” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go over to see this.”  When the Lord saw that he had caught Moses’ attention, God called to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am!” Moses replied. Exodus 3:1-4 (NLT)  So far, so good, right?

Then God tells him about the mission He has planned. "The cries of the people of Israel have reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them with heavy tasks. Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:9-10, NLT)  Moses cannot bring himself to say “No, I don’t want to do this.” Instead he offers a list of excuses why he cannot do what God wants him to do.

1. Who am I? Who would listen to me?  
2. Who should I tell them has given me this authority?
3. The people won’t believe me even if I tell them God told me.
4. I am not eloquent. I get tongue-tied.
   

In the text, God answers each of Moses’ excuses by focusing the man back on Himself.  He tells him, “I will be with you!” again and again. Moses is not going in his own strength, cleverness, or authority. He is commissioned by God to do holy work which will be accomplished through him by the power of God Himself.

That sounds so good when we say it, but truth be told, it takes a lot of courage to live in God’s way - to forgive, to serve without reward, to set aside our desires to do His will, to trust that our richest rewards will come in eternity, to risk rejection by friends and family when we choose to live counterculturally, for God’s sake. We are tempted, (well, I am, I’ll admit) to retreat into excuses.

What does God desire of you, my friend? 
What do you know you should be doing that you are avoiding? 
Are you fearful of failure and thus not making a radical commitment to Christ?

Rather than make excuses, get alone with God and tell Him the truth about yourself. He will love you, lead you, and remind you that your real strength comes from HIM!

The word from the Word encourages us to step up. Paul was called to the ‘impossible’ task of taking the good news of Jesus and the Kingdom to the Roman Empire’s far reaches. May his inspired words help you to say a ready ‘yes’ to God today.

"But thanks be to God, who made us his captives and leads us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now wherever we go he uses us to tell others about the Lord and to spread the Good News like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a fragrance presented by Christ to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those being saved and by those perishing. To those who are perishing we are a fearful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this? … We preach God’s message with sincerity and with Christ’s authority. And we know that the God who sent us is watching us." (2 Corinthians 2:14-17, NLT)

(Video of this blog at this link)

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The Lord's Prayer (It's Yours)

Father let your kingdom come

Father let your will be done

On Earth as in Heaven

Right here in my heart

 

Give us this day our daily bread

Forgive us forgive us

As we forgive the ones who sinned

Against us forgive them

And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from the evil one

Let your kingdom come

 

It's yours it's yours

All yours all yours

The kingdom the power

The glory are yours

It's yours it's yours

All yours all yours

Forever and ever

The kingdom is yours

 

On Earth as in Heaven

Right here in my heart

Bryan Fowler | Jacob Sooter | Matt Maher

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