Save your Excuses

    If you have had kids for any period of time you know that sometime getting them to do something is like pulling teeth. I have three kids of my own and I learned really quickly what my father and mother had to go through with me and my two brothers. 

    I have found that there are a couple of common responses when you try to get your kids to do something. No matter if it is asking the kids to feed the dog, or take out the trash, or clean there room. There are a number of responses that you might get. You might hear "I did it last time" as they point to their siblings who they claim never have to do anything. You almost always get the eye roll, that is if they lift there head up from their phone that they are glued to. Then there are those rare, almost supernatural moments where they get up and do exactly what you told them to do. At least that is what I am told. 

    However, many times when you  ask your kids to do something and then you head off. What will you find when you come back? Either your child has not even moved, or they are still working ( probably because they heard you coming) or they say that they are finished. Regardless of what they are doing, or what they say they have done or are doing. What you find is that nothing if anything has been touched. 

·Now when that happens what you will undoubtedly hear are the excuses. You will hear a list of all the reasons why you are unreasonable, why they were unable to accomplish the task. "I couldn't find the trash bags." "So and so is not working" or "I was going to get to it" 

    In the many years of being a parent as well as the many years I spent as a child I have both heard and used every excuse under the sun. In fact when we think about it, when it comes to us following God and doing what God wants us to do. We too can be slow to obey. We too can do things half way. We too have a tendency to point to others who are not obeying God, as if that makes our disobedience perfectly justified. When it comes to following God and His word for our lives, we often make more excuses than we make progress. 

     We might say things like "I can't witness at work because I will lose my job" "I can't tithe because I have bills coming up that I have to pay." "I don't have enough time to pray" "I can't go to church because I am just to busy." The list of excuses that we give to God is endless. 

    You see many times the issue is not that you don't know what God and His word says. Many times the issue, if you will be honest with your self, is that you don't really want to do it. So you start looking for excuses why you can't do what you know you should do. You start trying to justify your disobedience and giving your self some sort of excuse that will some how exclude you from having to obey what you know God wants you to do.

    Then there are those moments where you know what God and His word wants you to do and you have every intention to do it. However you fail to actually do it because you get distracted and overwhelmed with some other area of your life. Like when your child fails to clean up his/her room because they were too busy playing the video game and lost track of time. Sometimes we too get distracted with the busyness of life that we fail to do what we know we should be doing. So when this happens we begin to make those excuses rather than fessing up and admitting that we failed to obey God, because we made something else more of a priority for us than our obedience to God. 

In Jesus earthly ministry there were people who came up to him with a desire to be a follower….

· They had the right desire…they had all the right intentions

And it happened as they were going in the way, one said to Him, Lord, I will follow You wherever You go. And Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. And He said to another, Follow Me! But he said, Lord, first allow me to go and bury my father. Jesus said to him, Let the dead bury their dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow You, but first allow me to take leave of those in my house. And Jesus said to him, No one, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.-  (Luk 9:57-62)

 

You see while they had all the right intentions and there goal’s were lofty. There whole heart was not in it. If they were honest with themselves and Jesus the truth is that there were other things they felt was of more value, and ranked as a higher priority then being a follower of Jesus. While they said they wanted to be a true follower of Jesus, they were not completely willing to follow Jesus in everything or everywhere Jesus would lead them. 

    Truth be told, following Jesus is not always easy. It may mean making certain sacrifices. It might lead us in areas of our lives that are not always comfortable or convenient. Being a follower of Jesus might mean we have to get out of our comfort zone and do things we either do not want to do, or do things we feel are not able to do. 

    It's in those moments that our faithfulness is challenged. When we are called to do something that we don't want to do. When it is inconvenient or difficult. It is in those moments when our obedience to Him is challenged. That is when we like our children who is asked to clean their room, we start coming up with excuses. We start coming up with excuses why we can't do what we know God wants us to do. We start to come up with excuses why are not expected to do it. We come up with excuses why what God is asking is unreasonable or why it is meant for someone else. 

However we need to just lay aside all the excuses and reasonings, and simply obey and follow Jesus instead. So save your excuses and simply submit to Gods leading and authority in your life.