What's Your Excuse?

​Without a doubt every person who reads this article has made an excuse. Indeed, excuses are as natural as breathing for most people. We take refuge in the cute and clever excuses we forge to avoid what we ought to do. In fact, we spend more time inventing excuses to skirt our God-given responsibilities than we do carrying them out. How foolish! Yet, we continue to waste our time with rationales that irritate God. Let us be direct and address the common excuses we often use to evade the Lord’s work.

            Foremost among the excuses we make is a lack of knowledge. We have all heard a fellow Christian say, “I don’t know enough to work for the Lord.” Though it may sound unkind, ignorance is usually not the issue. Dedication, however, is. Christianity is simple (2 Cor. 11:3). It does not take a man with a fancy degree or decades of experience to understand the message of Jesus. If it did, then Peter, a fisherman from the backwoods of Galilee, would not have been privileged to preach the first sermon recorded in Acts (Matt. 4:18; Acts 2:14-40). Knowledge, then, is not the issue; it is our lack of dedication.

            Another common excuse concerns reception. It seems that some brethren assume that no one will listen to the gospel, so they never preach it in the first place. Yet, the Bible emphasis is on proclamation, not reception. Jesus expects His people to preach Him and allow their hearers to decide what to do (Luke 10:16). We do not pout in the corner simply because no one liked what we had to say. Every Christian must understand that Jesus, the only perfect man who ever lived, was rejected (Jn. 12:37-43). Reception is not the point!

            Both former excuses pale in comparison to the final one: “I have other obligations.” No other excuse reveals a greater misunderstanding of Christ and His work than this. Somewhere down the line we were convinced that our families and jobs supersede the kingdom of God. Yet Jesus taught the exact opposite. The kingdom always comes first (Matt. 6:33; Luke 14:26-27, 33). Nothing compares to the cause of Christ. Several early disciples forsook all that they had to follow Jesus (Luke 5:11, 28). The same ought to be said about us.
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            All that we have stated leads us to this: no excuse rationalizes our lack of work. We might convince others with our excuses, but God knows better. There is work to be done, and no room exists for excuse makers in the mission set before us. A wise man once stated, “he that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” Which would you rather be? A craftsman of excuses or a worker for God? The decision is yours.