Your Excuse Has Just Become Your Bondage-A Soap Box Sermon

As one who must OFTEN ask people to volunteer I OFTEN get to hear their excuses when what they are really saying is...

I don't want to.

Every blue moon I get someone who has decided they don't care and are just flat out rebellious enough to tell the truth...

I don't want to.

But for the most part I must stand there with a smile and listen to excuses from those who prefer to have a form of godliness.

I actually understand excuses having had to repent of having a pocket book full of my own from time to time over the years.  I mean c'mon.  Who really wants to go out of their way to do anything when they are tired, overworked already, or have had no time to just sit and....

breathe.

So it's not like I don't understand human nature..

BUT there must come a time when we get past our excuses

lies

and become a people of sacrificial and obedient lives.  But that's for another blog.

What I'd like to jump on my soap box about is how Christians will use certain things in their lives to keep from having to serve God.

For example a wife who feels her husband is too controlling and never does a thing he tells her until she is asked to serve then suddenly she becomes this "submissive" wife who needs to ask her husband before she is able to commit.  Of course said husband always says "no" and the wife is sweetly able to save face as she lays all the blame on her overbearing spouse.

Then we have those who use their illness as their excuse.  They can do anything they want to do (fun) but ask them to serve in a area that is distasteful to them and suddenly they are all but but bedridden.  "Pray for me" is their common refrain.

Next we have those who are always broke.  They own the latest in dvd's, they regularly eat out, and hair and nails are faithfully done but ask them to serve and suddenly they lack gas money.

And finally there are the "I would do that but my kids..." folks.  My kids are sick. My kids have homework. My kids need to get to bed.  My kids have games.  My kids may get offended.  I know I'm an adult but really my kids are in charge and I just keep house for them, pay their bills, and buy whatever they tell me to buy for them.  They are so busy bowing down to their children that there is no room in their lives to worship God.  Oh and did I neglect to tell you that most of these parents complain continually that their children have behavioral issues?

Again I understand the temptation to use excuses but there are some who will continually tell you how much they need God to move in their lives but will actually use the very thing in which they are asking God to help to keep from serving HIM!

Do they actually believe God is blind and deaf to this fact?

God please heal me, deliver me, rescue me!  Oh wait don't deliver me right now I need to use my (fill in the blank) to get out of serving You!

They need God to move.  I say that as long as their need is their convenient excuse they will never see God move because they have made that thing their god that delivers them from the task master the rest of us know as God in Heaven.  God in fact might just turn them over to that god and allow them to remain in bondage to it.  He did it to Israel when they continually worshipped other gods.  He actually arranged it so they would be force marched to Babylon where they could be slaves to the
very gods they worshipped when they were free.

Let us no longer be a people of excuses.  Let us no longer love our bondage because it allows us to get out of serving.  But let us love God and show Him our fidelity through our grateful service to Him.

God will not be mocked.  We shall indeed reap as we have sown.