“‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit’ says the Lord Almighty.” (Zechariah 4:6)
Excuses! Excuses! Excuses! The Bible is filled with stories of people whom God used for His glory, people who started out making every excuse imaginable in order to keep from answering God’s call in their lives. Some rationalized their disobedience; others flat-out refused to obey; in each case God eliminated every excuse and used these people as inspired instruments in His Mighty Right Hand. Here are just three of those stories.
Moses – When Moses was 40 years old, he tried to free his people from their bondage in Egypt. The people of Israel did not receive him, and he spent the next 40 years on the back side of the desert. When Moses was 80, he turned aside to look more closely at a bush that was burning but not consumed. There God called Moses to deliver His people out of their slavery. Did Moses jump for joy and exclaim, “At last! Let’s DO this”? Far from it! Moses responded to God with every excuse in the book: “I don’t know who I am! I don’t know who You are! The people won’t believe me! I have a speech impediment!” And when God had resolved all those objections, Moses finally spluttered, “Please send someone else!” But God, who is the Eternal Excuse Eliminator, replaced Moses’ fear with faith. The rest is His-story.
Jonah – God called Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and preach His Word. “Nope,” Jonah thought. “No way.” The Ninevites were brutal, barbaric enemies of God’s people; Jonah hated them with a passion, and he could not conceive how God could possibly want to be gracious to them in any way. So God’s recalcitrant prophet boarded a ship that would take him to Tarshish — the opposite direction of God’s call on his life. But God canceled Jonah’s trip to Tarshish by sending a violent storm; when Jonah essentially insisted that “I would rather drown than go to Nineveh” and asked the sailors to throw him overboard, God appointed a great fish to act as a lifeguard. In the end, God had eliminated all of Jonah’s “avenues of excuse.” He brought Jonah to Nineveh, and the entire city of pagan people — more than 120,000 people — repented of their sin and believed in God.
Gideon – Gideon was threshing grain secretly in a winepress, hiding from the Midianites, who were oppressing God’s people. God planned to use Gideon to free his people from the Midianites, who had injected much of their pagan culture into the way God’s people were living. Much like Moses, Gideon offered up one fearful excuse after another, from family obligations to time constraints, hoping that God would release him from this call. Gideon even had the temerity to put God to a “fleece test” — twice! Patiently, graciously, God eliminated every excuse that Gideon could devise, and He ultimately used Gideon and only 300 men to defeat the Midianite army of 135,000 men.
The end of every excuse can be found in one faithful fact: God is with His servants. You see, God does not call the equipped; God simply equips those He calls and promises to be with them every step of the way in order to live out their call for His glory and the expansion of His Kingdom in this world.
Are you ready to answer God’s call on your life today? Are there any excuses still standing in your way? Bring them to the External Excuse Eliminator and lay them at His feet. Nothing is impossible with God!
This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!
Grace for the Race 