Excuses: The Devil’s Way to Limit God’s Glory

“I’m too young.” “I’m not ready.” “I’m too black.” “I’m too white.” “I’m just a girl.” “That’s not fun.” “I have no money.” “I’m too ugly.” “I don’t talk good.” “I’ll do it later.” Have you ever heard any of these? I bet you have. You probably even uttered one or two of them. There called excuses and we say them everyday. As a matter of fact, many of us got so good at coming up with excuses that we can issue them without even thinking. Coming up with excuses seem to be mankind’s universal greatest gift.

Do you want to know who had excuses? A man named Jonah. God gave Jonah a very clear and simple command: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come before me (Jonah 1:2).” But what did Jonah do? He quickly ran away towards another city in an effort to flee from his calling. His disobedience leads him to almost getting innocent people killed in a ship wreck and him being tossed overboard into the seas (Jonah 1:11-15). Once thrown overboard, Jonah gets swallowed up by a great fish were he stays for three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17). God eventually frees him from the great fish and He repeats his command a second time. This time, Jonah obeys and goes to Nineveh to preach destruction to the city if they do not repent. The city repents by fasting and covering themselves in sackcloth so God has mercy and spares the city. After this course of events, Jonah’s excuse is finally revealed: “O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity (Jonah 4:2-3).”

So what was Jonah’s excuse? He didn’t want to go because he knew God would spare Nineveh, an enemy to Jonah’s people. What a bigot. Seriously. Basically, Jonah would rather see a foreign people die then to allow them to experience the glory of the Lord. Fortunately, Jonah came to his senses in time to perform the work of the Lord as commanded. Unfortunately, many Christians today do not.

Excuses by believers only serve one purpose when it comes to God: It’s the Devil’s way of limiting God’s glory. Look, as Christians, we need to develop the same philosophy of the United States Marine Corps when it comes to serving God. It’s a very simple, three word mentality: “Sir, yes Sir!” Serving God is not rocket science. It basically boils down to two things: obeying Him and never giving up on Him. When God gives us a command He is not interested in our opinion. Nowhere in the Bible do you see a command that says, “And thou shall have twenty questions for God.” God gives an order, you do it. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Personally, I’m politically against the war in Iraq. However, I have great respect for the US military because many service men and women unquestioningly carried out their orders despite personally disagreeing with the premise of the war. It’s also true that some service people deserted and broke their commitment. However, if people are willing to carry out the orders of a man made government, shouldn’t we even more enthusiastically carry out the orders of God’s government? If we don’t, then we will be like Jonah and seen as a deserter who refuses to carry out Kingdom business. God never said that we will be able to pick and choose our spiritual wars, He just expects us to do it when the King of kings and Lord of lords says it’s time to fight. No questions asked. No excuses wanted. Only “Sir, yes Sir!”