I had the great privilege of speaking this morning to a group of students at Homewood Middle School (Birmingham, AL) at their First Priority meeting.   I love getting together with students and sharing a few moments together with the Lord.  I talked about excuses and used the text from John 5 about when Jesus healed the invalid who had been in that condition for 38 years.

The truth is, we all have excuses.  For any task, you can easily fill in the blank with an excuse.  We inherited this trait from Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden.  In the John 5 passage, Jesus asks the man if he wanted to be made whole/well?  Instead of just answering, the man threw out his excuses.

As I shared with the students this morning, there are many things that Jesus calls us to…

1. Salvation
2. Sharing Jesus with others
3. Turn from sin
4. Get out of our comfort zone

Many times, instead of showing our great love for Jesus, we give excuses like the invalid in John 5.  God doesn’t care about our excuses as much as He cares about us.  Whatever it is that God is calling us to, let us instead of giving Him excuses give Him obedience.

I have been reading through the book of Exodus in my daily readings for the past couple of days.  This has been a great journey through God’s word for me.  As I came to the familiar passage about God using Moses and Aaron to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery, one thing stood out to me: the mentality of Pharaoh.

Exodus 5-12 accounts how God sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh with many “signs” or “plagues” so that Pharaoh might see that God was calling for a release of His people to worship Him and live in freedom.  Over and over again, we see that Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not allow the release.  Then God brought the ultimate “plague”: the death of the firstborn.  This led to the release of the Israelites to finally live in freedom.

What stood out to me was the repeated instances of Pharaoh saying one thing then doing another (Exodus 8:8-15, 8:25-32, 9:27-35, 10:16-20).  Over and over again, God showed His great power and victory over the false gods of the Egyptians.  Over and over again, Pharaoh made a “deal” with God to obey.  When Pharaoh saw that everything was good again, he reneged on his promise and faced something worse.

How many times does this reflect our hearts?  God allows things in our life to crumble or get uncomfortable, and we make a “deal” with God only to renege on our part.  God is not interested in our “deals”.  He is more interested in our hearts and obedience to Him as a loving Father.  Let us make a “deal” with ourselves today: stop making “deals” with God and just be obedient to Him.