Think of the number 5,073 and silly excuses!

You realize that an excuse is the attempt to assemble reasons why I should be released from this proposed or present situation. We offer reasons why this won’t work. We explain why we are not the person to do this thing. We even present a list of obvious conclusions as to why someone else should do this, but not me.

I take you back thirteen years to a staff meeting at Baptist Church Planters. The dear folks in our IT ministry and administration were encouraging me to launch my own website as part of the websites of Baptist Church Planters. One of the men was “crazy” (or so I thought!) enough that he even suggested I write a daily devotional. This wouldn’t be designed to replace believer’s reading of the Bible. Rather, it would serve as an encouragement or spiritual vitamin in addition to reading the Scriptures.

Oh, the excuses I made. No one would read it. Only my mother would read it. Come to think of it, my mother didn’t have a computer so even she would never read it. I would run out of things to write about. This would never work.

Today you are reading post number 5,073 and no one is as amazed as I am. I honestly thought that I would run out of things to write about by the end of the first month. Wrong! Daily I still have the privilege of coming to dear people throughout the United States and the far reaches of the world, including restricted access countries. What a great blessing I would have missed these years if I had kept on making excuses.

“Ah Lord GOD! Behold, Thou hast made the heaven and the earth by Thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for Thee” (Jeremiah 32:17).

Oh friends, if the Lord is bringing an opportunity to you, certainly pray much about it, discuss it with others, think it through carefully, BUT….don’t make excuses and disobey! I’m glad the staff laughed at my excuses and assured me they knew it would work!