“But they all with one accord began to make excuses…”  Lk 14:18

Somebody once said that those who excel at making excuses are rarely good at anything else. Let’s face it – we’re all pretty good at making excuses sometimes! We use them to explain our mistakes, justify our failures, and postpone the disagreeable. We offer them as a substitute for actions or decisions that we don’t want to deal with. We tend to use excuses rather than take responsibility for our faults.

The danger is that we can easily allow it to become a habit. A lifestyle. We begin to allow things like laziness, fearfulness, bigotry, and bad attitudes to become ingrained in our character. Instead of allowing God to change and improve us, we become skilful at making excuses for staying just as we are.

But when we decide to excuse ourselves we also pass up an opportunity to grow spiritually. In fact, when we point the blame at others – whether it’s our colleagues, our parents, the government, the church, or the devil – we also give away the power to change the situation. In other words, if someone/something else caused our problem, then only they can reverse it. When we take responsibility we are giving ourselves the ability to respond. We can only fix a problem when we own it.

In the end ‘excusitis’ is really a lack of faith in God. The biblical way of facing difficult realities is to confess our own faults, repent of them, and ask God to help us change. When we do this we are actively trusting God to bring transformational power into our lives, make a way where there is no way, or provide his own personalized divine solution to our situation.

So c’mon. Say it out loud: “No more excuses this year! I will face what I need to face and trust God to make me bigger than my problems and better than my enemies!”