Missing Dinner

“He brought me to the banqueting table,

and His banner over me was love.”
Song of Solomon 2:4

 

Imagine being invited to a top-of-the-line banquet, the best food possible with no expense spared, hosted by the wealthiest person around, yet, when the time comes to attend, making lame excuses why you wouldn’t be able to attend. That was the exact story Jesus told with the end result being people missing out on something that could only be described as the opportunity of a lifetime.

 

An excuse is an explanation given as a pretext for our doing or not doing something. The dictionary gives us this sentence to help us understand: ‘He used his poor health as an excuse for evading all responsibility.’ We may try to convince ourselves that our excuses are valid reasons for what we’re hoping to justify but, like the men in the story, they’re often without validity and cause us to miss out on some needful and valuable life experiences. Consider the following points:

 

• Excuses are the enemies of change.
• Excuses are the enemies of growth.
• Excuses are the enemies of sacrifice.
• Excuses are a way out of paying the price being required of us.
• Excuses try to cleverly disguise themselves as reasons when they are not.
• Excuses are silent, unlikely enemies out to hold us back from all the good things that the Lord desires to do in our lives.
• Excuses are a clear, unobstructed path to selfishness and laziness.
• Excuses are like sugarcoated lies that we hope the Lord will not see through and others will not call us out on.

 

A seat at the Lord’s banqueting table, the opportunity to partake of His grace and goodness, and an invitation to greater fulfillment and satisfaction in life is waiting for each of us. But any penchant we might have for making excuses when things get tough and when the price gets steep has to be dealt with and exposed for what it is. The banquet the Lord’s prepared for us is just that incredible, far too valuable to allow our fondness for making excuses to stand in our way.

 

God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church