It’s Easy to Make Excuses
John 4:35-38 When you plant, you always say, ‘Four more months to wait before we gather the grain.’ But I tell you, open your eyes, and look at the fields. They are ready for harvesting now. Even now, the people who harvest the crop are being paid. They are gathering crops for eternal life. So now the people who plant can be happy together with those who harvest. It is true when we say, ‘One person plants, but another person harvests the crop.’ I sent you to harvest a crop that you did not work for. Others did the work, and you get the profit from their work.”
There have been times in my life, and no doubt yours too, when God’s kind of nudged us in one direction to do His bidding, but we’ve found it far more convenient to head in the opposite direction, to do ours.
When someone wants us to do something that we don’t really want to do just at the moment, it’s so darned easy for us to make excuses.
Now’s not the right time. I just need to get this other thing over here sorted out. The circumstances aren’t right. Excuses, excuses. They’re our perfect ploy for avoiding what God has for us to do, here and now. Here’s Jesus talking to His disciples:
John 4:35-38 When you plant, you always say, ‘Four more months to wait before we gather the grain.’ But I tell you, open your eyes, and look at the fields. They are ready for harvesting now. Even now, the people who harvest the crop are being paid. They are gathering crops for eternal life. So now the people who plant can be happy together with those who harvest. It is true when we say, ‘One person plants, but another person harvests the crop.’ I sent you to harvest a crop that you did not work for. Others did the work, and you get the profit from their work.”
In other words, stop making excuses. The time is right. The time is now. The field is ploughed, the seed is planted, the crop is ready. And to prove the point, He’s telling them this just as He’s just finished ministering to the Samaritan woman at the well while He was tired, thirsty and hungry, and amid cultural circumstances (she was a woman and a Samaritan!) that were far from right.
#NoteToSelf: Stop making excuses. The time to follow Jesus is now!
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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