Making Excuses

I'm the world's worst at making excuses.

I make excuses for why I do certain things. I make excuses for why I don't do certain things. I make excuses for why I can't do certain things.

Sometimes, my excuses make perfect sense... but too often they are pure cop-outs, because I struggle with motivation and self-discipline and confidence and have too much self-doubt.

Tonight, I was reading in Exodus for my Chronological reading plan. The story of Moses is probably one of the first stories I can remember hearing about in Sunday School, complete with flannel board figures of a baby in the bulrushes. The timelessness of God, the "I AM" that never changes, reminds me that He is still the Great I AM. He is enough. He is all-sufficient. He is everything that we can imagine and need.

I can picture Moses minding his business in the desert, tending his father-in-law's sheep.

(What is it about shepherds? He is our good shepherd... but there were a lot of shepherds who learned some valuable lessons while out tending the sheep. Maybe it has to do with caring for something other than themselves... and I'm pretty sure being a shepherd involved humility).

Can you imagine how Moses must have felt when the bush actually started talking? And the fire just kept going?

Holy ground, yes...

(Can you imagine him shaking in his sandals? How do you even approach holiness? Too often we get so legalistic... but I can't help but wonder why he didn't fall flat on his face right before that talking bush in awe... and then I realize that often I'm staring right in the face at holy and I don't get it, either. I treat it as mundane and am not awestruck. Lord, help me. Help us.)

I found myself (again) wishing that at times God would use a burning bush to get my attention. Too often I struggle with wondering what in the world I'm really supposed to be doing...

but Moses had that burning bush there, with God speaking out of it, and he still struggled.

He started making excuses.

He wasn't good enough. Couldn't speak plainly...

A man of slow speech... that could actually be a good thing, because too often I am not of slow speech and blurt out what I'm thinking, sticking my foot in my mouth!!!

But anyway... here's what spoke to me.
Moses is sitting there making excuses about why he can't approach Pharaoh and about how the Israelites won't listen to him when God is telling him that he can. And as I read that, I thought to myself.

Ok... even though Moses didn't think he was enough, he was because God said that he was. Start believing what God says about you and not what you tell yourself.

He says I'm loved. I'm redeemed. I'm His child. I'm fearfully and wonderfully made for a purpose selected just for me before the foundations of the world. I'm a work in progress but I'm a masterpiece.

It's time to stop making excuses and instead trust that God will do what He says...

Because He Is I AM, I am what He says I am.

And so are you.