Luke 9:62 - Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."
In my last post, I wrote on laziness. God can do very little with a lazy person when it comes to building his kingdom. However, one who is just as useless is the one who continually makes excuses to God. In the next few posts, we are going to look at why we make excuses when it comes to serving the Lord.
In Luke 9:57-62, Jesus is call disciples to follow him. Their responses are, "I will follow you, but let me first...." One man was concerned with his provision, and one man was concerned with his familial duty. In essence, they saw something else as more important at that time than proclaiming the kingdom of God. While Jesus' words seen harsh in verse 62, if you imagine the word picture, it makes sense.
If a farmer is plowing a field, it is necessary that he plows straight rows. That way, the crops have enough room to grow and will not get intertwined with each other. In order to plow a field, one must hold the plow straight and look straight ahead. Otherwise, he will get off course. Knowing from experience (sorry little garden), when you look back while your hand is on the plow you begin to plow in the direction where your head is turned. The result is a messy garden and unfruitful labor. Applied spiritually though, we cannot follow Christ with our hands or our actions while our head and our hearts are still hung up on something that belongs to the world. If we do, we will simply be making excuses to either delay obedience or worse.
Jesus says that you cannot serve two masters. You will either love the one and hate the other or you will despise the one and love the other. If you have been making excuses lately about serving Christ to the fullest, I would like to ask you to examine the reason why. Could one of the reasons be that there is something else that has priority in your life? If so, ask God to begin to change your heart and help you prioritize your life around Him.
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