Sometimes when I talk to a Christian about his/her spiritual growth and ask about attending a local church or reading the Scriptures or even prayer, I hear objections. Some of the objections are legit. Others are … well, we all know them because we have them handy in our tool belt. For most of us the legitimate reasons are due to specific, temporal circumstances. But they are often used when they no longer (honestly) apply. How many times can you use the excuse that you couldn’t attend public worship with other believers because the dog barfed up throughout the house right before you walked out the door? Or because you woke up with a headache…again on a Sunday morning. There are legit reasons, but we better be careful not to allow them to be convenient excuses that hinder our spiritual growth and weaken our spiritual armor.
Even when legit circumstances hinder getting out the door to public worship, what about private worship? Thomas Brooks brings up a common objection some people use to why they don’t spend time in private prayer.
“We have much business upon our hands, and we cannot spare time for private prayer; we have so much to do in our shops, and in our warehouses, and abroad with others, that we cannot spare time to wait upon the Lord in our closets.”
Here is Brooks’ objection to this excuse:
What are all those businesses that are upon your hands, to those businesses and weighty affairs, that did lie upon the hands of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Daniel, Elias, Nehemiah, Peter, Cornelius?1 and yet you find all these worthies exercising themselves in private prayers. And the king is commanded every day to read some part of God’s word, notwithstanding all his great and weighty employments, Deut. 17:18–20. Now certainly, sirs, your great businesses are little more than ciphers compared with theirs. And if there were any on earth that might have pleaded an exemption from private prayer, upon the account of business, of much business, of great business, these might have done it; but they were more honest and more noble than to neglect so choice a duty, upon the account of much business. These brave hearts made all their public employments stoop to private prayer; they would never suffer their public employments to tread private prayer under foot.
I’ve made a note to myself: Know the difference between “A legitimate Reason” and “A Convenient Excuse.” I want to recognize when I’m using a convenient excuse on myself. I don’t want to fool myself, AKA deceive myself. Go ahead, ask yourself: “I am using convenient excuses to avoid developing a habit of prayer in my life?”
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Brooks, T. (1866). The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks. (A. B. Grosart, Ed.) (Vol. 2, p. 202). Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert.
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