March 3, 2024
I would like to lose about thirty pounds. The doctor even told me that losing thirty pounds would make my joints and my body feel better. It would also lower my blood sugar and improve my overall health. However, there are some obvious problems with this. Mainly, healthy food doesn’t taste as good as unhealthy food. I sort of feel for the two pelicans who were talking to each other, and pelican number one says to pelican number two, “Yesterday, I swooped down and grabbed a whole bag of peanuts from a man sitting on the pier, fought off a bunch of other pelicans trying to take the bag from me, flew back to my nest only to find out they were KALE peanuts.” Another problem with losing thirty pounds is, to lose weight, you must burn off more calories than you take in. In other words, you must exercise. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my favorite part of exercising is when it’s over. If I get up and exercise, I might pull something or have a heart attack. As I type this, it is dawning on me that all my REASONS for not losing weight are merely excuses. While it takes some adjusting, some healthy food is quite tasty, and no one says I have to run a marathon. I just need to get off the couch and become more active. It reminds me of Moses who spent the first forty years of his life being raised as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, in other words, he was becoming a “somebody”. After killing an Egyptian taskmaster, he went on the run and spent the next forty years on the backside of the desert in Midian watching over a bunch of wooly, smelly sheep, becoming a “nobody”. One day, he saw a bush on fire that wouldn’t burn up and went to investigate. Turns out, it took Moses forty years to become a somebody and then forty years to become a nobody. Now, God was going to spend the next forty years of Moses’ life showing Moses what God can do with a nobody. God was going to use Moses (the nobody) to lead his people, the nation of Israel, out of Egypt into the promised land. Do you know what Moses did? Just like my responses to my doctor’s statements about the health benefits of losing weight, Moses came up with a bunch of excuses as to how he was the wrong man for the job. You can read all about it in Exodus chapters three and four. Do you know what God did with Moses’ excuses? He ignored them and provided a solution for each excuse. That’s what God does with our excuses as well. We might have several reasons (excuses) for not getting busy with Kingdom work, but God isn’t going to accept them any more than he accepted the excuses of Moses. Let’s learn from Moses, skip the excuses, and get to work doing things that carry eternal significance. With all that being said, I’m still not eating Kale peanuts.
Be blessed and be a blessing . . . Bro. Andy
