“NONE OF THEM SHALL TASTE MY BANQUET”

Making excuses keeps us from God’s blessings.

Luke 14:15-24 tells us the story of how making excuses can keep us from having God’s blessing in our lives. In the passage, Jesus tells a parable. There was a man who prepared a great banquet and invited many guests. The guests, however, made up excuses not to attend. One had to visit his field. Another had recently purchased a yoke that he had to try out, and another had just gotten married. On the surface, these seem valid excuses; in light of what they were giving up, the reasons appear trivial.

The guests’ excuses revealed their hearts condition: the banquet was not essential and worth the trouble to them. The same could be said about us when we make excuses: to spare ourselves from the pain and difficulty of following God. We are essentially declaring that God is not worth it, that God and His Kingdom are the least of our priorities.

Don’t Miss Out

In the parable, the man throwing the banquet thus decided to invite the poor, crippled, blind, and lame. The parable ends with the man saying: “Not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.” In other words, those invited initially missed out on something big. Similarly, we, too, miss out on God’s blessings, rewards, and banquets whenever we make up excuses. We miss out on the opportunity to realize our full potential, hone our skills, and live a life of abundance—the kind of life that God has intended for each one of us. This is why Joyce Mayer encourages us: “Don’t give in to excuses that can keep you from really living the best life God has for you.”