We have lots of excuses for how we fail God in our lives. We say, oh that was beyond our control, or that was so small that it didn’t count. To our credit, we know we fail. But we also blame God when we try to make ourselves feel better by having problem-solving “methods”. We convince ourselves that “if only God did this or if he did that,” then we wouldn’t fail so miserably.
The thing is, God has given humanity a chance to try out these “methods” and it’s all been recorded down for us to read about.
The Top 5 “Methods” We Have For God… to keep ourselves from failing epically at life
- If only God walked with us here on earth….
Hate to break it to ya, but God tried this from the very beginning and is the one thing He so desperately wants with us. When God first created Adam and Eve, He walked with them, chatted with them, spent time with them like how an earthly father would physically spend time with his children. Adam and Eve could call upon God, and he’d show up.
But we know how that turned out. Adam and Eve were still not satisfied with that close intimacy with God. They fell prey to the serpents’ temptations and hence were forever separated from God. As result of their sin, their descendants, the human race, would occupy this world without God’s physical presence.
- If only God left us alone…
This is the opposite route from what we just talked about. Instead of having God keeping an eye out for us at every passing moment, some argue that if God just left us alone, without leaving us any rules, then we wouldn’t know what sin was, which means we wouldn’t sin. This is a stretch of a reason, I know. (At this point, I’m like, really? Even from a puny human mind, this logic doesn’t make sense. But no worries, God allows us to try this very logical moral reasoning as well…
If you look at the early chapters of Genesis, after Adam and Eve have been banished from the Garden of Eve, God more or less stays out of the humans’ business. He’s there but at a distance. Definitely not in the way as he was with Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 6, the human race has gotten so evil that God decided to wipe everyone out with the Great Flood….
Clearly, this method of God leaving us alone to do our own things doesn’t work.
- If only God founded a nation ruled by him…
These people here are asking for a theocracy. A nation founded by God and for God. There is one clear picture of this example and it is what half our Bible is written on. Yes, the nation of Israel. But that didn’t turn out so well. Even with God has their leader, they still followed the sins of the surrounding nations. Through their idolatry and their disobedience to God, the nation of Israel was ultimately exiled by both the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and has still not really regained its freedom and received God’s promise for it to this day.
However, some may argue that they had actual kings so they don’t technically fall under a theocracy. However, let us be reminded that it was the people of Israel who ended up rejecting God as their king as asked for a human king, leading to the anointing of King Saul, then King David. So God adjusted his plans for us to give us what we wanted, advising through these kings.
- If only God could speak to us through dreams…
I think this is a much more common one. I have often thought this myself, if only I could hear God speak then I would be less willing to sin. I think we come to this reasoning because we know God won’t walk with us on earth, not at this time anyway. But dreams is something we experience to this day and is more “practical” than walking with God.
Unfortunately, God speaks to people through dreams throughout the Bible. Too numerous to record. But a notable instance of God speaking to a man through a dream is the promising of a great nation to Abraham. God tells him that this will happen through his own offspring, his own flesh and blood (Gen. 15). And even despite Abraham’s great faith, he does not fully believe the Lord and rather takes Hagar, a servant in his household to sleep with her in an effort to speed up this promise. This was not God’s original plan, and this decision caused rifts in his marriage with Sarah, leading to abandonment of Hagar and her son, Ismael, and would eventually pave the way for unrest lack of peace between the descendants of his two sons.
God spoke to Abraham through a dream, much in the manner that we ask him to today, but he still sinned in an effort to bring about this fulfillment in his own way rather than waiting on God’s timing.
- If only God gave me everything I wanted…
If we were all honest with ourselves, I believe this is the request that God hears most of us. Because of this reasoning we convince ourselves that if only God had given it to us, then we wouldn’t have sinned to try to get it on our own.
Yet, God provides us with the perfect example that even this would not stop us from sinning. King Solomon, the son of King David, from the bloodline of whom Jesus would come from, was a man known throughout the world at that time and now. God gave him everything that anybody could ever want- riches, women, fame. Unfortunately, the end of Solomon is a tragic one. Once so wise and a man after God died with his kingdom shattered and given to another man not of the line of David and died at only the age of 60, most likely alone.
Again, the riches of this life did nothing to prevent him from sinning. Rather, it kept him wanting more, leading him to giving up a little bit of God each time he chose the worldly desires instead.
These five excuses we give God are only some that we offer to him when we mess up. But we often forget that God has heard all of it and allowed humanity to try it all already. It’s all been written down for us so that we don’t have to go through that pain of failing again.Those in the Bible and us still today believe that we can gain the same result without following God’s plan. But we forget he already has the best laid out for us.
the mathetis 