In church, we make the excuse that we don’t have enough time, but what we really mean is, “I don’t want to.” I don’t want to volunteer or I don’t want to miss my son’s soccer game or I don’t want to put one more thing on my plate. I don’t want to contribute. I pledge; I show up every other Sunday. Leave me alone.

When we don’t want to do something that we know we should, we feel bad and we make excuses. We don’t simply say that we don’t have enough time, we say…

…I’m swamped at work…

…My family needs me at home…

…I did my time…

…and we pretend as if the entire church can go on without us.

But it can’t. And deep down, we know that. That’s part of the reason we feel guilty. The other is that one time we stole a pen from the office administrator because she always gets those great blue gel pens that write so smoothly. Otherwise it’s that we know that we’re needed.

The issue isn’t so much that we don’t have enough time, it’s that we have other things prioritized ahead of church. And we think that’s the right thing to do. We love our kids, so we go to all of the soccer games, all of the practices, even the inter-squad scrimmages and we think that’s what great parents do. But we’re making a choice. A choice to be at all these scrimmages rather than be at church. And we only feel a small twinge of guilt.

So we have a two-step program:

1. Admit we put all this other stuff first.
2. Then do something about it.

It really is that simple. We have to decide whether to do all of those things we think are “necessary” or do we make church one of those necessary things.

And after we make the decision and (hopefully) we want to be at church, step two comes in and we have to figure out what we can do about it. But that’s easy one. The first step is the toughest. It is so very simple, but so hard to admit. To admit that we are the problem.