The pastor correlated a person’s ability to follow Jesus with their willingness to push through their paper walls and acknowledge that their reasons are often just excuses. “Excuses are often selfishness disguised as humility.” They rob you and they rob others,” he said. rarely make much of a difference because paper walls keep you and keep me from being engaged. “People who live behind paper walls and make excuses. People who make excuses, he posited, rarely make much of a difference. “An excuse is really just a lie we tell ourselves about ourselves,” Stanley said. Throughout Scripture, Christians are encouraged to continue following Jesus despite challenges or reasons, and “throw off anything that hinders” to stay in the race of life (Hebrews 12:1). I spent my whole life behind the stupid wall that was nothing other than something I made up based on what somebody told me, something I believed, something I heard, something I read.” You don’t want to get to the end of your life and look back and think, ‘Good grief. “You don’t want excuses to be the boss of you. “Do you want excuses to be the boss of you?” he asked. “Is it possible that a ‘because’ is actually an excuse?”Īn excuse, he said, can become a “king,” while “excuses” can become a “board of directors.” “Is it possible you’re missing out because you’ve walled yourself in?” he asked listeners. The Deep Wide author said everyone has excuses or paper walls - but no one knows what’s on the other side of them. And I’m telling you, I almost missed it,” he shared. That season is one of the greatest seasons of my life. “And when I look back on the pictures and when I drive by those baseball parks, it is still emotional because of the joy to be with my sons, to learn. It wasn’t until Stanley’s own sons began playing sports and he was asked to coach their teams that the pastor realized just how much he was letting his fear hold him back. I’m actually hemming myself in and keeping myself out of opportunities … and maybe better relationships because of something I won’t admit.” “The the moment I decide it’s something out there … I begin constructing a wall. “Something is wrong with me, but it’s so hard to look in the mirror, so I decide it’s not me, it’s something out there,” he stated. “I was just uncomfortable.”Īt the root of an excuse is “blaming something internal on something external,” the pastor contended. Though his fellow pastors thought he was being “humble,” Stanely said he can see now that “it was just an excuse.” But because of his insecurity surrounding his athletic ability, the pastor said he’d often decline such opportunities. It’s you.”Īfter he started his ministry, Stanley recalled being asked to preach at different sports franchises, college sports events and NFL games. “Rich people, pretty people, people who graduated, people who didn’t graduate, college grads? Are there whole categories of people you don’t like? You should pay attention to that because you think it’s them. “Are there types of people you just don’t like?” he asked. It’s easier not to like them than to admit something about me.” … Because I wanted to be one and I failed. … And I loved sports, but I just wasn’t good enough,” Stanley shared. As a result of that experience, he said, he harbored an internal resentment for athletes throughout his academic career. When Stanley was in high school, he tried out for sports teams and never made any teams. He asked his audience: “Is it possible you have created a paper wall or an excuse for why you procrastinate about certain things, why you neglect certain things, why you avoid certain things? Is it possible you created a paper wall for why you avoid certain kinds of people, certain people, events, circumstances, opportunities?” “What if we acknowledge, ‘This isn’t real. “What if we just quit disguising our excuses as reasons?” he asked. Though it’s easy to pinpoint the flaws of others, the pastor challenged listeners to examine their own hearts. “Excuses get passed off as reasons, and excuses easily become, in the real world, ‘becauses,’ because all of us have some ‘becauses’ that we habitually hide behind when certain things come up.” “From a distance, an excuse looks like an actual reason,” he said. In a sermon on Sunday, the Atlanta-based pastor encouraged his audience to leave “excuses” in the past, stressing that there is a “fine line between a reason and an excuse” - and “one always disguises itself as the other.” | Screenshot: YouTube/Gwinnett ChurchĪndy Stanley, the pastor of North Point Ministries, urged Christians to stop making excuses, explaining that many professing believers construct a “paper wall”- often fueled by fear or insecurity - that holds them back from living a God-glorifying life. Evangelical megachurch pastor Andy Stanley of Georgia’s North Point Ministries warned his church to quit letting fabricated excuses impact their decision-making in a Jan.
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