I have another confession. Every now and then I will use my kids as an excuse to get out of doing something. Like if someone invites me to a party that sounds really boring and I don’t want to hurt their feelings, I’ll say “We can’t find a babysitter.” The only reason I do that though is I am a liar.
But I think that lie is better than when someone asks you to help out at church and instead of saying, “no” you say, “let me pray about it.” Really? I asked you to help me clean up tomorrow night after the youth group and you feel like that’s something you need to run past the Savior of the world? He’s going to give you the thumbs up or thumbs down on whether or not you can help me stack chairs for seven minutes?
Not that there aren’t some situations that call for a “pause while I pray” response. My wife recently did that when she was asked to be a core leader for her CBS group in Atlanta. But I would argue that 47% of the time when we say “let me pray about it” we are just saying that so we can avoid saying no and can go home and email the person a big no instead of doing it in person.
(This one was Amy’s idea. She is awesome. No lie.)