Compromise

One step away. One moment when you lower your guard. One slight betrayal of your standards. One small compromise of your principals for convenience sake and you have unwittingly  entered into a place you thought you would never ever go. A place once thought to be impossible to reside, a place where  morals, ethics, and ways of Godly conduct are set aside... It all starts with one step.
I have to my sorrow learned of a friend who has stepped into this place. If you would have asked me if I thought it would be possible I would have said no, never, his faith is rock solid, his walk with God careful  and blameless. And yet no matter what I think, no matter how hard I wish otherwise, it still is so. Such a thing learned makes me wonder how does one slip so far? What prompted that first decision of compromise?It is an important question because I  share the same risks, we all do. In my life my compromises have been for various reasons; wanting to avoid conflict or confrontation, to avoid hurting someone, to avoid doing something I do not want to do. To avoid, to avoid, to avoid. I think I see a pattern here.
Why does the sacred get sacrificed for the convenient ? The thing that alarms me even more than the step into compromise is the possibility of getting comfortable within that new way of thinking and living a life that is marked by a lack of the concrete principles that have been given to me by God, principles that are vital to my living life successfully.
The brutal truth is we all slip into wrong behaviors, wrong ways of thinking, wrong attitudes, and wrong motives. The hope of every person who is diligent in their walk with God is to grow beyond those behaviors. One hopes that our Christian maturity will buffer us, and our moral life will show itself to be above reproach.
It is sobering to have knowledge of a friend, one who is a mature Christian, who has begun to live like the world. If he was able to be moved from his firm position, what hope have I?
Oh God, open my eyes to my own ways of compromise, open my heart to be broken by my behavior that is directly opposed to your standards and your law. Let the sacred things remain sacred. My daily actions pleasing and uncompromising, bringing glory to Jesus.


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