Compromise
2 Chronicles 8
Then Solomon brought Pharaoh’s daughter up from the city of David to the house which he had built for her, for he said “My wife shall not dwell in the house of David, king of Israel, because the places are holy where the ark of the Lord has entered.
2 Chronicles 8:11 NASB
Compromise, by definition, does not involve a wholesale capitulation to wordly ways or ideals; rather, it accommodates them.
That statement above really got me thinking about how subtlycompromise starts in our daily lives.
For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, comes not from the Father, but from the world.
1 John 2:16
I know I do not just set out to disobey God or sin against him. Most of us would recoil at the thought of tossing Jesus aside and embracing an idol, but compromise never asks us to do that. Compromise says that we can have the idol and keep Jesus too.
Oh, those idols – Control, money, approval from others, social media all those things we can choose to elevate in our livesabove the Lord. If we are not careful, we can fool ourselves into thinking what is one more object of worship – what’s the harm if we still have Jesus? That is the devil’s tactic to pull us away from God.
I know for myself, as I have shared before, control is just something I continually struggle with. I need to not rationalize the temptation and try to come up with my own ways of dealing with it. I must seek God’s word and follow his ways. Or else all my rationalizing is nothing more then deluding myself.
But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.
James 1:14
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.
James 1:16
Solomon knew that his marriage was not holy, or else his wife could have stayed in the house of David. Instead of addressing this the right way, he rationalized a compromise where he had no right to negotiate. Compromising with sin always leads to new sin.
Father, I don’t want to be a fool. I know I cannot deceive you, but I also don’t want to deceive myself. Give me open eyes to see my temptations clearly. Give me open ears to hear the convictions of the Holy Spirit. Help me to respond with confession and repentance instead of trying to justify my desires with autonomy that does not belong to me. Let your will be done, not min. In Jesus’s name I pray, Amen.
Amen!