The Subtlety of Compromise

The Subtlety of Compromise

2 Corinthians 11:3

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

            The mind that God has given us are marvelous in their ability to help us function, remember, reason and navigate life.  They can also be extremely susceptible to deception and wrong reasoning and thinking.  How many times have we heard people say, “My God wouldn’t do that or isn’t that way, or is this or that.”  Who is their God?  Who is our God?  We know God through the revelation and knowledge of His Word.  We know Him through the life of Christ we see recorded in that Word.  We know Him by His Holy Spirit that He has placed within our hearts and we come to know Him personally and experientially as we walk with Him in obedience and relationship.  Like Eve, our minds are not only open to hear the voice of God, but other voices, reasonings and spirits as well.  How blessed we are to have the foundational truth of the Word of God; to have absolutes and firm values of what is God’s will and righteousness.  Satan’s purpose is always to pervert, twist, misconstrue and ultimately to lead us away from the Truth and to destroy our faith.  He is probably not going to have much success if he is too obvious.  If he came up to you today and said, “God isn’t real.  You need to just relax, enjoy life and forget about this God stuff.”  We would obviously refuse that and rebuke the devil.  The devil is known for his subtlety.  If he can influence our flesh to make small compromises, he will chip away at our moral fiber until it crumbles and falls.  “What can it hurt if I just do this little thing?”  It is the little foxes that spoil the vine.  It is the little compromises that add up to major falls.  It is fleshly and false reasoning that undermines our foundation of truth.  One day something comes along and because we have compromised the integrity of our values that we knew to be right we set ourselves up to make a major blunder that devastates our lives and the lives of those around us.  We all have areas of weakness in our lives where we are prone to be given to the flesh and to sin.  The enemy will find the open doors and windows to creep in unawares and devastate our spiritual lives. 

            God is continually warning us throughout the Word to guard our hearts from the deceitfulness of sin.  Deuteronomy 11:16 says, “Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them.”  Psalms 98:5 warns us against the hardening of our heart that can come through life’s trials and testings,” Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, [and] as [in] the day of temptation in the wilderness:”  Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, “The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it? “ 

Knowing that our minds and hearts are prone to evil, 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 tells us about how to combat these compromising temptations. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”  Our compromises are the imaginations that we don’t pull down and we allow to have place.  Many of us are dealing with these compromises in our lives today in one area or another.  The last thing we want to do is become stiff necked, hard-hearted, having eyes, but we cannot see and ears, but we cannot hear.  Let us repent of our compromises and be restored in those areas we have let imaginations and strongholds come in.  Let us be faithful in love and all humility to restore one another in the areas we see our brother or sister falling into compromise; taking heed that we also do not stumble in disobedience.  We are not judges, but we are watchmen, watching out for one another in love, knowing that all of us are subject to compromise.  Let us deal quickly with our sins while they are small, before we reap the consequences of what they will produce in us. 

Blessings,

#kent

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