Living with Compromise

I was searching for something inspirational to write about a few weeks ago. An officer at I-Cellhouse offered something. He said, "Don't straddle the bench!" He had no idea how brilliant that was.

President Andrew Johnson (who followed Abraham Lincoln) said a similar thing: "I wish the word compromise had never been put in the English language" [emphasis mine]. He was tired of seeing legislation built on solid, helpful principles get compromised by Congress.

As it is with politics, so it is with the Christian faith. There are too many folks who are straddling the bench, giving one foot over to the Lord and the other to the devil, producing "watered-down Christianity". There are two types...

  1. People who are on the brink of giving their lives to the Lord, but their compromises are holding them back.
  2. Christians who have accepted Jesus as their savior, but are still giving over to some problem with sin.
God does not like such compromises. Why? Because God spits out the lukewarm (Revelation 3:15-16). In both of these cases, it's like taking a can of Pepsi and adding water. The more diluted our faith becomes, the more potency and flavor it loses. On the other hand, "full-flavor faith" can be a very powerful thing. Remember, Jesus said that His disciples are the salt of the earth. But just as salt without flavor is useless (Matthew 5:13), so is lukewarm discipleship.

God Bless you.

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