Compromise

Greg Laurie Daily Devotional

One Bite at a Time

So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise.
—Ephesians 5:15

If you find a person who has fallen into gross sin, I would say that in every situation that you can think of, it began with compromise. Very rarely do people fall away from God overnight. Sometimes it appears they do, but in reality, it doesn’t happen that way.

For instance, you may have seen someone at church last week, only to discover the next week they have gotten into some immoral lifestyle or are doing something they shouldn’t be doing. You think, I don’t get it. I just saw them in church last week. They were doing fine. I propose that compromise has been taking place over a long period of time in that person’s life, and he or she finally just caved in.

It is like a massive tree that had stood for some 400 years in Colorado, only to come crashing to the ground one day. No one could understand why a tree of that size would crash to the ground. After all, this tree had been struck by lightning on 14 different occasions. It had weathered countless storms and had never fallen. But one day, without warning, it just crashed. It turned out that the tree had been killed by beetles. Little insects had, over a prolonged period of time, chewed their way through its mighty fibers until it came crashing down.

That is how compromise works. The devil may be wicked, but he is not an idiot. He knows how to rip people off. He doesn’t tell you what he is up to in the beginning. Instead, he comes to you with a little enticement. He will infiltrate through compromise and then take you down, one bite at a time.