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I pulled up my email on my phone and began to type out the message to my employee. I got about two-thirds through it and couldn’t go on. I hit back space until the whole thing was erased and closed out my email. I had told myself, “Just this one time… it’s not a big deal.”
It’s not what was in the email because the email was good. It was the day the email was in. It was the Sabbath and for years and years now I have committed to not work on the Sabbath. I realized that as I justified the email to myself, I was really deciding to compromise… just a little.
I have seen this in my life time and time again and I have seen it in others’ lives. One day they wake up and wonder how they’ve gone months without spending time with God alone. They wonder how they have such lack of integrity around certain people. They wonder how they got so off course. I can tell you how. It started with a little compromise.
Maybe the commitment was to spend time with God every day and then one day they decided to forgo that time. Then the day turned into two and then months later they are a dry well spiritually. Maybe the commitment was to not participate in certain lifestyles and one day they convinced themselves that a little wouldn’t hurt. After a while they didn’t even feel so bad about what they promised they wouldn’t do.
Whatever the circumstances, if you have to tell yourself: Just this one time, or: This really isn’t that big of a deal, you can be sure that you are convincing yourself of a compromise and even little compromises have huge impacts in our lives. Every step we take makes us head in a direction of either health and wholeness or destruction and regret. No matter how far away the destination seems, we want to always make sure we are making decisions that are pointing us in the direction that brings life to us and our family.
Is sending a work email on the Sabbath a huge deal? Maybe not to some people, but to me it would have broken a long-standing commitment and to me that is a huge deal. Once I compromise once, it becomes oh so much easier to compromise again and then again. It’s compounding momentum. Once it starts, it picks up steam. Pushing a non-moving object is pretty hard, but once that object starts rolling it becomes so much easier to keep going. I want to be committed to not letting compromises propel me in a direction I committed to stop going.
Father God, anytime I try to convince myself to compromise by telling myself it's not a big deal, or that it's just this one time, I pray that You overwhelm me with Your presence and flood me with Your strength to keep my commitments. I want a life free from compromise and free from regret!