The Consequences of Compromise

The Consequences of Compromise. Judges 1:1-36 The book of Judges is exactly a story of crooked and perverse times. The period of the judges is probably more like our day and age than any other in the history of Israel. It was a time of moral decline among the people of God, who were surrounded by a culture that flaunted depraved behavior. So the lessons we can learn in this book from studying how God called out a people to be his children, to represent him in the midst of those times.When it seems either too dangerous or too difficult to do otherwise, we make choices to compromise. We choose to do less than God is calling us to do. We pad an expense account. We live with prayer lives that are mediocre, intermittent, and shallow rather than learning to pray in any depth. We experience thought lives that have all sorts of inappropriate fantasies in them, and we never attempt to judge them or turn to God for help. We let our temper explode and overwhelm us and assume there is no help for this temper problem that we never seem to be able to get over. We don't do the hard work of going back and confronting what needs to be confronted and being freed from it.Admitting these things means we are ready for an impossible mission-beyond human strength, accomplished by God's power for His glory. The mission that we have been called to is to be children of God in a crooked and perverse generation, lights in the world.