Stepping Out In Faith Toward Your Life's CallingExemplo

The Cost of Compromise

My family has a prejudice towards a certain bread of canines.  We believe that black labs are the most beautiful, intelligent and loyal pets you could ever have.  That was the case with our black lab named Coley.  

We had her since she was a puppy; she had been the best friend and hunting partner to my youngest son, accompanying him whenever possible.

Coley had always adjusted well with our many family moves and quickly became the favorite neighborhood dog wherever we resided.  We always had a fenced in yard, until this last move.  We moved into a rural area with a large yard.  We were greeted by several dogs in the area.  It looked like our new home was the neighborhood hangout for the area dogs.  That was fine with me and my husband because we had recently become empty nesters and having the company made us not miss our kids so much.

We had thought about putting a fence up at our new location, but again, no one else had a fence and all the dogs seemed to get along.  Carl and I discussed putting a fence in to protect Coley, but decided that she would be so unhappy being locked up when all the other dogs in the neighborhood were able to run loose.  

We had been there several months and everything seemed to be going well until one morning when we couldn’t find Coley.  We called for her to come and eat her food, but she didn’t come.  Carl and I rode around the dirt road near our home; there was no sign of her.  We went a little further out to the highway and saw something black near the side of the road.  It was our precious Coley.

I dreaded calling each of our children, but I made the calls.  We were all devastated that we had lost our precious pet.  Carl and I were also burdened with guilt that we had not fenced our yard.

Carl and I continued our morning walks without Coley, but all the other dogs in the neighborhood would still follow us.  They were not in fenced yards; they were able to roam around without borders.  We started to resent the fact that our neighbors still had their dogs, when we had lost ours.  We resented having our neighbor’s dogs hanging out at our house.  

We knew that God wanted us to learn something from this pain we were experiencing so we started praying and asking God what He wanted to teach us.

This is what we learned.

1. We had to repent and ask God to forgive us for not being responsible with the animal He had given us.  We had compromised.  We knew that we needed a fence but because none of our neighbors had fences, we let our judgement get clouded.

2. This compromise had cost us greatly. We started asking God to show us other areas of our lives in which we had compromised.

3. God showed us that we had to forgive our neighbors.  We were called to love them.

After we repented, God began to change our hearts towards our neighbors and their dogs.  One evening I came home and my headlights shined on two big dogs sitting at my front door.  I began to pray, “Father, I thank You that my home is protected by my neighbor’s big dogs.”

When we stop compromising, we can see much better. The community of Barrow, Alaska had suffered greatly from the compromise of sin.  When the leaders decided to stop compromising and make drastic changes for their youth, the community started changing.  

Questions to ask yourself:

Do you ever feel pressured to do something because everyone else is doing it?

Has your disobedience and compromise cost you?  If so, how did it cost you?  What did you learn from it?

How do you respond to those who are under your authority, maybe your children, when they make compromises to be like others?  Are you able to share with them some of your mistakes?