I am a music junkie. I can not get enough of good music. If a new album by one of my favorite bands comes out, I’ll be downloading it at midnight the day it releases. Then I’ll listen to it non-stop until I get tired of it. Sometimes I’ll be done with a new album in a week, sometimes a month, and if the album sucks, just a couple of days.
So, I’m always waiting for the next great album. I’m always on Pandora, Amazon, Lastfm, and tons of other music sites looking for some new artist. It is much easier nowadays because I have the internet at my disposal, but a little over a decade ago you still had to buy CDs.
What did that mean? It meant that good music got buried by the crap the record companies shelled out on a regular basis. You couldn’t just hop online and see if you would like a new band or not.You had to go to the store and buy the CD. The problem was that if it sucked you were stuck with it.
Being a music junkie I couldn’t always wait for the good stuff to come out, though. So, I bought a lot of bad CDs just because I couldn’t wait for good ones to come out. Basically, I was compromising for something less because what I really wanted wasn’t there yet.
It is fine to compromise when it comes to music. It won’t ruin your life if you listen to Creed or Nickleback for a while. You are just tidying yourself over until that next good album comes out, but compromise can be dreadfully bad in our Christian walks.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE COMPROMISE?
Part of our Christian walk involves not giving into compromise. God has great things in store for us, but when we rush we end up making a mess out of the entire situation. Let’s look at Abraham and Sara. God promised them and child, but left them hanging on “when” they would have a child.
So, as time goes on, Abraham and Sarah begin to doubt God’s promise. Maybe he meant something else? Maybe he’s not going to do it? Maybe he meant for me to have a child with another woman? And after all that doubting Abraham ended up sleeping with Hagar in order to get his child.
But that wasn’t God’s promise and since Abraham compromised, he made a mess of everything. That compromise has impacted the entirety of human history. I can throw those Creed and Nickleback CDs in the garbage, but Abraham had no resolution to not having faith in God’s promise.
If you look at the word compromise it has “promise” in it. A compromise is basically looking for middle ground on a given promise. I don’t think it is the best idea to search for middle ground with God’s promises. We want to realize his full promise and not something in between.
I WANT IT ALL
Isn’t this how we all feel sometimes? I know there are moments in my life when I get sick of waiting. To put it simply, we are being impatient and that is not how we are called to act according to scripture. It is impatience that leads to compromise.
Let’s look at Jesus’ life. He knew he would have a ministry and be the savior of the world, but he had to wait for the right moment to begin that journey. In fact, we know very little about Jesus’ life before he started his ministry. That is thirty years of patiently waiting as a simple carpenter before preaching the truth to the world.
In John 2:4 he even says, “Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.” Jesus knew that waiting was of the utmost importance. God has special timing for the things we desire and the tasks we are called to accomplish. It is up to us to remain steadfast until the moment is right, though.
GOD WON’T RUSH
To be fair, I think everyone has waited on an answer to prayer and I think almost everyone has been disappointed by God’s response time. Sometimes our prayers are not answered right away and we give up on God before he can reply. It is nice to get those immediate miracles once and awhile, but they are not the norm and we should not expect them all of the time.
Just look at Romans 8:25, “But if we hope for what is still unseen by us, we wait for it with patience and composure.” That is how we are called to pray, ask, and wait.
I remember a quote by C.S. Lewis that said, “If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now?”. In other words, sometimes it is best for us not to get what we ask for. We always get to a point where we want God to break the rules for us and let us cheat our way through life, but he put those rules in place for a reason. Our trials are there to help us grow, learn, and become the perfect person that Christ desires us to be.
In James 1:2-4, “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”
So, don’t jump the gun. Don’t settle for second best. God has promised to bless us and we must keep hope that he will. When we comprise we ruin God’s promise and miss out on the better blessing he has for us down the road.
Off The Cuff Christian 