The Sting of Love

If we create a message hoping our audience will accept what we share, and if acceptance becomes our primary motivation, we will eventually compromise truth to hold onto our audience. At some point, we have all been guilty of this transgression. Humility, honesty, and repentance is the only way out of this trap. 

As a young pastor, I remember the day God challenged me on this subject. I still feel that sting today. I am still being stung to this day in other areas of personal compromise. I want to be stung again and again whenever I find out I am more interested in keeping my readers happy and having them enjoy what I write than serving them the hard and sometimes uncomfortable truth. 

If left unchallenged, our compromise will cause the Spirit to withdraw His instruction and leave us with a message crafted only by human wisdom and our version of spiritual reality. In America, we have created a lot of feel-good theology and subsequent worldviews.  This has taken place in our insulated culture absent from the stark realities of life being lived out each day by our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. We can too easily create a spiritual and emotional Twilight Zone where reality and truth have been exchanged for a fuzzy, photoshopped lie. 

When God expands the sphere of influence of our voice, no matter if our audience is one or a million, we will experience a challenge to our integrity. If we do not allow the challenge to discipline our hearts and the content of our message, any of us can be susceptible to making a weak turn toward compromise.  This becomes especially important if we have allowed our identity to be hitched to a preferred response from our audience. The principles of truth and honesty never change. They walk with us into each new season of life, carrying with them the sting of love.