The Breadcrumb Trail

You don’t become obese over night. I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific fact. It takes a good deal of work to get to that point—a good bit of snacking, a good bit of swiping the cookie jar, and eventually you qualify.

Sin works in our lives much the same way. You don’t wake up one morning in someone else’s bed to discover to your surprise that you have cheated on our spouse. There is a breadcrumb trail of compromises behind you that lead directly there—the compromise of lust, the compromise of white lies, and the list goes on.

Leading up to David’s adultery with Bathsheba were some seemingly insignificant compromises of escalating sin in David’s life. 1 Samuel 19 illustrates one of these compromises.

With King Saul in hot pursuit, David’s wife, Michal, distracted Saul’s guards allowing David to evade Saul’s grasp. This distraction involved placing the household idol under the covers of her bed with goat’s hair sticking out to resemble a sleeping David (1 Sam. 19:13).

This event begs the question, what in the world was David doing with an idol in his house? Could he have been ignorant of the fact that his wife had the idol? It’s possible, but unlikely. It’s more likely that he had full knowledge of the idol but refused to fight that battle. So, he compromised. He let it go. A seemingly small and insignificant compromise gave birth to a pattern of compromises that eventually led to David’s moral failure.

Growing up under my dad’s preaching, I remember him often repeating this phrase: “Sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay.” The breadcrumb trail of compromises lead to a place you never intended to go. The cost is not worth it. Decide today to quit adding to the trail.