Giving way

DEVOTION

PROVERBS

GIVING WAY

Prov 25:26

26 Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked.

NIV

This is not good. A spring should be clear and babbling through a glen being a refreshing sight and sound as well as being able to supply a cool drink to a traveler. The well also should be a place to draw fresh water both for cooking with and drinking. But here the spring is full of mud, and the well is full of pollutants both unable to fulfill their purpose. Both of them corrupted by filth. So is the believer who yields before the wicked. What does that mean? Because we should be steadfast in our faith, we should maintain our faith in the face of all wickedness. The original language puts it in a way which describes it as falling down before the wicked. This does imply that we would join in with some form of folly being done by a wicked person. That is to say when we are in the presence of people who have not accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior we should always maintain our decorum. It is not that wicked is defined as horrible ugly minded people that never do anything good but always are morally bankrupt doing evil things. But their lives are not centered on Christ as ours should be. So then if we fail to maintain that centered focus of our lives in their presence it might be a form of falling down before them. It would be especially harmful if we allowed their ideas to pollute our thinking or muddied our faith. Jesus said that if we drink the water he gives we would have a spring of living water welling up within us. We cannot afford to allow the thinking of the wicked to muddy that spring of living water. To accept their ideas of life, to accept their ways of life, to live in accordance with the same principles of any kind would be having our spring muddied. This matters most when we are with them. We should be a beacon of light to the world pointing them to Christ. We should be the salt of the earth both preserving it as making Christ tasty to their heart. If we falter, if we fail to be steadfast, if we fail to uphold God before them we have fallen before them. If the wicked can cause us to corrupt our message in some way, we have given way to them. If they can say anything about the way we act, behave, or about something we said that does not match our testimony about being a Christian, perhaps we have given way to them. If we do not demonstrate the love of Christ before them, showing his compassion and mercy, praying for and with them in their stressful times, or when they are in some pain, maybe we have given way to them. Even the wicked say” Oh I am so sorry about your loss, or that you are not feeling good” or something to that effect. But we should be saying, “Let me pray with you about this”, that would be in accordance with being like Jesus, rather than being like the rest of good wicked people. Let us not give way.