a modern day Rahab...

Rahab was a woman who demonstrated great faith, to the salvation of herself and her family. She sheltered God's people and risked her life to protect his spies in Caanan. She was so greatly blessed and shown favor by God, that she is named in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Listed in his lineage, she is known simply as Rahab, the mother of Boaz who married Ruth. Yet how do we remember her today? What words inevitably and always follow her name as a constant reminder of the compromises she made?
In the story of Rahab, she is referred to over and over not by her name, but by her profession…as a prostitute. Why does the Lord give her grace, yet choose to remind us of that fact? Numbers 32:23 says "......be sure your sin will find you out". In God's eyes, being a prostitute is a sin, and even though Rahab was greatly blessed by God, she is first known as Rahab the prostitute.
I wonder, with the choices I have made...the positions I've willingly and to be honest, gladly placed my self into, how will I be remembered? What descriptors will follow my name??

I could spend the next several paragraphs listing the compromises that I have made over the last few months...but let me paraphrase. I've compromised every aspect of my life in some way.

I compromised my job to spend time with someone I love. I compromised my feelings to protect a way of life that I can never be a part of. I compromised my emotions and grief to be a leader to my campus. I compromised my integrity to a family who opened their arms to me. I compromised my character by believing that I would "take whatever I could get" from someone who loves me, but isn't ready to be with me. I compromised friendships by pushing them away so I wouldn't have to explain the other compromises that I've made. But most of all, I compromised my witness as a christian by choosing the stuff of earth over the allegiance I owe only to the giver of all good things.

As I look back on how I've chosen to live, I'm truly amazed,not at how much it has cost me, but at how much I was willing to pay for what I considered happiness. It certainly isn't what Christ had in mind when he died for me. I've spent the last several months ignoring what matters most, because I thought that living without the person I love would be too great a price to pay. It's the only price that I focused on. I thought that, to show unconditional love required me to compromise what I wanted or needed in order for it to be proven to the person to whom it is given. I was wrong.

When I finally reached the point of giving my decisions to God and praying to trust in his grace, I didn't find peace or release...I found the cross calling not for compromise, but for sacrifice. Unconditional love is more than just compromise... to accept it means dying to the things that most provide security and allow someone else to believe in you. It is the unconditional love of God for us that makes grace possible. It means accepting that I am human and faulty, yet loved beyond words...to the point of death... by the only one who matters. It means that the person I love is loved that way too...and not just by me. I know I'll never lose my life to save his soul...even though I'm willing to do so...but that has already been done. Unconditional love means that I completely and utterly release myself from compromise, and find my identity in the power of the cross. It is to accept that my sin will find me out...but that it will not define me. The love that I thought I had gained through compromise...what I thought I should do and what I thought I needed to prove, I now understand had to be lost to me.

Please don't think that I find this understanding easy...I truly know for the first time, what it is like to identify with the suffering that Christ endured for me. Yet, I know that in order to love and to truly accept the best life I can, the life Christ wants for me, I have to let go of my insecurities and hold tight to trust. I have to die to myself...which means I can no longer compromise. Christ's love will never ask more of me than I can give...that's not what love does; not even the unconditional kind.

Timing is everything and unconditional love never fails...it never goes away. For me to try to force it on someone who isn’t ready to accept it, isn't love at all...it's just one more opportunity for me to make that person's happiness a priority in my life to show them that I will do whatever is necessary to prove that they are loved...it's just one more opportunity to compromise.