Don't get burned

1 Corinthians 15:33

Compromise never works. We always get burned. Even though we rationalize around our weak decisions and tell ourselves that wicked associations really won't harm us ("They'll get better, our good will rub off their bad!"), we get soiled in the process.

If you put on a pair of clean white gloves on a rainy day and then go out into the backyard to the flowerbed and pick up a glob of mud, trust me, the mud will never get "glovey."

The gloves will definitely get muddy. Every time.

In all my 60-plus years on earth, I have never seen glovey mud. Not once.

In simple terms, that's what 1 Corinthians 15:33 is saying: "Do not be deceived: 'Bad company corrupts good morals.'"

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Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Wisdom for the Way (Nashville: J. Countryman, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001).Copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.