Episode Details

Welcome to The Daily.

We are 14 days away from beginning our next book of the Bible. We are moving to the New Testament, 1 Peter. We are going to discover how to live holy in a hostile world. Go ahead and pick up your 1 Peter Scripture Journal now. And if you are a Project23 donor giving $35 or more per month, this has already been shipped to you. So become a donor and partner with us in Project23.

Our text today is Hosea 13:1

When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling; he was exalted in Israel, but he incurred guilt through Baal and died. — Hosea 13:1

One of the lessons we have learned throughout Hosea is that spiritual collapse never happens suddenly. It happens slowly. This warning continues in this chapter.

You see, there was a time when Ephraim/Israel was respected, strong, and honored. There was spiritual weight and seriousness to their lives. But then something changed.

"...he incurred guilt through Baal and died."

Notice how slow the change is, but how quickly God perceives it. One compromise slowly opened the door to another. And eventually, the very people who once feared God became spiritually lifeless. That is how sin always works.

Most people do not wake up one day planning to drift far from God. It begins with smaller compromises that do not seem dangerous at first:

tolerated sin, ignored conviction, spiritual passivity, quiet pride, hidden lust, bitterness, greed, dishonesty, compromise with culture.

Over time, what once bothered you stops bothering you. Your conscience grows unconscious. Your spiritual sensitivity saps. And slowly, sin begins to reshape into a new normal. That is why compromise is so dangerous. It never stays isolated and small.

This is happening everywhere in our culture today. You see it happening right before your eyes.

People are normalizing what God calls destructive. We celebrate things that slowly erode souls, families, marriages, identity, and truth itself. Hate speech, doxing, sexual sin, and killing children in the womb. Many Christians are slowly adapting to the spirit of the age until they no longer recognize how far they have drifted from the truth in God's Word. James Talirico in Texas is one of these men. He claims to be an evangelical Christian, but holds numerous views that no longer align with the truth in the Bible, and claims his positions do.

Faithful believers have always faced pressure to compromise with the surrounding culture. That tension is not new. And it is exactly why believers must learn how to live differently inside a drifting world.

Sin may slowly take over—but surrender can slowly restore too. The moment you stop justifying compromise and honestly bring it before God, healing begins. Conviction is not God rejecting you. It is God rescuing you before drift becomes destruction.

Do not ignore the small compromises. Bring them into the light right now. Let the unchanging truth (in God's Word) change you. What you repeatedly tolerate in culture eventually shapes who you become. And yet truth has the power to turn you back to the God who loves you and wants you to return.

Ask God to expose one area of compromise you have slowly started accepting as normal.

1. What small compromise have I been tolerating lately?
2. When did my spiritual sensitivity start to grow weaker?
3. Am I becoming more shaped by God's truth or by culture's values?