Knowledge makes you arrogant. Love makes you humble.

As a leader, I need to be daily transformed by love and humility. When I do that, I resist the devil.

3. YOU’RE STARTING TO BLUR MORAL LINES

Occasionally leaders move from relatively deep obedience to an extraordinary moral breach overnight, but usually, it’s far more subtle than that.

As C.S. Lewis says in the Screwtape Letters, “the safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

So how does this happen?

Often it happens when you start to compromise on the small things. Maybe you take a few deductions you shouldn’t on your taxes. Or you don’t report some side income. Or you get a little too close emotionally to someone you’re not married to. Sure…nothing happened. But deep down you know something is happening in your heart.

Or maybe you just shade the truth a little in conversations to make yourself or the situation look better than they really do.

The first moral lapse is always the hardest. Then it gets easier from there.

You may be asking God for more in your life or leadership, but whenever you ask God for more, he usually asks you what you’re doing with what he’s already given you.

If you’re not faithful in the little things, you won’t be faithful in the bigger things.

Obedience may seem boring or inconvenient in the short-term, but it’s richly and deeply satisfying in the long term.

If you refuse to compromise now, it becomes much easier to resist compromise in the future.

4. YOU’RE DISCOURAGED

So the first three things were sins of commission.