The Man Who Will Not Compromise
- ippmprisonministri
- Dec 2
- 14 min read
Standing Pure in a World Full of Traps
Scripture Reference: – Psalm 119:133 – Proverbs 4:23
“Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me.”
“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”
Introduction: “The Valiant Prayer: Why A Man Who Will Not Compromise On His Knees”
There are many disciplines in the Christian life that demand courage: confession, fasting, repentance, confronting sin, forgiving an enemy, preaching truth in the face of scorn. All of them cost something. All of them require faith. But if honesty is permitted for a single moment, prayer stands apart. Prayer is the most intimate and the most costly discipline because it exposes the heart. Prayer strips pretenses. Prayer forces the soul to speak truth. Prayer unmasks our need.
For many men—especially men inside prison walls—prayer is the battlefield. It is where shame meets confession. It is where loneliness meets pleading. It is where the saint recognizes his weakness and lays it before God. Prison life intensifies every emotion; it sharpens every temptation; it multiplies every fear. In that pressure cooker, a man either learns to pray like his life and testimony depend on it—or he finds that he will compromise little by little until his soul is quieted not by peace but by doom.
This devotional opens with a simple claim: the uncompromising man is first a man of prayer. Every other virtue—self-control, holiness, faithful speech, wise friendships, moral courage—grows from the root of a consistent, dependent prayer life. David understands this. Centuries before the Lord’s Prayer was recorded on the lips of Jesus, David was already pleading for purity, protection, wisdom, correction, and vindication.
Psalm 141 belongs to a quartet of prayers (Psalms 140–143) that read like the journal of a man pressed from all sides—political threats, personal enemies, inner temptations—but who will not barter his soul for a painless life. He chooses the hard path: to be holy for God’s glory, no matter the cost.
Think for a moment about the context many of your brothers live in every day. The environment is designed to harden; it rewards cunning, boasts of toughness, and admires self-preservation. A wrong word can cost you. A wrong friend can ruin you. A single compromise, once made, loosens the chain that once bound you to prayer and to God. That is why David’s urgency rings true for those behind bars. He does not ask for reputation. He does not pray for ease. He prays for a heart that refuses to bend and for a life that will not be bought by comfort or safety.
Prayer, then, is not optional; it is the frontline. The kind of prayer David models in Psalm 141 is raw, restrained, worshipful, and strategic. He cries aloud for help—and he knows how to worship while crying. He wants his prayer to be as incense, rising before God as a pleasing aroma. That image is vital. It tells us that desperate prayers can be holy when they are offered in a spirit of reverence. The man who will not compromise does not plead for vindication with bitter pride; he pleads for purity with broken worship.
There is another reason prayer matters more than any other single practice: prayer reorders the heart’s loyalties. In prison the temptation is always to look left or right—at the men who control the yards, at the favors or threats that come with certain alliances, at the short cuts that preserve comfort. David teaches a different orientation: fix your eyes on God. Let your gaze be upward.
Let your mouth be guarded, your heart inclining to holiness, your friendships chosen carefully, and your hands—your deeds—kept from iniquity. Prayer does not simply ask God to change circumstances; it asks God to change the one who prays. That change is the only way to remain uncompromised when everything around you is designed to compromise you.
Look also at the tone of David’s prayer—it is urgent but humble. He says, “Make haste unto me.” He pleads, “Give ear to my voice.” When a man knows he is outmatched by sin or by enemies, he becomes urgent in his petitions. There is nothing theatrical about David’s cry; it is survival language. Men in prison understand survival language.
But notice that David never stops at survival; his cry moves quickly to worship: “Let my prayer be set forth as incense.” The man who will not compromise combines desperation with adoration. He learns the discipline of bringing suffering into worship instead of letting suffering become the god that replaces God.
This psalm also teaches that holiness demands practical wisdom. David does not simply ask for victory over temptation as if it were a one-time miracle. He asks God to “set a watch before my mouth” and to “keep the door of my lips.” He asks that his heart not lean to evil, that his hands not be pulled into wicked works, and that the company he keeps not be those who entice with delicacies. These are practical petitions.
They reveal a strategy: holiness is not accidental; it is intentional. Guard your speech. Rule your desires. Choose companions who will wound you with love rather than flatter you to ruin. In prison the pragmatic nature of this advice is sometimes the difference between life and death, witness and compromise.
Perhaps most unsettling—and most needed—is David’s willingness to ask God for both vindication and protection without bitterness. He prays imprecatory words against those who seek evil, yet he places himself under God’s righteous judgment rather than taking revenge. For the prisoner who has been wronged, this is a crucial lesson: leave vengeance with God, and protect your purity while you do it. The man who will not compromise lets God be his judge, while he keeps his hands clean.
Finally, this psalm points us to the ultimate Man who refused to compromise: Jesus Christ. David paints a portrait of dependence, wisdom, holy friendships, vindication entrusted to God, and refuge in the Lord. Jesus lived that portrait without failure. For the prisoner wanting to follow the Man who overcame, Psalm 141 is both mirror and roadmap: it reflects our need and maps the way forward.
So as we begin this study, hear this charge—quiet as a whispered prayer, fierce as a battle cry: if you are going to stand uncompromised in a world that rewards the opposite, you must begin by learning to pray the kind of prayers David prayed. Not polished liturgies only, not lectures on morality alone, but gut-level, incense-rising, watchful prayers that keep the door of the lips closed, the heart from leaning, and the feet from wandering into the company of those who will drag you down.
This is a devotional for men who want to be men of God in an environment that despises everything God stands for. It will teach you how to pray when the night is long, how to choose friends when temptations glitter, how to guard your speech in heated moments, how to ask God for righteousness instead of revenge, and how to fix your eyes on the Lord as your only hope.
Begin now by bowing your head. Bring your life honestly before God. This introduction is your call to arms and to kneeling. If you will take David’s posture—urgent, humble, worshipful, and strategic—you will find that God does not merely grant strength for one more day; He shapes a life that will not compromise.
I. He Will Ask The Lord For Help (Psalm 141:1-2)
A life without compromise is not built on willpower, toughness, intelligence, or inner strength. It is built on dependence. The first mark of the uncompromising Christian is this: he runs to the Lord, not from Him. In Psalm 141:1–2, David is not ashamed to cry aloud. He is not too proud to admit weakness. He is not too strong to acknowledge need. He comes to God as a desperate man—because desperate men pray, and praying men survive.
David begins: “LORD, I cry unto Thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice.” These are not the words of a casual believer offering a half-hearted prayer before bedtime. This is the language of urgency—of a man who knows that unless God intervenes, he is finished. Twice he says, “I cry… I cry.” This is not poetry. This is survival.
Many believers never grow strong because they never grow honest. They whisper when they should cry. They hide when they should run to God. They pretend when they should plead. David teaches us that a man who refuses to compromise must first become a man who refuses to rely on himself.
Look at the two things David asks:
“Make haste unto me.” He is literally saying, “Lord, hurry!” This is not disrespect. This is dependence. God delights in the desperate cry of His children. The God who created galaxies is not irritated by urgency—He is moved by it. He loves when His children acknowledge their need for Him more than they fear appearing weak.
“Give ear unto my voice.” David does not want to be ignored. He wants to be heard. He knows the Lord hears him, but he wants to feel heard. Every prisoner knows this longing. In the loneliness of a cell, in the quietness of the night, in the pressure of conflict, the soul cries out, “Lord, hear me! Don’t overlook me! Don’t forget me!”
Then David shifts from desperation to adoration. He says, “Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”
Here is the first powerful lesson: The man who will not compromise must combine urgent prayer with worshipful prayer.
Urgency without worship becomes panic.
Worship without urgency becomes ritual.
But urgency with worship becomes power.
David sees prayer as incense—sweet, holy, pleasing to God. He imagines the priest entering the temple, lighting the fragrant incense that rises heavenward, symbolizing the prayers of Israel. That is how David views his own cry. Prison may keep a man from the temple, but it cannot keep his prayers from the throne.
“Let the lifting up of my hands” shows surrender, humility, desire, longing, and reverence. Whether alone or surrounded, whether in danger or safety, David lifts his hands as if to say, “Lord, I need You. I depend on You. I cannot stand without You.”
He mentions “the evening sacrifice,” not to teach ritual but to teach consistency. It was the close of the day—the time to reflect on failures, victories, temptations, and God’s mercies. It is often at night when the enemy attacks the hardest. This seemingly small point is one that I have personally known for the past 13 years. My condition does not allow for much sleep due to the intensity of the burning.
So I labor through the night, and so often it’s in the wee hours of the morning where I feel the weakest and vulnerable, and so I cry out to God with an earnest heart to hear me and to once again bring me through to another sunrise. David knows this, and so should every believer behind bars.
Nighttime is when memories return.
Nighttime is when guilt becomes heavy.
Nighttime is when regrets shout loudest.
Nighttime is when temptation creeps in.
Nighttime is when pain loneliness becomes crushing.
So David prays “as the evening sacrifice,” committing himself to the Lord at the end of a hard day. A man who refuses to compromise must learn to pray at the close of each day, handing God the wounds, failures, fears, and temptations that accumulated from sunrise to sunset.
A man who refuses to compromise runs to God.
A man who refuses to compromise calls on God.
A man who refuses to compromise worships God.
This is the first step, the foundation upon which everything else rests. If you miss this, you will compromise. If you pursue this, you will stand.
II. He Will Ask The Lord For Wisdom (Psalm 141:3-4)
The second mark of a man who refuses to compromise is his continual pursuit of wisdom. Not knowledge. Not head-information. But wisdom—God’s viewpoint, God’s discernment, God’s understanding.
James 1:5 promises that God gives wisdom generously to all who ask. David takes God up on that promise centuries before James wrote it. He asks for wisdom in four specific areas:
1. Wisdom for his words.
“Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” Before David asks God to deal with his enemies, he asks God to deal with his tongue. He knows his greatest danger is not “out there” but “in here.”
A reckless tongue has destroyed more men than any enemy’s sword ever has. Words can start fights, break relationships, fuel anger, spread lies, damage testimonies, and ignite violence. Every prisoner knows this only too well. Behind bars, the tongue is often a man’s greatest liability. David, a king and warrior, knew the discipline required to guard a city gate—and he asks God to guard the gate of his lips with equal vigilance.
A man who will not compromise must pray this daily: “Lord, put a guard on my mouth.”
2. Wisdom for his heart.
“Incline not my heart to any evil thing.”
David knows the heart is easily deceived (Jeremiah 17:9). He knows temptation begins inside, not outside. Jesus taught the same truth in Mark 7:21–23. Before temptation becomes action, it becomes desire. David pleads with God to prevent his heart from drifting toward evil.
A man who will not compromise prays: “Lord, don’t let my heart lean toward sin.”
3. Wisdom for his actions.
“To practice wicked works…”
The connection is clear: heart → action.
No man falls into sin.
He leans into it.
Compromise begins with inches, not miles. David knows that if God does not guard his heart, his body will follow. Every compromise starts small:
a thought entertained
a feeling excused
a desire tolerated
a boundary pushed
Wisdom protects the believer from entering the “first step” of sin.
4. Wisdom in his companions.
“…with men that work iniquity… let me not eat of their delicacies.”
Companions shape character. You become like those you walk with. (Don’t forget the truth and value of Proverbs 13:20). “He that walks with wise men will become wise, – but a companion of fools will be destroyed.” (A great verse to commit to memory.
You will never rise higher than the spiritual level of your closest friends.
David knows that some men entice through strength, others through charm, others through opportunity, and still others through “delicacies”—the things the world calls tasteful, enjoyable, pleasurable, comfortable. These delicacies seem harmless, but they are baited hooks. David knows that the wrong crowd can destroy even a king.
A man who will not compromise must pray: “Lord, give me wisdom to choose godly companions.”
III. He Will Ask The Lord For Good Friends (Psalm 141:5)
David’s prayer takes an unusual turn: “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness…”
A man who refuses to compromise must surround himself with people who help him stay holy. Good friends do not flatter you; they protect you. They tell you the truth when it hurts. They speak up when you go astray. They love you enough to wound you for your good (Proverbs 27:6).
David asks for two things:
“Let the righteous correct me.”
He sees rebuke as “excellent oil”—a costly gift. A friend who tells you the truth is worth more than a thousand who tell you what you want to hear. In prison, genuine spiritual friendship is rare—but priceless. David says a godly friend may hurt you, but only in the way a surgeon hurts to heal.
“Let me receive it when they do.”
Pride refuses correction. Humility receives it. David knows correction is painful but healthy, uncomfortable but necessary. Most men fall not because no one warned them, but because they refused to listen.
A man who will not compromise must say: “Lord, don't just send me good friends—make me willing to listen to them.”
David now shifts from inward struggles to outward threats. He faces real enemies—dangerous men, violent men, corrupt men. He turns to God for justice, not personal revenge.
He asks God for two things:
Judge the wicked.
David prays what is called an “imprecatory” request—asking God to stop, expose, and judge evil. He does not seek retaliation; he seeks righteousness. He knows that God will not overlook wickedness forever.
Approve the righteous.
When David says, “their judges shall be overthrown… but they shall hear my words,” he is expressing confidence that God will vindicate the righteous, lift them up, honor their obedience, and show that His way is true.
A man who will not compromise leaves vindication in God’s hands.
IV. He Will Ask The Lord For Protection (Psalm 141:8-10)
The psalm ends with David lifting his eyes upward: “But mine eyes are unto Thee, O GOD the Lord…”
He asks for three forms of protection:
“Look to Him.”
David fixes his gaze on the Lord, not on danger. The direction of your eyes determines the direction of your life.
“Flee to Him.”
He runs to God as refuge. A man who refuses to compromise does not rely on reputation, strength, connections, or experience—he hides in the Almighty.
“Keep me from the traps.”
David knows enemies set traps, snares, ambushes. He asks God to keep him from falling into them—and to let the wicked fall into their own nets while the righteous escape.
A man who will not compromise must continually ask the Lord for protection.
Prison Application
Psalm 141 speaks powerfully into life behind bars. Here are the truths prisoners must take to heart:
Prayer is your lifeline. You cannot survive spiritually without crying to God daily—morning, afternoon, and night.
You must guard your words. Conflicts, insults, rumors, and tempers spread quickly in prison. One careless sentence can escalate into danger. Ask God to set a guard over your mouth.
You must guard your heart. Bitterness, anger, and hopelessness sneak in quietly. Without God’s guarding hand, your heart will drift into darkness.
You must guard your steps. Temptation is everywhere—anger, lust, gambling, manipulation, pride, violence, and despair. David teaches you to pray before sin reaches your hands.
You must guard your companions. Some men will strengthen you. Others will destroy you. Choose friends who push you toward Christ, not toward compromise. If you don’t, you will suffer the consequences.
You must leave vindication to God. False accusations, unfair treatment, broken appeals—these are real pains. David teaches that God sees, God knows, and God will vindicate His people.
You must run to God for protection. Enemies set traps, but God delivers His children. When danger rises, cry out, “Lord, keep me!”
A man who refuses to compromise lives Psalm 141 every day.
Final Thought –The Uncompromising Christ: Our Perfect Example
When we look at Psalm 141, we see the outline of a holy man—but not the fullness. David prayed these things, but did not always live them perfectly. He stumbled. He failed. He sinned greatly.
But the Man who prayed perfectly, lived perfectly, resisted temptation perfectly, chose perfect companions, spoke perfect words, and trusted God perfectly—is Jesus Christ.
He is the Man who would not compromise.
He asked the Lord for help (Hebrews 5:7).
Jesus prayed with loud cries and tears.
He asked the Lord for wisdom (Mark 1:35).
He rose early, seeking the Father’s will.
He asked the Lord for good friends (Luke 6:12–13).
He prayed all night before choosing the disciples.
He asked the Lord for vindication (John 17).
He committed His cause to the Father.
He asked the Lord for protection (John 17:11).
He prayed for His people to be kept from evil.
Where David failed, Jesus prevailed.
Where David stumbled, Jesus stood.
Where David cried for purity, Jesus embodied purity.
Where David begged for protection, Jesus walked into danger for our salvation.
Jesus lived Psalm 141 perfectly—so that through His Spirit, you can live it genuinely.
The uncompromising life is not the life of a perfect man—but the life of a surrendered man.
Not the life of the strongest man—but the life of the most dependent man. Not the life of an exceptional man—but the life of a man who knows he cannot stand without Christ.
If you are in Christ, the Man who will not compromise now lives inside you.
His courage is your courage.
His strength is your strength.
His holiness is your holiness.
His victory is your victory.
Walk with Him.
Depend on Him.
Cry to Him.
Trust Him.
Follow Him.
The Man who refused to compromise will empower you to do the same.
Reflection Questions
Where do you feel the greatest pressure to compromise your faith in prison?
Which of David’s prayers—help, wisdom, friendship, vindication, protection—do you most need today?
How can you cultivate a deeper, more consistent prayer life behind bars?
What specific changes do you need God to make in your speech?
Are there friendships you need to end—or begin—to grow spiritually?
What traps or snares do you need God to help you escape?
How does seeing Jesus as the perfect “Man who would not compromise” strengthen your hope?
Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father,
I lift before You every man reading this devotional behind prison walls. You see their struggles, their temptations, their battles, and their fears.
You know the pressure they face every day to compromise, to blend in, to respond in the flesh. Lord, be their strength. Be their guard. Be their wisdom.
Set a watch over their mouths. Purify their hearts. Direct their steps.
Surround them with godly friends. Deliver them from evil men and evil influences. Protect them from traps and snares set by the enemy.
Fill them with Your Spirit. Empower them to live holy in an unholy place. Let them shine as lights in the darkness.
Give them the courage to stand firm when others fall. Let them be faithful when tempted, hopeful when discouraged, and steadfast when weary.
And may the Lord Jesus—the Man who never compromised—live His life through them.
In His strong and saving Name I pray, Amen!
From: Fight the Good Fight of Faith / Life Journal: by Gregg Harris
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