We've been looking at the secrets to healthy
relationships and another one is the secret of integrity. Integrity is deciding to integrate my
heart's values into my daily actions. It is the
feeling that you get when you know what you're doing is right, that's integrity.
It's important; God placed a very high value on
integrity. Proverbs 28:6 (NKJV), "Better
is the poor who walks in his integrity, than one perverse in his ways though he
be rich." GOD says integrity is
a lot more valuable than all the stuff I think is valuable.
Notice in that definition the word
"deciding". That's the
key. You don't slip into integrity. Nobody every said, "Oops, I fell into
integrity." It's something you
decide on in life. So how do you decide
on integrity in your relationships, the kind of integrity that builds a solid,
secure foundation for relationships?
It's important; God placed a very high value on
integrity. Proverbs 28:6 (NKJV), "Better
is the poor who walks in his integrity, than one perverse in his ways though he
be rich." GOD says integrity is
a lot more valuable than all the stuff I think is valuable.
I Chronicles 29:17 (NIV), "I know, my GOD, that
YOU test the heart and are pleased with integrity." It is one of the things that makes GOD happy,
that makes GOD smile.
Integrity is important to GOD but it's important to
all of us too. All of us want to have
integrity between my heart's values and my daily actions. We struggle when we don't. It's one of the ways we see how important it
is to us, the fact that we struggle when we don't see those two fitting
together. We all live with this issue of
integrity, with some I call "the frustration gap". That is the gap between my heart's values and
my daily actions. We all struggle with
that.
Gallup did a poll that said the number one problem
Americans face is incongruent values. We
say "I don't want to be materialistic" but then we spend a lot of
money. We say "I want to spend a
lot of times with my kids, that's important, it's a value in my life" but
we just can't find the time. We say
"Important, intimate conversations with my husband/wife is of value"
but we go weeks not having those kind of conversations. We struggle with that.
Just a thought from the front porch…
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