Develop Integrity
When we were growing up, it was the season for travel. AAA says that 115 million Americans will travel throughout the holidays. Almost every year when I was growing up, we traveled 575 miles from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Detroit, Michigan, to visit with our extended family. One year was particularly memorable because we drove during a “Nor’easter,” a massive snowstorm. I remember wondering if we would make it as we passed cars that had spun off the roads!
Another moment sticks in my mind from a holiday trip years later. A truck driver in our congregation came up to me and told me that he saw me in a gas station convenience store about five hours south of home but didn’t get the chance to say hello.
You know what I didn’t wonder? I didn’t wonder if I was doing anything that I shouldn’t be doing as a pastor because the Lord had helped me to develop integrity, that “quality or state of being complete or undivided” (Merriam-Webster).
As a believer in Christ walking in my freedom, I learned to be the exact same person in my living room as I was behind the pulpit of our church. I learned to be the same man in a convenience store where I didn’t think anyone knew me as I was in the church lobby talking to one of our members.
But that wasn’t always the case. For years, I thought I had to pretend so that people would like me and accept me. I thought I had to perform to measure up to the standard I set for myself… and that I thought God expected of me. I practiced my sin in secret and put on a good-boy, Christian mask when I was in church.
Thankfully, the Lord didn’t leave me alone in that miserable state. He provided me with friends who loved me and who made it safe to take off my mask. As I learned to be real with them, I realized that I could be real with God. I used to think that if I shared my struggles, people would reject me. God’s Word says that “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
I am so thankful for these friends because they helped me learn to live with integrity.
Jesus was not a fan of wearing masks. In fact, He had some strong words for the mask-wearing hypocrites. In the New Testament, the word hypocrite meant someone who was living as an actor, assuming a character for the public but living as someone else in private.
Jesus said, “Woe to you… hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.” (Matthew 23:25-26, ESV). Then, in the following verses, he called them “Whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (verse 27).
The beauty of being a new creation in Christ is that our sin no longer defines us, and we are enabled to walk free of it and grow and mature. But it is a reality that we live in the flesh, continually bombarded by lies of the world and the enemy — “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Therefore, we can all continue to grow in freedom and maturity!
Dear Saints, as we head into 2024, let us nurture those relationships in which we can be gut-level honest and real with one another. Grow in integrity with safe brothers or sisters in Christ by taking off the masks you wear.
And equally important, provide a safe place for people to be real with you. Jesus taught us in John 3:17-21 that it is for fear of condemnation that people doing evil deeds don’t come into the light. Can you provide a safe place for someone to bring the struggles of their heart into the light? When we do this, we clean the inside of the cup, and the outside (behavior) is taken care of along the way. Our life begins to line up with our new heart as a new creation in Christ.
Consider these questions: When are you tempted to put the mask back on? And when are you tempted to go into fix-it mode towards others instead of offering a gracious reflection of our loving Savior so they can take off their mask and walk in the light of the truth?
As the Psalmist said, “Because of my integrity, you uphold me and set me in your presence forever” (Psalm 41:12, NIV).
Beloved, let’s grow in our integrity before God and others this year.