Integrity

There was no reason to believe that George would be anybody. There was no reason to believe that this man would accomplish anything, that he would ever be famous, that he ever would actually change history. George was born a slave in the South just before the American Civil War. He was very sickly. His mother was actually kidnapped by slave-raiders because he lived on a small farm. You know, small farms basically, you know, they would have one or two slaves and they worked together. But these slave-raiders would come in, kidnap the slaves, take them to a bigger city, and sell them where you couldn't trace them. You know, the farmers were trying to find them. They were impossible to trace them. His mother was taken by slave-traitors. They, the people who owned him found him and brought him back. His dad died early in his life. There's a couple different stories of what happened to him. Well, this story became very real to my family because we went to this man's home where he spent as a boy and my son, who was similar in age, just found this whole story fascinating. How he spent his time as a sickly boy could do a lot of work. He spent it out in the woods studying trees and plants. And after the war, he went to school, which to read the story of how he had to go to school and the difficulties and what he went through and the work he had to do to go to school is amazing. How far he had to walk, things he had to accomplish. And he went on to get a doctorate. And he went on to become a very famous scientist. How many of you know who I'm talking about? Okay. George Washington Carver. Now, I only knew him as a kid because he's the guy that made peanut butter. And to me, anybody who discovered peanut butter was an okay guy.

So, you know, this guy was okay. But you know when I took my kids to the house where he grew up and we began to study, I began to study the man's life, he became even more fascinating to me. He could have been a very rich man. He had the opportunity to become a very rich man. And the reason why is he created hundreds of new ways to apply certain agricultural principles, including the peanut. That's what we think about him most. But that wasn't it. That was more than that. He refused to patent any of his discoveries and inventions because he believed they should be shared with everybody, and especially poor people.

And it didn't matter what color they were, he just wanted poor people to get what he was doing. And so he turned down wealth and even a certain amount of fame to do what he wanted to do with his life. As you read through his life, you find out that there were certain things he said. There were sayings he said that he said, this is how I live my life by.

And two of them that really struck me is one where he wrote, it's not the style of clothes that one wears, these are the kind of automobiles that one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank that counts. These things mean nothing. It is simple service that measures success.

Now, that statement could have been said by anybody, right? You buy books of famous quotes, and that could have been said by anybody. What's amazing about this is this is a man who believed it so much, he gave up wealth for it.

Another one of his, my favorite quotes, is he wrote, there's no shortcut to achievement, he once said. Life requires thorough preparation. Veneer isn't worth anything. Because he's talking about covering up character flaws. We just recently went to buy some new oak bookshelves. I had some old oak bookshelves we bought many, many years ago. Solid oak. Just love these bookshelves. We found out we couldn't afford new solid oak bookshelves. So we'll get a good oak veneer.

You know, a veneer is where they take a lesser wood and put a better wood on top of it. The problem was we looked at many, many, many bookshelves in which the particle board underneath was so poorly constructed, they were already falling apart in the store. I said, well, if we order these and bring them home, how long would it take before they're falling apart in our house?

Now, there are sometimes some really good furniture that has a good veneer on it that'll last generations. But you've got to be careful about veneer. His point was, you can't hide who you are under a thin coat of pretending you're somebody else.

This is the quality we call integrity. It's what we want all of our politicians to have, but we don't believe anybody has it. It's what you want when you use car salesman, but you don't believe he has it either. It's what you really want in your doctor.

It's what you want in your neighbor. We want integrity. The question is, what does that really mean? And as a Christian, what does it mean to have Christian integrity? What does integrity mean? I really asked myself that question probably between 10 and 15 years ago. I read a book by Stephen Carter. Now, he's a Yale University law professor. And Stephen Carter has written numerous best-selling books on why the United States was losing its belief in God.

A very astute analysis of the society we live in. One was called Civility, as people become less civil, they become more barbaric. But this one was just on integrity. And I read his book, and I found it fascinating. He brought out the point that the word integrity comes from a Latin word integer, which means whole. You know, it's a whole number.

It's whole. It's not fragmented. It's not in parts. So integrity has to do with wholeness. It means being complete. It means not being fragmented. Many times what we think is integrity equals honesty. Well, honesty is part of integrity, but integrity is more than that. Integrity is more than honesty.

So what is it? It's interesting that in the Old Testament, there's actually about three different words, Hebrew words that are translated in your English Bible as integrity. One of them, though, is the most fascinating to me. It's tobe. Tobe literally means wholeness. I mean, it has the same meaning as the Latin word and the English word. It means to be whole. Let me just read you. You don't have to turn here. Let me read you four places where the word tobe is used in the Old Testament. Psalm 25 says, Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you. In other words, I am whole, so I wait for God. This will preserve me while I wait. My wholeness, my completeness will preserve me while I wait. David wrote that. In Proverbs 10, it says, He who walks with integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his way will become dumb. So, integrity, you will have security. The opposite is to twist your ways. Proverbs 19.1 says, Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one who is perverse in his lips and is a fool.

And then Proverbs 27.2 says, The righteous man walks in his integrity, and his children are blessed after. In other words, a person of integrity tends to influence others, including, of course, his own children. Simply stated, integrity has to do with consistency. The more consistent a person is in knowing what they actually believe, conducting his life based on those beliefs, and articulating what he believes, the more integrity he has. So, it's not just about honesty, that's part of it.

But to have real integrity, in fact, I've seen people confuse integrity with pride. They'll be defending maybe their integrity, and actually what they're defending is their pride.

So, we have to look at this and say, okay, what exactly does it mean? Now, a person can have integrity, what appears to be integrity, but their first step of this is wrong. They're off. In other words, it comes down to the first step has to be knowing the difference between right and wrong. In other words, a person can choose wrong, believe that that's the right decision, and have lots of integrity past that point, but they started on a wrong premise. So, when we talk about integrity in terms of spiritual integrity, it all begins with our premise. Where do we start? And what do we start with? Well, Stephen Carter breaks down integrity into three steps. I want to look at those three steps, and I want to get a script truly here today. First, integrity requires that you can discern the difference between right and wrong. If you can't discern the difference, and you're choosing wrong, then by the very fact that you can't discern, it means you don't have integrity. Integrity requires that we're able to discern between right and wrong. It also requires that we act on what you have discerned to be right, even if it cost you something. Even if it cost you something. There's something here I want, especially young people, to hear today. We talk to you a lot about how, when you obey God, something good happens. And that's true. But there's something else you have to understand, because when it comes down to it, what we're talking about here, about our relationship with God, it's at the core of who we are that's the issue. And sometimes, sometimes, when you obey God, there is a short-term cost that is not very comfortable. That's reality. The long-term is a reward. Now, here's the thing about choosing wrong. Choosing wrong is a short-term benefit and a long-term heavy price to pay. But in reality, to do what is right, if you discern the difference between right and wrong, and you choose the right, sometimes, somebody doesn't like you. Sometimes, they fire you from your job. Sometimes, people try to slander your name. Sometimes, you lose a friend. Sometimes, it costs you money. 3. Integrity requires that you act out on what is right, even if it costs you something. And then, 3. You have to be willing to say openly in defense of what you have done. This is why I do what I do. So, you have to be able to openly defend your decisions. Now, you have a consistency. If you think about it, that's wholeness. Wholeness is, let me see, this is wrong, this is right, I choose the right. Wholeness is, I do what is right, even if it has a personal cost. And at the end, I can look at anybody in the eye and say, this is why I do what I do. I am convicted, so therefore, I do. That's integrity. Here's the problem. You and I are born incomplete people. To be completed, we have a human spirit, but we also have to receive God's spirit.

So, you're born incomplete. We're all born incomplete. We all feel it. We don't have to explain it. But deep inside, every one of us, and we like to pretend it's not there, it's this feeling of not quite being complete, I guess, because we're not.

A lot of things that people do through life is an attempt to feel complete.

Now, not only are we incomplete, but early in our lives, Satan gets a hold of us, and society gets a hold of us, and we become twisted in the way that we think and we feel, and we become fragmented people. If you're incomplete to begin with, and you receive all this bad influence, you become a fragmented person. You become a fragmented person. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute, what it means to be a fragmented person. What does God say? What does Jesus say about integrity?

Let's go to Mark 12. We're going to look at a couple of the most common passages in the New Testament, but hopefully we can look at it in a little bit new light here. Mark 12.

He came to Jesus, and they said, which is the greatest commandment of all? Now, that is a very, very important question, and a question that was hotly debated in Judaism at the time.

If you have two commandments of God, but you're in a situation where which one takes precedent over the other, how do you make that decision?

The most common one you see quite often in the first century is, what if you have an animal, and an animal falls into a ditch, and it's the Sabbath? Now, the Sabbath says you should do no work, but there's also a command in the Torah that says you must take care of the life of your animal. So, which one is more important?

Now, it was actually fairly easy. The Pharisees were the liberals on this. They said, well, you go save your animal.

The Essenes said, no, you can save a human being, you let the animals die. The Essenes aren't mentioned much. They weren't a very popular group in the first century, but they were there. They were destroyed by the Romans in 7080. The The command, not the work, was more important than the life of the animal. So, when they asked this question, this is a legitimate discussion, especially in Judaism, where they're looking at all these laws and they're trying to say, okay, how do we prioritize these in daily life? And they asked Jesus that, and what Jesus says, because they asked me, the end of verse 28, the man says, what is the first commandment of all? Which one do we start with?

Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. He said, you want to know where to start? That's where you start. Now, you read through that, you know, that's okay. No, no, there's something very important here, because this has to do with integrity. He said, if you really want to understand the law, then the first thing you have to do is love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, your life, your energy, with all of your mind, and all of your strength. He didn't say part of it, a little bit of it, as much as you could give. He said everything, 100 percent, nothing left back. He said that is the most important commandment. Everything, all of it. And that's where this integrity gets sort of sticky. And this is why I said 15 years studying integrity, only to realize that there are times in my life I seriously lack integrity.

Is it all? What is it that we're holding back from God? Because anything you hold back from God is less than all. And now we have an issue of integrity.

If we define integrity as honesty, this gets a little simpler. And if we define it as tobe, we have another issue here. It's much bigger than that.

Let's look at an occasion where Jesus deals with integrity. It's very interesting. Matthew 19, another very common passage. Matthew 19.

I sort of came to the same conclusion that Stephen Carter did in his book on integrity, is the more you understand it, the more you feel you really got to work on it. Because it's wholeness. It's total consistency. Now, I don't believe as a human being we can come totally consistent in everything until the day we're changed. But that doesn't mean we're not supposed to try. We're supposed to try. Matthew 19 verse 16. Now behold, one came and said to Christ, Good teacher, what good things shall I do that I may have eternal life? He says, then, why do you call me good? No, it is good, but one that is God. First of all, let's start out this conversation right. If we're going to talk about total oneness, one goodness, it's one God. Now, he goes on. He doesn't expect him to totally understand that. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. And he said to him, which ones? Okay, there's 613 of these. Is it wearing the tassels? Is it making sure I go into the temple every day? Is it making sure I bring a sacrifice on all the holy days? What is it? Is it all of them? Which ones are required for life? You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear faultfulness and false witness. Honor your father and your mother, and you shall love your name as yourself. Let's start there. And the young man said to him, all these things I have kept from my youth, what do I still lack? Now, Jesus didn't say, you liar, you haven't kept these things from your youth. As a Torah observant Jew that this serious, he had kept the Sabbath all his life. Much stricter than any of us do, by the way.

As a Torah observant Jew, he had never bowed down to an idol.

Ever. He didn't take God's name in vain.

He always took the temple on the holy days. He said, I mean, he never murdered him.

And yet he still feels the incompleteness. I've done everything I could do, and Jesus doesn't argue with him. He had done everything he could humanly do. But the problem is, there's still parts where he's still fragmented. He's still not complete. Verse 21, if you want to be perfect, you want to be whole, you don't need to be complete here. Don't sell what you have and give it to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. This isn't just some, you know, flippant thing Jesus is doing here. He's actually offering this man discipleship, just like John and Peter and Andrew. He said, you come be one of my disciples.

But when the young man had heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, or he had great possessions. God could have control over the Sabbath. God could have control over whether he should worship idols or not. God could have control that he wouldn't commit adultery. He'd stay with one wife or another. God could have control over that. But there was one place in his life God could not commit to.

There's a lack of integrity. There's a peace. There's a place. There's one room in the house God can't commit to. That's the room with the locked door. God, you can be in all the other rooms, but no, no, no, can't go in that one. What room do you have that God can't commit to? That God can't commit to.

As long as we do that, we're fragmented. As long as we do that, we're fragmented. And here's what we do. We compartmentalize our lives. Have you ever read the story that comes out every few years? They'll find some guy that has a wife in New York and a wife in Los Angeles and has done this for 10 years. Has kids. And he's like, how did he do that? This wife is saying, crying, you know, he was the best husband and best father. I had no idea. I did know that, you know, every other week he has to spend a week in LA, and the woman in LA is saying, well, we got married 10 years ago, and he's the best husband and best father, and how could he do this? And that story comes up every once in a while.

And what it is, we compartmentalize. And men were actually better than women.

Men can compartmentalize better. It doesn't mean women don't do it, and sometimes we can't, but we're just better at it.

Right? We just go into a box, and we're in the box.

It's like I tell my wife all the time, I can be sitting watching television. I'm watching football. When I'm watching football, I'm watching football. And this is what my experience is.

What do you think?

I think they're going to score.

I tell her, you gotta get my attention first. Why don't you say, you know, now she walks up and says, hey, can I talk to you? Or you got a break? Oh, now she's got my attention. But until she gets my attention, I'm in another box. She could be standing here talking for two minutes before I figure out she's even in the room. Now when she's got my attention, it's a whole different story, right?

We do that, guys. We even do it too. It's not as easy for them to do it as us. It's one of our great straights and weaknesses, the ability to go into the box.

But here's what happens when we compartmentalize. And when you think about it, we all do this. You know something's wrong in your life. But you compartmentalize it. You separate it from the rest of your life so you can continue to do what's wrong here because it's like, well, I'm only doing that 10% of the time. 90% of the time, I'm okay. Now what you're saying is, God, you can't come into that room.

And we'll find a way to rationalize so that we shut off some aspect of our lives and say, God, you can't have that room. Just like this man who kept the 10 commandments in the letter very well. Jesus never condemned him.

In fact, one of the gospel accounts says that Jesus loved him.

He said, you know, you're a special guy. You are. Now let's deal with another aspect of your life that you're not really to go to. So what do we do?

You see, people do this. Very honest people. Well, business is business. They're honest, except the business. Well, that's what you have to do to get ahead today. But you wouldn't do that to your friends. No, but that's not my friend. That's that. This is business. It's doggy dog. I see people do that and play games. Right? They just... Some happens when they start to play Peanut Cold, they have to cheat.

It's a card game, but they have to cheat. There's a little box that says, a little box that says, I have to win every card game.

And it's not wrong. It's just cards. Well, yeah, they just talked to someone. Oh, yeah, I used to play cards with that person. I won't even go to their house anymore. They cheat all the time. And that relationship is broken. Why? Guy's a Peanut Cold. He has a playing cards.

We do it with sports. We do it with pornography. We do it with drugs. We do it with alcohol. We do it with our thoughts. We do it with all kinds of stuff. We have to realize this is all an issue of a lack of integrity. We have boxes. We're not whole. As non-whole people, we're not happy. We'll never experience the joy God wants us to experience until we're whole. And we'll never be whole until we let God into every box.

Let's go back for a minute. Let's talk about how do we develop this spiritual integrity. How do you do it? You know, I've thought about this a lot. How do I do that in my life? I can only break it down into a couple core starting points. One is in Psalm 119. Psalm 119. David. You know, what we see when David is a very fractured man, don't we?

A man who did some terrible things in his life, and at other times, he's one of the most incredible examples of faith and obedience you'll see in the whole Bible.

As he got older, he became more and more, though, a man of integrity. You see him make less and less of the mistakes, and more and more be right with God. And here's what he says in Psalm 118, verse 1. Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. Okay, we're talking about law here, but he takes us a step further. Verse 2 of Psalm 119. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart. I don't know how to seek integrity until God comes in and God does something to give us wholeness. That means we have to go ask him. We have to go and say, I seek you with everything. I ask you to come into my house, and I ask you to show me where I do not have integrity. David said, show me my presumptuous sins. No, show me the sins I don't even know I have. Now, I don't suggest you go ask God, dump on me every sin I have in my life. That's not smart. It's not good. But you do go and ask God to help you. I seek you with everything I have. If we do it half-hearted, we'll be a half-hearted Christian.

You see what I mean? Half-heart means half the heart God doesn't get. So which part of your heart are you not giving to God? It's all of our heart and all of our mind and all of our soul and all of our strength. Christ said, that's it. This is the first of all the commandments. Everything to God.

That's not easy. I have met very few people that were close to that. And I admire them greatly. I've met a few people that were real close to that. They had given up more and more of those compartments. It was a person of integrity.

Most of us just sort of still struggle through this. We're still struggling through this.

Let's go back a minute now and let's look at that. Those three points that Stephen Carter brought out in his book. I know it's weird to use a Yale law professor to quote him a sermon, but it just profound. And he actually went back to the Old Testament. Disserting what is right and wrong. Disserting what is right and wrong.

That discernment has to become yours.

We have to learn. You know, we come to church and we learn, but this can't be all it is in your life. This is just a little guidance. You have to be with God every day.

You have to be in the Scripture every day. You have to be on your knees every day. Letting God teach you to be able to discern so that it's internalized. If you were the only person, you would do it anyways if it's the right thing to do.

Now, the less we do that, the more susceptible we become to society. The more susceptible we become to peer pressure. The more susceptible we become to whatever happens to the popular idea at the time. There's a perfect example of the Bible. I won't go there, but in 2 Chronicles, Joe Ash became the king of Judah at a very young age. And the Bible talks about what a good king he was. All through his teenage years, up into his young adulthood, he was a great king of Judah. And the reason why, Jehoa was the high priest. And Joe Ash read the law. He read what God said to do. And Jehoa just said, this is how we do it. He became under his influence. And he was one of the great righteous kings. But Joe Ash never internalized it. Right and wrong never became part of actually how he thought, how he felt. It wasn't all of his strength and all of his heart and all of his might and all of his soul and all of his mind. It wasn't that. It was, oh, okay, I see this. This is good. Jehoa said, what should I do next? And then Jehoa died.

And it says that Joe Ash gathered around him some other advisors, and they said, we just got to stop all this. They gave him a new set of values, a new set of beliefs, and over a short period of time, they convinced him. And guess what he did? He turned Judah against God. And he ended up being a very bad king.

He could not internally discern right from wrong. He didn't internalize it. So as long as someone else was guiding him in God's way, he'd do it. When that person was gone, he could not do it. This discernment of right and wrong has to become internalized. It can't be yours, you know, because I know in my family, we have four generations in this way of life. And it can't be because it was my dad, and my kids can't be because it's me, and their kids can't be because it's mom and dad. It's got to be because at some point, it's theirs. They believe this is what God wants. It's what God wants me to do. My creator, and I love my God with all my heart and all my might, and all my soul, and all my strength, and all my mind. The second point was we have to act on what we've deserved, even at personal cost. I love the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, because that's the perfect case where I could have lived in a fragmented part of my brain and really talked myself out of doing what they did. Because we look at the story, and we say, oh yeah, God saved them. But remember, they didn't know that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are about to be thrown into this furnace filled with fire. And what did they say? Basically, what they said is, we don't know what God will do. He can't save us if he wants. But let it be known to you, Nebuchadnezzar, that even if we die, we're doing what God wants. Now, I could have done a little bit of that. Now, I could have done a lot better than that. But wait a minute, if I die, who's going to take care of my family? If I die, who's going to take care of the people of God? If I die, you know, I can get down and pretend that I'm praying to the statue, but really be praying to God. Nobody else would know but me. I can't account with a hundred reasons not to be thrown into a fire. It takes great integrity to say, no, I have discerned what is right here, and therefore I will do what is right, even if it cost me.

Because right in me is more important than that.

It's hard to imagine there are some things more important than death. But what you will find in the Bible are people who believed that being right with God was more important than life itself. There are people in this book that we read their stories who believe being right with God was more important than life itself. That's integrity. That's wholeness. That's completeness. That's the ultimate test of completeness. And then the third point is we have to openly say it. There's an interesting passage of Mark 8 that is a little disconcerting when you really think about it. Mark 8, 34.

Jesus calls the people to Himself with His disciples also. So He's gathered a big crowd together along with His disciples.

And He says to them, "...whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospels will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation. Whoever is afraid to state, this is why I do what I do." He did say, you got to go down to the street corner and try to convert everybody. That's not what this is about. Can we be so ashamed of God, so ashamed of Jesus Christ, that we hide who we are? But see, if we are a person of integrity, you can't hide that. You can't hide integrity. It's there because the person is whole. You notice it. When you meet someone of real integrity and what they say and how they act is always consistent with their beliefs of what is right and wrong, we're all amazed at those kinds of people. You can't hide it. You can't.

For ever who is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation of Him, the Son of Man will also be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. I can't imagine standing before Jesus Christ and having to say, you know, Gary, I'm really ashamed of you. I'm really ashamed of you.

You were ashamed of me. You tried to hide from, you know, hide. You said, well, and here's what we fall into the trap. Why, no, He's ashamed of me because I committed this sin and this sin. Wait, wait, wait, wait. If you're forgiven, you're forgiven. He's not ashamed of you. He can say, yeah, but oh, man, you know, 10 years ago, I stopped. Did you repent? Oh, yes. But He's not ashamed of you anymore. The Scripture says, if you've repented, He's not ashamed of you. So the shame here has to do with denying Him.

You know, sometimes people will sin because they're ashamed. I knew I shouldn't, you know, I knew I shouldn't have had five beers, but everybody does have five beers, and I wanted to fit in. I wanted to fit in. You knew what was wrong. And see, I discerned it was wrong, and I wasn't willing to do what was right because I was ashamed that I may have to defend my stance. I was afraid to defend what I believed. And He says, that's the problem with the lack of holiness, with a lack of integrity. I sent out in my passage of data a list of questions that probably most of you get. I know we need to make some copies of that. Do we have an information table? Who doesn't charge the information table? Somebody charged the information table? Okay, could you do me a favor? Could you make some extra copies of the pastor's update and put out there in case some people don't get it? Okay, thank you. You're probably doing it already, aren't you? I'm sure she is. Okay, because she can just read my mind. When I sent out a list of questions about integrity, I want to go through a couple of them. Because, you know, some of them, it's all yeah, I do that. And then some of them, I mean, if you really think about it, am I doing that? How often do I seek God's will in prayer and Bible study and dealing with personal decisions? Have you ever run off and made a snap decision and then later thought, oh, I wish I'd have prayed about that? Yeah, I've been there and done that. Maybe I should have prayed about that first. Maybe I should have called and got some good spiritual input from somebody before I ran off and did that.

Here's a real important one to think about. How well do I treat people from whom I can gain nothing?

How well do I treat people who can't do any good for me? How well do I treat people who, you know, that person's not all here. What does it matter?

That person has Alzheimer's. What does it matter?

That's a definite lack of integrity. Wholeness. Am I transparent?

There's a whole lot of questions about this. Do I role play? Am I always trying to be somebody? I'm not.

I always try to be Indiana Jones, but everybody figures that out, you know? This grand adventurer is like, he's not really that. What is the role that we're trying to play in our lives sometimes? Instead of just being who we really are. But if I am who I really am, people won't like me.

So they're liking someone you're pretending to be.

It's not worth the relationship.

Do I quickly admit when I'm wrong? Here's the strange thing about integrity. As I said over the last 50 years as I tried to understand this deeper, there's a few things that become very clear. The more integrity you have, the easier it is to say I'm wrong. You think it'd be the opposite. But the more integrity you have, when something doesn't meet the standards, you say, oh man, that was a dumb mistake. Or, that didn't work. That didn't work. Or, I'm really sorry. I didn't think that through. Or, boy, I didn't mean to hurt you. Or, yeah, I was grumpy and what I did was mean and I'm sorry. Because I don't want to be mean. So, yeah, integrity demands I move back through the process and say I'm sorry. It's the amazing thing. The more actual spiritual integrity we have, the easier it is to admit you're wrong.

Do I have unchanging standards for moral decisions? Or, do circumstances dictate my decisions?

I'm not going through all of them here, but you can study them. You can pray about it. That's why I put it in the pastor's update. You know what? You want to do something really interesting? Take that list, hand it to a really good friend or to your husband and wife and say, what do you think about my response to these questions? Do you think I do any of these things? It better be somebody you have a good relationship with. Okay, I better be careful. I'm going to have all these marriage counseling this week.

Be careful who you ask this to do with. It's not a bad idea. When I have something to say about people, do I talk to them or about them? Ooh, that's a hard one. It's a whole lot easier to talk about somebody than to them. Integrity requires when you go talk to them.

And here's the one that over the years I've found very helpful with is, am I accountable to at least one other person for what I think, say, and do? I've always had a few friends in my life. I always had my dad this way, but I've always had a few ministers. That I will call, or I will sit down with, and I will say, okay, tell me where I'm wrong here.

And I usually stand back and get smacked right in the nose. But that's why I ask them to do it.

Because there's times you have to go say, my emotions are too out of control here. I'm not thinking clearly, I'm going to go pick a fight. You know, I'm going to lose this, and I know what's going in. There has to be people we're accountable to.

Now, we can go to and say, is this right or is this wrong? You have the same standards I do. You know, that's the interesting thing about the best friends you have in life. Using the best friends that you have in life, there's some point where they changed you for the good.

There's some point they changed you for the good, because they were willing to smack you right in the nose.

Because they cared for you that much. They cared for you that much. So we have to be accountable. We have to learn to be accountable.

And it's part of the lessons we learn. Now, if you go through these questions and you have some negative answers, then you have an integrity issue. But I'm going to tell you something.

For most of us in this room, we have integrity issues, and I include myself in it. We just do spiritual integrity issues.

That's part of this growth process. It's not easy, but we've got to look at ourselves and we've got to find out these things. All human beings are born incomplete. You and I were born incomplete. We're only born half there. We don't have God's spirit yet. So there's a great emptiness inside of us when we begin this process. And Satan gets ahold of us and we become fragmented little rooms, fragmented emotions that don't even make sense. You ever been in an argument and realize you're at a point in the argument where everything you're saying is stupid but you can't stop?

I hate it when my wife is right and I'm in the stupid part. I like it when she's in the stupid part because I can act real superior. Now, honey, that's not real.

But when I'm in the stupid part, I can hear part of my brain that's trying to have integrity saying, it's stupid. Stop it!

And yet part of you wants to fight on it. Why? Because I don't want to have my pride in the end or whatever it is. You see what I mean? It's a lack of integrity. It's a lack of wholeness. Whole people don't have certain problems. You and I all have problems because we're not whole. We're fragmented in our thoughts and our behavior and our emotions. The more you let God's Spirit work in you, the more of a real person you become. This is what this is about, is becoming real people, not actors, not going through life acting. It's amazing to watch little children that are so honest. Why? They're not acting, they're just people. At some point they start to learn to act. And then we spend our whole lives acting. Well, God wants us to stop acting. Just be His children.

Be His children. And as we do, we become more and more comfortable with being a real person. No veneer. A complete person. Because remember, when it comes to our spiritual character, veneer is worth nothing.