integrity

A survey was done a few years ago in which about 500,000 people were asked a series of questions. They were asked questions about their lifestyles, their church life and their beliefs. The first question was somewhat different though. THey were asked what they would be willing to do for 1 million dollars if there was no way it could possibly be found out. Embarassingly enough over half of those who were married would be unfaithful, about a quarter of them would be willing to steal from their own family, and thirty percent of all of them would do something completely immoral. Thesee statistics may or may not surprise you, but out of all of them, 60% of those who would be unfaithful were regular church attenders. Of the 30% who would do something completely immoral, almost half of them were church members. What am I getting at? Today's church is starving for real Christ followers, those who are willing to set aside all things to seek the glory of God.
Proverbs 12:6 says, "Righteousness guards the man of integrity,, but wickedness overthrows the sinner."
The key word in that passage is integrity and integrity is what is lacking in today's world, scarily it is even missing in today's Christians. We need to be people who are seeking to live lives of integrity in all aspects of life. People cheat on their taxes, thinking that it will never be found out, people cheat their books in their business or cheat others out of jobs in the corporate world to get that promotion. Today's Christian needs to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord no matter where or what they are involved in.
I sat in my desk at the Homeless Coalition about 2 years ago and felt something under my feet. I reached down and it was a paper bag, it has over $300 cash in it and a few receipts no markings or names anywhere on it. I dug through and found nothing to tell me whose it was, or to prove that it was anyone's at all. I had to back track to see who had been in my office and I figured out that two days prior there was a lady in there who had used my desk to fill out some things for one of our programs. She had sat her stuff under the desk and the bag had fallen out, she had just cashed a check from a charity to pay her bills. I had witnessed to her atleast a couple times directly, and several hundred times with the things that I did, with no impact whatsoever. But, when I called her to see if she had lost a bag, she told me exactly what receipts were in there and how much cash was there to the nickel. To this day her grandkids still attend our youth group every Wednesday.
Integrity, people believe in you when you show integrity. That may be your strongest witness, so don't compromise to see what you can get for yourself, keep your integrity and see what you can do for God.
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!