Resetting My Integrity

The Spaghetti Dilemma

When it comes to the topic of fine dining, judging by everyone's appearance here, I think I'm safe to say that most of us could care less about specific table rules and silverware order. We only fret about one thing, how does the food taste?!?

When it comes to dinner at my house, we tend to consume tons of pasta. At least once a week, my family and I eat spaghetti, stuffed ravioli, or plan noodles with butter for the simple reason that it's fast to cook and prepare before your children start crying.

Yet, the worst decision you can make is not eating pasta with marinara sauce only once a week. But, it's arriving at the table without a fine dining experience and then having the audacity to wear simply just a white t-shirt. I think you already know what happens next because it has already happened to you! You look down, and once a beautiful cleaned shirt is now soiled by the stain of the red marinara sauce. It's everywhere!

Whatever you do to clean it up won't work. The red sauces have gone down into your shirt's white fibers, and frankly, it's not coming out. The worst part about your meal is everyone stares at your big blob that's below your neck. Having dirty clothing at the dinner table is only cute with your baby, but it's not adorable you're a grown adult.

Falling off the cliff of integrity

I illustrate this point that whenever we stain our lives, the people closest to us are the first to notice, just like when we soil our clothing at the dinner table, it's those who are with us who see our dirtiness. If we keep living as we are, more and more people see our stained up shirt, and they know that we didn't take precaution when eating our food.

The same applies to our idea of our integrity. The people closest to us notice when we're not honest with others. They are quick to spot out if our moral compass is pointing south and our uprightness is off track. They see the stain on our shirt. Symbolically our white shirt is the marker of our integrity; to prevent it from getting dirty, we have to take the necessary steps to keep it whole and clean.

It breaks my heart every time I hear prominent Christians falling off the cliff of integrity—many Christian leaders who built up an incredible ministry. Eventually, come collapsing down because they failed to protect the Christian faith's essentials, the goodness of their heart.

In recent years, megachurch pastors such as Perry Noble and Carl Lentz have been removed from their pastoral positions because of egregious behaviors connected to excessive drinking and infidelity. To world-renown Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias had an internal investigation done on his ministry organization. The internal investigation team concluded that the deceased Ravi had many sexual encounters within his privately own spa. To famous author and pastor John Ortberg, who resigned from his ministry because he concealed his son's pedophilia from the church and allowed his son to continue serving the youth department.

I say all these things not to throw punches, but to say that honest, morally right Christians can fail, and often the higher you are, the harder you land. Think about the Old Testament's biblical characters who were chosen by God to carry out his will and then turned around and failed their integrity. Samson, a judge of Israel who was to restore the people to God, fell to the seduction of a harlot Philistine named Deliah. King David was known as a man after God's own heart. He was commission by God to keep the covenant but fell by raping Bathsheba and murdering her husband. Then you have David's son, King Solomon, who was bestowed wisdom from heaven and became the world's wisest man, fell because he began many sexual relationships with led him to commit idolatry and turn his back again the Lord.

The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them (Proverb 11:3).

And if we are not careful, we too can quickly fall in our integrity and turn away from God. Think about Apostle Peter, on the night Jesus was going to be betrayed; Peter spoke confidently to Jesus and told him he would never deny him and was even willing to die with Jesus. Less than a day later, Jesus is bound and arrested by the Romans, and Peter flees. Then Peter reappears in the courtyard to see what's happening to friend Jesus, and when he is confronted as a Christ-follower. Peter, Jesus' best friend, denies him.

Real-life and the bible's history shows you that integrity, doing what is right and honorable, is a difficult task, and unless you are Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, you too will fall in your integrity.

House Cleanup

Perhaps you get the sense you're not living up to your highest potential. Your moral compass is not directing you true North, and at times you struggle to live up to God's calling. Luckily for us, God is generous and gave us a way to clean off the stain from our white shirts.

Yet, before we can do a total internal house cleanup, we need to know where to apply the bleach. You see, removing the stain of lousy integrity only works when we directly treat the problem at the core. Let's open to the words of Jesus to find out where our integrity problem arises from adequately diagnosing and treating the issue.

In Mark's gospel, we see Christ and his disciple across over waters landing in a nearby town, and suddenly when the crowds heard about Jesus, swarms of villagers surround him offering their sick to him for healing.

Eventually, the news breaks that Jesus is healing the masses, so the religious leaders (Pharisees and Scribes) come over to Christ to see what is taking place near their homes. And if we had to envision them for their integrity, their white shirts would be dripping with marinara sauce. You get the point. When it comes to doing the right thing, these men will deflect and turn away as much as possible from doing the right thing to obtaining their heart's desires.

So rather than commending Christ, they take a jab at his integrity as a teacher. "Why are you disciples eating with defiled hands? Why are they ignoring the teachings of the elders?" In their mind, Jesus was failing in his integrity of keeping the Jewish customs of their day. So Christ claps back and tells them how they fail to see where the root of their evil.

And he called the people to him again and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, "Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person" (Mark 7:14-23).

What Jesus is clearing up the muddy waters of integrity is not what's on the outside that counts, but what comes forth from your heart. Honesty, truth, faithfulness, and purity arise not from the outside appearance but flows from their inner soul. So when we fail to live up to God's calling, it means we have an internal heart issue dominated by the powers of sin and death.

By the grace of God, the filth that we struggle with does not have to our lord anymore. Your white shirt that's covered in the red marinara sauce can be bleached by the blood of Christ and be clean again. God is setting the captives free. Today you can begin with a new heart freed and full of integrity, but that only starts when you embrace Jesus daily.

Resetting my Integrity in Christ

To reset our integrity, we must place it in the hands of God and let him reset our hearts, mind, and mouth. So what should be done?

To reset our Integrity in Christ, we must begin to safeguard our hearts so that we can preserve our minds so that we can watch our mouths. We must deal with our hearts before we can influence our minds and mouth.

To master our hearts, we look to Jesus and how he maintained purity, honesty, and truth. These are the seven-way Christ mastered his integrity. All of them are connecting with God and his purpose.

Prayer

At least 25 times in the Gospels, we read of Jesus praying. According to Luke 5:16, Jesus often prayed by himself. In other words, He made a habit of it.

In the Sermon on the Mount, he taught His followers about prayer, specifically private prayer (Matthew 6:6). If such prayer times were important to Jesus, they should be a vital component of every believer's life.

Fasting

At the onset of His public ministry, Jesus took 40 days to fast in the wilderness. While it made His body weak, His spirit grew stronger.

Luke 4:14 says that after His trial in the wilderness, Jesus returned to Galilee "in the power of the Spirit." Following the fasting pattern of Jesus will increase the vitality of His disciples.

Public Worship

Luke 4:16 says that "on the Sabbath day [Jesus] went into the synagogue, as was his custom."

Finding a place of solitude and silence can be. Interestingly, Luke makes a similar observation regarding Paul in Acts 17:2: "As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue."

Public worship is a time to grow spiritually with others of like faith. Jesus knew this, and all Christians should follow His lead.

Bible Reading

Studying Scripture was an essential part of Jesus' life. In fact, by age 12, He was already as biblically literate as the leading teachers (Luke 2:41-47).

Reading the Bible early and often is foundational to the life of a believer. This was not something Jesus skipped. He relished it and excelled at it.

Solitude and Silence

Jesus regularly ministered in front of large crowds. But He also made a habit of getting away from time to time (Luke 5:16). He even encouraged His disciples to get out to a quiet place and rest (Mark 6:31).

Finding a place of solitude and silence can repair your soul, especially amid the ministry's hectic demands. Jesus knew this and practiced it.

Service

In Mark 10:45, Jesus said His goal in coming to earth was not to be served but to serve others and to give His life for our benefit.

It's easy to overlook service as a spiritual practice. However, serving with a heart of love for God and others is undoubtedly a way to be more like Jesus. The next time you do, whether at church or in the community, think about how it relates to your spiritual growth.

Meditation

While other religions teach meditation to clear the mind, Christian meditation focuses on God and His Word. This is apparent throughout the Old Testament (see Psalm 119:97, for example).

While there is no explicit text that shows he meditating, he likely did when He went away alone. His teaching in Matthew 15:19-20 highlights the spiritual importance of maintaining a God-centered thought life, which Paul also talks about in Philippians 4:8.

When we reorient our lives on God, then our hearts are safeguarded by faith. In turn, this preserves our minds and helps to keep honesty, truth, and faithfulness.

May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you (Psalm 25:21).

When our heart and mind align with God, we can control the mouth and the words we speak to one another.

Seeing God Clearly

By planning these actions and by God's intervention, we too can have a clean heart, new integrity, and love for God and people. God wants you to live a blessed life. To reset what's broken so that you can have more joy and peace which comes through Jesus.

As Jesus promised in the gospel of Matthew, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). Let's safeguard our hearts, preserve our minds, so we can watch our mouths and live a life worthy of God's calling.

As you reset your integrity in Christ, my prayer that you begin to see God showing up everywhere, and truthfully, when you let God work in you, everything will change.