Day 68- Integrity
📖Daily Reading
1 Chronicles 16-29
🎥 Video
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
1 Chronicles 29:17
“I know, my God that you examine our hearts and rejoice when you find integrity there. You know I have done all this with good motives, and I have watched your people offer their gifts willingly and joyously.”
Integrity is a virtue that I am striving for in all areas of my life. God is my north star and integrity is my compass. Whenever I feel off track I can check in with my integrity and immediately see why and how I got off track. Integrity is defined as: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, firm adherence to a moral code or artistic principles, an unimpaired condition, the quality or state of being complete or undivided. The root word is integrate.
It is interesting because I think you can be honest but not have integrity, I think you can be authentic but not have integrity, I think you can also adhere to a code and not have integrity. So I think a lot of people might misunderstand and think of themselves as having integrity but they really might not. An extreme example is organized crime or gangs. They might have an adherence to their own code of ethics and might be very honest within their world and authentic about who they are, but most would not consider them as also having integrity. What you are integrated with and toward matters. Hitler had honesty, loyalty to a belief system, he was honest about his beliefs. The point is that the characteristics that are part of the definition of integrity don’t define it in and of themselves. And integrity can’t be compartmentalized. This is what we often attempt to do and how we can often deceive ourselves.
Back to 1 Chronicles, in chapter 28 v 3 David is telling Solomon that he will be the one to build the temple because “..God said to me, ‘You must not build a temple to honor my name, for you are a warrior and have shed much blood.’”. I thought this was really interesting. He is so pleased with David that David is known as a man after God’s own heart and as we learn above he rejoices about David because he finds integrity in his heart. And yet, he doesn’t allow David to build his temple because of the blood on his hands, even though much of that bloodshed was due to following God’s instructions. So then I started to think about God’s integrity. If He is who He says He is then this choice must be one that is based on integrity. I think this is another foreshadowing of Jesus and the Gospel.
As the author and creator of it all, the bloodshed may have been necessary, but it doesn’t mean he liked it or that he wanted his permanent home on earth stained by it. This is what integrity can do for us to, it can lead us do what is right and necessary even when we don’t like it. It is for the greater purpose, mission and good. God is not a God of destruction and bloodshed, he is a God of love, mercy and grace. We have the New Testament and know what is coming and in order for that to exist it’s opposite must exist, that is how it works. God as a loving father did what was necessary for the greater truth and story to unfold. But He himself could not have a permanent home on earth that was built by those who had carried out the killing, His house had to be built by the king who represented wisdom and peace, more representative of God’s true nature.
I am not sure I have this ‘right’, I am not a theologian, I am just a regular human trying to get some wisdom from spending time with the word and with chatting with the Lord about it. Trying to live with integrity, every day I get a little stronger, some days I back slide but now I have a more clear understanding of why. My compass is integrity and my true north is Jesus and that is helping me achieve integrity and I like it! Integrity feels like freedom. It also is that shelter in the storm that I talked about a few days ago, courage to do what is necessary even when you don’t like it, or when others won’t like you for it. It can be daunting and tiring at first to begin the integration process and live with integrity and to become a person with integrity.
But it is even more exhausting wearing masks, being divided, being compromised, being impaired, waking up with good intentions but then not following through on what I say are my values and how I want to live. I would love to be able to say that I always put God first, but that would be pretending, my compass often has a competing magnets nearby - called people pleasing and poor boundaries that often gets my directions screwed up and I end up going south, thinking I am going north!
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
Are you tracking with this? Do you have integrity? Do you want some? What is your true north and compass? 🧭
📖Tomorrows Reading
2 Chronicles 1-15
Coaching Opportunity
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