Thank you so much for visiting. The writing content is no longer updated regularly on this website because, as author Joshua Harris has said, "Blogs are so 2008." My colleagues and I hope, however, that you will enjoy our archives.
We live in a Biblically illiterate society. I have written a book, Triumphant Womanhood: God's Never "Whatever," in which I demonstrate that the King James Bible can - and should - be applied to any aspect of modern life. The book is available on Amazon.com. Thank you so much for reading and allowing me to speak into your life. Are Christian Conservatives Really Bigots?I recently found out what happens when a Bible chick waves a big banner around social media announcing that she is Christian and politically conservative. On twitter, I was called vulgar names I’m too Southern to repeat, but I will tell you that one gentleman expressed a strong desire to nail me to a cross. Didn’t mama say don’t talk to strangers?
Most interesting is the widespread view that fundamental Christians and GOP conservatives are bigots. The word “bigot” means someone who is obstinately and unreasonably wedded to a particular religious practice and has extreme prejudice against the opinions of others. When Republicans express legitimate objections to welcoming into our nation 10,000 Syrian refugees, 92 percent of whom are Muslims, people start to throw around the word bigot. When conservatives try to protect the beloved values of Western Civilization by pointing out that 38 percent of American Muslims agree with the terrorist beliefs of ISIS, and that 19 percent believe violence is justified in order for Sharia Law to replace the U.S. Constitution, they are dismissed as bigots. When a creation scientist provides documented proof that Lucy, the so-called missing link, was most likely just an ape, he is called a bigot. And that is about the most polite word he will be called. Yes, I am devoted to Christianity and conservative principles because I have considered and studied the alternatives. I find that entirely reasonable. What is not reasonable is for people to cling tightly to their own obstinate, fundamental viewpoints – for example President Obama said that he is teaching his children not to tolerate intolerance; what does that even mean? – but not see that the word “bigot” could apply to them as easily as it could to someone like me. Sources: U.S. State Department data on Syrian refugees. CSP Research poll on Muslim Americans. |
Heartache “So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” That
is what Joseph said in Genesis 45 when his brothers had mistreated him
and then lied about it. When emotional crisis hits, run to your heavenly
Father as if you are a little child, hiding in His arms.
Joseph tells us in Genesis 50 that the way to survive heartache is to view it in this way: “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Did you know that the Hebrew women (that’s us as followers of God) are different from the Egyptian women (that’s the rest of the world)? We hear this in Exodus 1 which says, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous.” Another translation says “they are lively.” Saint Augustine said in 400 AD that everyone dwells physically in the same place but that there are two separate worlds here on earth. Believers are residents of the City of God. And so we have access to a power and a comfort and a strength when we lay our anguish at our Father’s feet. Exodus 14 tells us, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He shall work for you today; the Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still.” Deuteronomy 3 says, “You shall not fear them, for it is the Lord your God who fights for you.” The last time I checked, no one could stand against God. This means no one can stand against you. “When you are in tribulation,” Deuteronomy 4 says, “and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord and obey his voice, for the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not fail you.” Circumstances might seem unbearable. It is hard to get up in the morning in the midst of a crisis. But the Bible says there is one thing that is not too hard for you. And it really is the only thing you have to do. “Turn to the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul. For this commandment is not too hard for you.” Deuteronomy 30. How do we know all of this is true? Watch and see. When we come out on the other side of heartache, we will be able to say, “The Lord has redeemed my life out of every adversity.” 2 Samuel 4. 
|
Opening the Eyes of the Poor
by Jennifer Houlihan
for Better Times Magazine
A thousand people are waiting in
line. They wait for hours, sometimes days, in 100 degree heat. They are waiting
because God’s Eyes International has traveled to their remote, impoverished
area of the world to give them new prescription eye glasses. When the God’s Eyes team has finished
and must leave, hundreds of people are still waiting. They begin to cry, to
grab the doctors’ pants, to beg for a pair of glasses. They know that an eye
doctor will not return for many years. Not everyone will get a pair of
glasses that day, but many will. Many people will finally be able to see
clearly. Hundreds of them will also meet the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Calling
In 2005, Bryan Kaiser, an optician in Peachtree City, was sitting in church one Sunday. He heard spoken in the sermon the word “legacy.” He started to ponder what his legacy would look like. He asked God right there in church, “What is my legacy going to be?” God answered, “You’re going to make eye glasses for the world’s poorest people.”
Kaiser and his wife went home from church that day and did some research. They found out that, at any given time, around a billion people in the world need vision correction but will never get it because they cannot afford it. They decided that, as Kaiser’s wife said, “When God tells you to do something, you do it.”
This calling was a divine interruption in their lives.
Kaiser eventually sold his business and established the non-profit corporation, God’s Eyes International. He went into full time missions work, traveling all over the world, bringing brand new, custom made eye glasses to poor people. But God’s Eyes had a Jonah beginning.
"I Can’t Do This"
After that day at church, the Kaisers announced to the global missions community that they were available to make eye glasses for the poor. Dr. Colby, a missionary in Honduras, was the first to contact the Kaisers and she said their help would be a Godsend.
Kaiser at this point was thinking, “Everything’s in place, but I don’t want to do it. It’s going to cost too much.”
The Calling
In 2005, Bryan Kaiser, an optician in Peachtree City, was sitting in church one Sunday. He heard spoken in the sermon the word “legacy.” He started to ponder what his legacy would look like. He asked God right there in church, “What is my legacy going to be?” God answered, “You’re going to make eye glasses for the world’s poorest people.”
Kaiser and his wife went home from church that day and did some research. They found out that, at any given time, around a billion people in the world need vision correction but will never get it because they cannot afford it. They decided that, as Kaiser’s wife said, “When God tells you to do something, you do it.”
This calling was a divine interruption in their lives.
Kaiser eventually sold his business and established the non-profit corporation, God’s Eyes International. He went into full time missions work, traveling all over the world, bringing brand new, custom made eye glasses to poor people. But God’s Eyes had a Jonah beginning.
"I Can’t Do This"
After that day at church, the Kaisers announced to the global missions community that they were available to make eye glasses for the poor. Dr. Colby, a missionary in Honduras, was the first to contact the Kaisers and she said their help would be a Godsend.
Kaiser at this point was thinking, “Everything’s in place, but I don’t want to do it. It’s going to cost too much.”
In John Chapter 6 when Jesus was about to feed 5,000 people, the disciples said to just send them all home. But Jesus said: You feed them. In Kaiser’s world, Jesus was asking him to give almost a billion people eye glasses. Kaiser said to himself and to God, “I can’t do this.” What did Jesus say to the disciples before he fed the 5,000? He said: Give me what you have (the loaves and the fish). Kaiser began to see that God was asking him to give all he had.
“This is when I go Moses on Him and say, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’” Kaiser said. “Haven’t you read Dave Ramsey, God? You don’t give your money away. You save it.” Kaiser was faced with knowing what God wanted him to do, but he didn’t want to do it.
Matthew 6:22-23 says that if your eyes are good, your body is full of light. It hit Kaiser that, hey. There are a billion people out there drowning in a sea of darkness and he had a boat and life preservers.
He got confirmation from the Lord when, at a missions conference, he spoke to a doctor from the Fellowship of Associates of Medical Evangelism (FAME). This doctor told Kaiser, “You are supposed to help Dr. Colby in Honduras.” Kaiser couldn’t speak. He was stunned. This was the same Colby he’d already spoken to. FAME sends medical teams to Colby’s clinic a few times a year. If Kaiser would get FAME the glasses, they would take care of getting them delivered to Honduras. “I looked up at the sky and said to God, ‘You really want me to do this, don’t you,’” Kaiser said.
It’s More Than Glasses
About a year after sending glasses to Honduras through FAME and also providing glasses to Haiti, Kaiser went to Honduras to meet Colby. He saw poverty like he never thought existed. We don’t see families living in shacks here in Fayette County. It was very overwhelming to him. “This is hotel minus 6,” Kaiser quietly thought.
During that trip to Honduras, God really got his heart.
Kaiser came back to America, read Acts 26:17-18 and here’s what God said to him through that passage. “I am sending you to them, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan unto God…” It might as well have said his name on that page of his Bible. He knew at this point, not only did he have to send supplies, but he had to personally go and evangelize the poor.
“We hand out Bibles and we share the good news of Christ,” he said. Sometimes it is the first time many people have ever heard of the concept of grace and having their sins forgiven. We see in the book of Acts that Philip, who questioned how Jesus would feed all those 5,000 people, is running a church and doing miraculous things. Philip no longer says that’s impossible, he just does it. Philip’s changed. Kaiser was changing as well.
He went to Haiti next. He saw pain and death and suffering, and he felt the presence of evil for the first time in his life. The people of Honduras now seemed wealthy compared to Haiti. The people of Haiti live under thatched roofs supported by four sticks, they don’t own anything, a mother died in childbirth the first day he was there.
Kaiser wondered how God could let this happen. He knows there’s hope in Christ but Haiti seemed beyond hope.
He went to Ephesians 2:10, which says that we are God’s workmanship, created to do good works. This passage reveals that we all should start doing specifically what God has called us to do. We’re created to do good works, but we often choose which good works we want to do. We shouldn’t be bringing cans for a food drive when God wants us to teach the high school youth group. We shouldn’t be going on missions trips if God has called us to take care of an aging parent. “I realize I’ve got an A in Churchianity,” Kaiser said. “But up to this point, I was not doing what God had prepared for me to do. I didn’t have the intimacy with the Father. My life didn’t look a whole lot different than any non-believer’s.”
Let’s Rock
At this point, Kaiser finally realized what God wanted him to do and he said, “Okay God, let’s do this, I’m ready.” That’s when things started happening. Big things. God things. The Kaisers began to go and do whatever God told them to do. Their phone began to ring all the time, from doctors and pastors in developing nations that needed eye glasses for the poor. Whatever need came their way, they would ask God to confirm it somehow.
Once, they felt God leading them to send 500 frames to the poor in Haiti. That would cost $20,000, but Kaiser remembered what God said: When your money runs out, watch what I do. They prayed and waited, and two days later someone offered 100,000 new frames to meet this need. They had only prayed for 500. God was telling them that the answer is, “Just ask me.”
Kaiser said, “If Father wants a room full of money He just says, ‘Room full of money.’” One company sent God’s Eyes $1 million in new frames. Another company said they would donate 200,000 lenses. This company called back and said they had miscounted. It would actually be more than 500,000 lenses. Today, God’s Eyes International has a warehouse in Peachtree City filled with millions and millions of dollars of supplies to send out to the poor in third world countries. God has provided it all.
Opening Their Eyes
God’s Eyes International does three things now:
1. Partners with medical mission teams by helping to fund them with optical supplies.
2. Goes on medical mission trips to remote locations where no medical help exists, where people have never even seen eye glasses before.
3. Opens up optical centers in these remote locations, so even after God’s Eyes teams leave, people can come and get their vision corrected for free.
God’s Eyes puts together teams who travel throughout Africa, Central America, South America, The Philippines, Haiti, Jamaica and more. God’s Eyes once provided new eye glasses for an 83 year old man in Peru. This man hadn’t read his Bible in 30 years, because he could no longer see small print. He carried his Bible in his pocket, and when Kaiser gave him his glasses, this man pulled his Bible out and read it, and burst into tears.
For people who don’t know how to read, God’s Eyes can bring the Bible to the poor on cassette players, or on MP3 sticks. Davar Ministries makes a solar powered digital Bible, in any language. These devices run about $20 a piece, they’re lightweight, and it’s a great way to get the Bible to someone. “What we hear back from pastors,” Kaiser said, “is that five or six families gather together and listen to that one Bible player that someone has been given.”
In the bushlands of Zambia at a missionary conference, God’s Eyes workers were set up in tents in a very remote place. Missionaries would come up and say, “I broke my glasses the first week I got to Africa. That was 10 years ago.” These missionaries had done without corrected vision all that time.
Recently: Nicaragua
God’s Eyes International has supplied more than nine teams to Nicaragua in 2014 already. A recent trip to Nicaragua was in October. Local optometrist Dr. Scott Bowser of the Peachtree City Eye Center accompanied God’s Eyes as they served alongside pastor Oscar Cornea, an orphan who was abandoned by his parents and who now has a ministry in Nicaragua. God’s Eyes is building a permanent eye clinic at Cornea’s mission base, called the Dream Center.
In 75 locations throughout Nicaragua, Cornea hosts feeding programs for the extreme poor. When the Dream Center is complete, he will gather up orphans for a four day weekend where they will get fed, play soccer, swim, receive medical attention and get their eyes tested and corrected by God’s Eyes.
“These trips really are not about eye glasses or opening eyes,” Kaiser said. “They are all about opening hearts, and God is the only one who does that.”
How Our Community Can Help
· Pray
· Attend missions trips
· Give financial help
· Volunteer at the warehouse
· Invite them to speak at your church or civic group
God’s Eyes International does not do any fund raising. The organization completely relies on God’s provision through the generosity of donations. All it takes to cover the cost of a pair of new prescription eye glasses is $13. “That $13 could save somebody’s world,” Kaiser said. One of the great aspects of the God’s Eyes ministry is that the people actually get the product. No corrupt government or leader is going to take 99 percent of it. God’s Eyes goes in and personally hand delivers everything directly to the patient.
God’s Eyes partners with Adlens Corporation, which makes glasses that allow the patient to adjust the power of their lenses up to 36 steps. Those glasses are a blessing to give in a place that God’s Eyes is never going back to. “If we’re deep in the jungles of the Amazon and we know we’re not going to be able to ever go back there,” Dr. Kaiser said, “with a turn of a dial they can change the power as their vision changes.” What’s cool about glasses vs. medicine is that glasses last so much longer. Medical people can hand out a month’s supply of pills whereas a pair of prescription glasses could last many years. “What a great thing to be able change someone’s life,” he said.
Scripture says that the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few. Our community can pray for God to send more laborers, more doctors, more people to go on the God’s Eyes missions trips. God’s Eyes traveled to Jamaica in January and to Belize in February. Trips are planned almost monthly. Anyone more than 18 years old is always welcome to go on any trip as long as spots are still available. Younger children are also invited if at least one of their parents accompanies them.
“We bring light to a dark and needy world,” Kaiser said. “And when we leave, that light doesn’t go out. We work with pastors and teams of up to 50 people and by the time we leave, there’s a church. Here are 167 new people who just met Jesus.”
For more information, go to www.GodsEyesInternational.com, or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Jennifer Houlihan is legally blind and wears contact lenses to correct her vision.
“This is when I go Moses on Him and say, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’” Kaiser said. “Haven’t you read Dave Ramsey, God? You don’t give your money away. You save it.” Kaiser was faced with knowing what God wanted him to do, but he didn’t want to do it.
Matthew 6:22-23 says that if your eyes are good, your body is full of light. It hit Kaiser that, hey. There are a billion people out there drowning in a sea of darkness and he had a boat and life preservers.
He got confirmation from the Lord when, at a missions conference, he spoke to a doctor from the Fellowship of Associates of Medical Evangelism (FAME). This doctor told Kaiser, “You are supposed to help Dr. Colby in Honduras.” Kaiser couldn’t speak. He was stunned. This was the same Colby he’d already spoken to. FAME sends medical teams to Colby’s clinic a few times a year. If Kaiser would get FAME the glasses, they would take care of getting them delivered to Honduras. “I looked up at the sky and said to God, ‘You really want me to do this, don’t you,’” Kaiser said.
It’s More Than Glasses
About a year after sending glasses to Honduras through FAME and also providing glasses to Haiti, Kaiser went to Honduras to meet Colby. He saw poverty like he never thought existed. We don’t see families living in shacks here in Fayette County. It was very overwhelming to him. “This is hotel minus 6,” Kaiser quietly thought.
During that trip to Honduras, God really got his heart.
Kaiser came back to America, read Acts 26:17-18 and here’s what God said to him through that passage. “I am sending you to them, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan unto God…” It might as well have said his name on that page of his Bible. He knew at this point, not only did he have to send supplies, but he had to personally go and evangelize the poor.
“We hand out Bibles and we share the good news of Christ,” he said. Sometimes it is the first time many people have ever heard of the concept of grace and having their sins forgiven. We see in the book of Acts that Philip, who questioned how Jesus would feed all those 5,000 people, is running a church and doing miraculous things. Philip no longer says that’s impossible, he just does it. Philip’s changed. Kaiser was changing as well.
He went to Haiti next. He saw pain and death and suffering, and he felt the presence of evil for the first time in his life. The people of Honduras now seemed wealthy compared to Haiti. The people of Haiti live under thatched roofs supported by four sticks, they don’t own anything, a mother died in childbirth the first day he was there.
Kaiser wondered how God could let this happen. He knows there’s hope in Christ but Haiti seemed beyond hope.
He went to Ephesians 2:10, which says that we are God’s workmanship, created to do good works. This passage reveals that we all should start doing specifically what God has called us to do. We’re created to do good works, but we often choose which good works we want to do. We shouldn’t be bringing cans for a food drive when God wants us to teach the high school youth group. We shouldn’t be going on missions trips if God has called us to take care of an aging parent. “I realize I’ve got an A in Churchianity,” Kaiser said. “But up to this point, I was not doing what God had prepared for me to do. I didn’t have the intimacy with the Father. My life didn’t look a whole lot different than any non-believer’s.”
Let’s Rock
At this point, Kaiser finally realized what God wanted him to do and he said, “Okay God, let’s do this, I’m ready.” That’s when things started happening. Big things. God things. The Kaisers began to go and do whatever God told them to do. Their phone began to ring all the time, from doctors and pastors in developing nations that needed eye glasses for the poor. Whatever need came their way, they would ask God to confirm it somehow.
Once, they felt God leading them to send 500 frames to the poor in Haiti. That would cost $20,000, but Kaiser remembered what God said: When your money runs out, watch what I do. They prayed and waited, and two days later someone offered 100,000 new frames to meet this need. They had only prayed for 500. God was telling them that the answer is, “Just ask me.”
Kaiser said, “If Father wants a room full of money He just says, ‘Room full of money.’” One company sent God’s Eyes $1 million in new frames. Another company said they would donate 200,000 lenses. This company called back and said they had miscounted. It would actually be more than 500,000 lenses. Today, God’s Eyes International has a warehouse in Peachtree City filled with millions and millions of dollars of supplies to send out to the poor in third world countries. God has provided it all.
Opening Their Eyes
God’s Eyes International does three things now:
1. Partners with medical mission teams by helping to fund them with optical supplies.
2. Goes on medical mission trips to remote locations where no medical help exists, where people have never even seen eye glasses before.
3. Opens up optical centers in these remote locations, so even after God’s Eyes teams leave, people can come and get their vision corrected for free.
God’s Eyes puts together teams who travel throughout Africa, Central America, South America, The Philippines, Haiti, Jamaica and more. God’s Eyes once provided new eye glasses for an 83 year old man in Peru. This man hadn’t read his Bible in 30 years, because he could no longer see small print. He carried his Bible in his pocket, and when Kaiser gave him his glasses, this man pulled his Bible out and read it, and burst into tears.
For people who don’t know how to read, God’s Eyes can bring the Bible to the poor on cassette players, or on MP3 sticks. Davar Ministries makes a solar powered digital Bible, in any language. These devices run about $20 a piece, they’re lightweight, and it’s a great way to get the Bible to someone. “What we hear back from pastors,” Kaiser said, “is that five or six families gather together and listen to that one Bible player that someone has been given.”
In the bushlands of Zambia at a missionary conference, God’s Eyes workers were set up in tents in a very remote place. Missionaries would come up and say, “I broke my glasses the first week I got to Africa. That was 10 years ago.” These missionaries had done without corrected vision all that time.
Recently: Nicaragua
God’s Eyes International has supplied more than nine teams to Nicaragua in 2014 already. A recent trip to Nicaragua was in October. Local optometrist Dr. Scott Bowser of the Peachtree City Eye Center accompanied God’s Eyes as they served alongside pastor Oscar Cornea, an orphan who was abandoned by his parents and who now has a ministry in Nicaragua. God’s Eyes is building a permanent eye clinic at Cornea’s mission base, called the Dream Center.
In 75 locations throughout Nicaragua, Cornea hosts feeding programs for the extreme poor. When the Dream Center is complete, he will gather up orphans for a four day weekend where they will get fed, play soccer, swim, receive medical attention and get their eyes tested and corrected by God’s Eyes.
“These trips really are not about eye glasses or opening eyes,” Kaiser said. “They are all about opening hearts, and God is the only one who does that.”
How Our Community Can Help
· Pray
· Attend missions trips
· Give financial help
· Volunteer at the warehouse
· Invite them to speak at your church or civic group
God’s Eyes International does not do any fund raising. The organization completely relies on God’s provision through the generosity of donations. All it takes to cover the cost of a pair of new prescription eye glasses is $13. “That $13 could save somebody’s world,” Kaiser said. One of the great aspects of the God’s Eyes ministry is that the people actually get the product. No corrupt government or leader is going to take 99 percent of it. God’s Eyes goes in and personally hand delivers everything directly to the patient.
God’s Eyes partners with Adlens Corporation, which makes glasses that allow the patient to adjust the power of their lenses up to 36 steps. Those glasses are a blessing to give in a place that God’s Eyes is never going back to. “If we’re deep in the jungles of the Amazon and we know we’re not going to be able to ever go back there,” Dr. Kaiser said, “with a turn of a dial they can change the power as their vision changes.” What’s cool about glasses vs. medicine is that glasses last so much longer. Medical people can hand out a month’s supply of pills whereas a pair of prescription glasses could last many years. “What a great thing to be able change someone’s life,” he said.
Scripture says that the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few. Our community can pray for God to send more laborers, more doctors, more people to go on the God’s Eyes missions trips. God’s Eyes traveled to Jamaica in January and to Belize in February. Trips are planned almost monthly. Anyone more than 18 years old is always welcome to go on any trip as long as spots are still available. Younger children are also invited if at least one of their parents accompanies them.
“We bring light to a dark and needy world,” Kaiser said. “And when we leave, that light doesn’t go out. We work with pastors and teams of up to 50 people and by the time we leave, there’s a church. Here are 167 new people who just met Jesus.”
For more information, go to www.GodsEyesInternational.com, or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Jennifer Houlihan is legally blind and wears contact lenses to correct her vision.
Integrity
The fun part of integrity is applying it to someone else. The less fun part is to make a brutally honest evaluation, all throughout our lives, and ask if we personally are behaving with integrity. It’s like my neighborhood homeowner’s association. Puh-lease do something about that rusty trailer in my neighbor’s overgrown yard. But I don’t see that my son’s brilliant, graffiti-painted skate board ramp is bothering anyone? Maybe I should reconsider.
Everyone has a basic idea of what integrity is. It’s the junk that you are glad the homeowner’s association cleaned up in someone else. But we can’t unpack and live there. We have to apply integrity to ourselves because we are the only student who will ever truly be under our control. “Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?” Romans 2:21. C.S. Lewis said that integrity is “doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” We can also define integrity as moral soundness, purity of mind, uprightness, honesty. All that good stuff. When we stare at our Bibles long enough (the inside, the part with words, y’all) we start to notice that integrity is almost always paired up with another concept: the fear of God.
Sylvester Stallone said this regarding integrity: “I believe there’s an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth in their hearts.” Could Rocky by any chance be referring to fear of Almighty God? Of course he is. Whether he personally realizes it or not, that inner power we all possess is the nudging from the Holy Spirit. God lets us decide whether to listen to it or ignore it. When we listen, we act with integrity. “The integrity of the upright shall guide them,” says Proverbs 11:3. Integrity is what our conscience looks like on the outside. Mr. Stallone said we should listen to the truth of our hearts. He’s talking about Christ, the ultimate truth because Jesus said, “I am … the truth.” And honeychild that’s the truth.
The word integrity is a derivative of the Latin adjective “integer,” meaning whole or uninjured. Yes, mathematically inclined people, an integer is a whole number. Fist bump on that. Applied to Earthlings, that Latin word “integer” tells us we are fulfilling our whole purpose and keeping ourselves uninjured with our integrity. Scripture explains it this way: “Let the integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait on thee.” Psalm 25:21. We are whole and complete when we are committed to integrity because we are motivated by a trust in God. When we abandon integrity, we damage ourselves and our relationship with Him.
All this integrity and revering God business is relatively easy when life is going well. When is it hard? It’s hard when we are suffering. It’s hard when we are surrounded by people who are such dirty rotten lowdown scoundrels that they wouldn’t know the word integrity if it was painted on the side of an asteroid and landed on their head. How can we overcome that?
Just ask our buddy Job, an awesome dude who “feared God, and eschewed evil.” Job 1:1. This guy had it made, and then all at once he lost his children, servants, home, sheep, everything. He had some funky skin condition going on too. Job was in total despair. His friends sat around and took turns telling him he was to blame. His wife was very discouraging. This is what she said to him: “Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die.” 2:9. Job never did give up and said instead, “…till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me.” 27:5.
Integrity is mentioned again in chapter 31 when Job says he wants God to see his integrity. That passage is important because it does not say Job wants his friends or wife to see his integrity. He is not thinking that his clients or customers will see his integrity. He is not going for Facebook “likes.” He is not after popularity or financial gain. Job is thinking only of impressing God. That’s the one motivation that will always truly stick. Eventually, God honored Job by restoring everything he lost and then some. God “blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.” 42:12. We know that’s how the story ends, but Job didn’t. He kept his integrity anyway. Will I?
Everyone has a basic idea of what integrity is. It’s the junk that you are glad the homeowner’s association cleaned up in someone else. But we can’t unpack and live there. We have to apply integrity to ourselves because we are the only student who will ever truly be under our control. “Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?” Romans 2:21. C.S. Lewis said that integrity is “doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” We can also define integrity as moral soundness, purity of mind, uprightness, honesty. All that good stuff. When we stare at our Bibles long enough (the inside, the part with words, y’all) we start to notice that integrity is almost always paired up with another concept: the fear of God.
Sylvester Stallone said this regarding integrity: “I believe there’s an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth in their hearts.” Could Rocky by any chance be referring to fear of Almighty God? Of course he is. Whether he personally realizes it or not, that inner power we all possess is the nudging from the Holy Spirit. God lets us decide whether to listen to it or ignore it. When we listen, we act with integrity. “The integrity of the upright shall guide them,” says Proverbs 11:3. Integrity is what our conscience looks like on the outside. Mr. Stallone said we should listen to the truth of our hearts. He’s talking about Christ, the ultimate truth because Jesus said, “I am … the truth.” And honeychild that’s the truth.
The word integrity is a derivative of the Latin adjective “integer,” meaning whole or uninjured. Yes, mathematically inclined people, an integer is a whole number. Fist bump on that. Applied to Earthlings, that Latin word “integer” tells us we are fulfilling our whole purpose and keeping ourselves uninjured with our integrity. Scripture explains it this way: “Let the integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait on thee.” Psalm 25:21. We are whole and complete when we are committed to integrity because we are motivated by a trust in God. When we abandon integrity, we damage ourselves and our relationship with Him.
All this integrity and revering God business is relatively easy when life is going well. When is it hard? It’s hard when we are suffering. It’s hard when we are surrounded by people who are such dirty rotten lowdown scoundrels that they wouldn’t know the word integrity if it was painted on the side of an asteroid and landed on their head. How can we overcome that?
Just ask our buddy Job, an awesome dude who “feared God, and eschewed evil.” Job 1:1. This guy had it made, and then all at once he lost his children, servants, home, sheep, everything. He had some funky skin condition going on too. Job was in total despair. His friends sat around and took turns telling him he was to blame. His wife was very discouraging. This is what she said to him: “Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die.” 2:9. Job never did give up and said instead, “…till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me.” 27:5.
Integrity is mentioned again in chapter 31 when Job says he wants God to see his integrity. That passage is important because it does not say Job wants his friends or wife to see his integrity. He is not thinking that his clients or customers will see his integrity. He is not going for Facebook “likes.” He is not after popularity or financial gain. Job is thinking only of impressing God. That’s the one motivation that will always truly stick. Eventually, God honored Job by restoring everything he lost and then some. God “blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.” 42:12. We know that’s how the story ends, but Job didn’t. He kept his integrity anyway. Will I?