George Washington once said "I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man." I agree with him totally. To be called an honest man is a very important trait that everyone should have. It is easily "the most eviable of all titles" as being honest allows you to walk with your head up high without trying to hide anything from anybody. That is the importance of honesty. Psalms 119:1 in the NLT version of the Bible tells us "Happy are the people of integrity, who follow the law of the Lord"
Being a person of integrity is very important. When you are a person of integrity, you do not hide anything from the people around you. Sometimes it may seem to be alright to just act as if you are a great person, someone who is strong and perfect in his life. Well, it may be alright untill a test comes in your way, when a storm blows into your life. You will be put in a spot then, you will not know what to do and all your acts will just fall apart. When that happens, you will realise that it is so much better to just have integrity and accept that you have your weaknesses. When you accept your own weaknesses, God will help you to overcome these weaknesses. In such a way, it is very important to have integrity as it would also mean that you have humility to accept your own weaknesses.
Honesty is very important as it also builds trust. To be dishonest is also to be destroying the trust of the people around you. How many of us trust someone who has cheated us? I believe there is hardly anybody who would say yes to that. To lie to someone would mean to damage the trust the person have in you. You may think that it is alright to just lie to the person as he would never find out about it and it does not have much effect anyway. But think again. Our lies always catch up to us. We can never hide from our lies ever. It always comes up and catches up to us. We often just use another lie, and then another lie to cover up the previous lie. But we can never run. One day when our lie gets revealed, trusts will be damaged and we can only hide our face from our friends. None of us want that to happen.
All of us have lied before that is for sure. But we must make a concious effort to make ourselves tell the truth all the time. We must keep a check on what comes out of our mouth, on what actions we do. When was the last time you told a lie? I honestly have forgotten. But its not because I have not told a lie for a long long time. Its because I have forgotten to take check on what I say. Are you in the same situation? If so, then we have probably formed a habit of lying. Colossians 3:9~10 says "Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" This specifically tells us to put off our old self and put on the new one. Here we can see it as taking off our old clothes and putting on a new one. It simply implies that we should put off this bad habit of ours and put on a new habit that the Lord has given unto us.
But of course it isn't as easy as it seem. Many a times we find it hard to put off these old clothes of ours as we are so used to them already. We attempt to take them off but never really take them off completely. Its like leaving one dirty sock on, or just taking our clothes off halfway. This is where God comes in. We need to ask God to help us with the changing of our self. Why? This is because this new self is "renewed in knowlege in the image of its Creator." This new self comes from God. And it is God who will help us with changing of our self and put on the new self.
Therefore I pray and encourage all of us to seek the God to put away our old self and put on the new one. That all of us can learn to be truthful and be man and woman of integrity. Being honest will truly benefit us in the long run and integrity pleases God. Let us all have the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
1 comment:
AMEN!
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