Pastor Pat Duffin,
High Prairie Christian Centre
Everybody wants it.

A lot of folks claim to have it.

And a lot of folks that claim to have it, don’t really have so much of it as they led us to believe.

Just watch the evening news. Preachers, politicians, business leaders; all folks you’d expect to be full of integrity, but we find out that they didn’t have so much after all.

Integrity is an interesting thing. No one can take it from you. They can take your stuff, your house, your money, your spouse, your children.
They can even take your life but, no one can take your integrity.

Nor can you lose it. But, you can surrender it. You can give it away. You can throw it away. You can sell it.

But no one can take your integrity away.

Some sell it for a lot. Some sell it for pennies. Integrity is peddled all the time, sometimes thoughtlessly, without considering the significance or the consequences.

Integrity is an interesting word. We all use it, we look for it in others, but not so much in ourselves. We like to think we’ve got it, but it’s much easier to judge others than to examine ourselves.

Personal introspection is not a strong suite in a busy world. Maybe we don’t look too hard because secretly we know we don’t have as much of it as we let on.

There is a popular concept in recovery groups known as “Second Virginity”. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. The idea is to separate yourself from some of the wreckage of the past and start over, acting “just as if” we had never made those horrible mistakes that hurt and scarred.

Implicit is the idea that we can change. We can’t change the past, but we can change the present and, consequentially, the future.

Maybe we didn’t do so well in the past. Perhaps it started small but bit-by-bit our choices added up to something inside us we just don’t like.

Maybe we would like to feel different about our lives and the direction we have been going. To be sure, it’s not easy, but it is possible. The Bible calls it repentance.

To repent simply means to change our mind and make a choice to go in a different direction from the one we are going. Spiritually, we are only going in one of two directions. We are either moving toward God, or away from God.

Even the tiniest steps toward God is movement in the right direction. If we are not moving toward God, then we can only be moving in one other direction – the wrong direction – that is not progress.

Repentance means we decide to stop going in the wrong direction, turn around and move towards God. It starts with a decision, but ends with resolute action. We make a 180-degree turn. In doing so, we put the old life to our back and start a new life with God. [1 Peter 2:25]

When we start moving in God’s direction, all sorts of wonderful new possibilities open before us, including constructive change, healing and so much more.

Integrity goes right to the core of who we are and touches every aspect of our being. Webster defines integrity as, “moral soundness, probity [scrupulous honesty]; wholeness, completeness; the quality or state of being unimpaired. From the Latin ‘integritas’ – wholeness.”

Integrity and wholeness are inseparable. Integrity before God and with ourselves is the only way to go. Anything less and we are just pretending. Almost all concede we are not perfect. On that point God certainly agrees. [Isaiah 53:6; Psalm 119:176]

No matter how hard we try, because we are sinful by nature, we cannot generate real integrity through our own self effort. To some degree we can imitate it, like Second Virginity, but it is not the real thing. Since the fountain itself is polluted, self-effort is doomed to fail.

With God’s help, positive change becomes as natural as physical growth. The more we grow, the more we change in the direction of wholeness and completeness which is rooted in God.

Believer or not, we all want “wholeness.” It would be irrational not to want it.

But, it does matter how we try to get it. It was a nasty surprise for the ambitious entrepreneur who spent his entire life climbing the ladder of success only to discover in the end, it was leaning on the wrong wall.

If you have not already done so, it’s not too late to make your 180. Turn away from the hurtful ways of thinking and behaving you have acquired [sin] and choose the new and living way. [Hebrews 10:20)]

Heed the words of Jesus, “…go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” [Matthew 9:13]

And go to church this Sunday.