Walking With Integrity

Walking with Integrity

“9 People with integrity walk safely,
but those who follow crooked paths will slip and fall.”
- Proverbs 10:9

Integrity has been simply defined to me as “what you do when no one is looking.” In Merriam’s Dictionary, you will see it defined as adhering to a strict code of moral or artistic values, as to be incorruptible. You can be integrous to different ideas, beliefs, and morals. But the integrity that is portrayed here is an integrity that follows God.

How am I walking a path of integrity with what I know and believe in God? Or at the least how should it look, so that I know when I am not and am susceptible to “slip and fall?” It looks like spending time with God everyday through doing devotions, focusing and using my time wisely for the things that God has called me to grow (whether new skills acquired, old ones tuned, school, growing right relationships, or anything else God puts on my heart). When I listen to God, I am under his protection and from here I know that I can move safely and effectively. But when I start to do my own things, not listening to what I know I should do, breaking focus to try to bring my own sense of fulfillment into my life, and go on to sinning, eventually it is inevitable that I will find myself in trouble and flat on my face.

To walk with integrity is to walk with God, and with that said, the opposite is true as well: to walk without God is to walk a selfish path – one that leads to danger and harm. I must be a person who walks with God, to use the time I have wisely and do and focus on what God asked and asks me to do. There is no way around this truth, because we are either for God or against Him. I choose integrity; I choose to walk with my God.

Father God, please help me to be focused, to walk with integrity in this world that has so many distractions and worries. I know that I lack in many areas and I need your help to make it through this life not by the skin of my teeth, but in victory and success. I want to be close to you, I want to be a man of God that has the maturity to be a good father and a good husband. Please help me to move to the next stepping stones, so that I may be these things, able to provide more than just for myself but for a family, and perhaps even for a congregation. You already know this, but I care ... May your will be done, and may my heart follow it. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.