Hanging On To Integrity

Hang Onto Integrity

In the last post we began a consideration of integrity.  We saw how important it is to the preacher who wants to continue to be heard.  In this post we’re going to reflect on why you must hang onto integrity in your life improves your life and ministry.

Integrity Failures

Many years ago, Dr. Howard Hendricks, long-time professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, did a survey of 246 people who had “fallen” while in ministry.  His goal was to discover commonalities in their failure.  Here’s what he found, as reported by Garrett Cell of The Gospel Coalition:

• None of the men was involved in any kind of real personal accountability.
• Each of the men had all but ceased having a daily time of personal prayer, Bible reading, and worship.
• More than 80 percent of the men became sexually involved with the other woman after spending significant time with her, often in counseling situations.
• Without exception, each of the 246 had been convinced that sort of fall “would never happen to me.”

Lessons for the Person Hanging Onto Integrity

There are several lessons here for us to consider:

Integrity Requires Accountability

• You can’t remain in isolation and hang onto integrity in your life.  The person who stays with his profession and his practice in alignment has some people to whom he remains accountable.    This is not easy for most
  

  Accountable, Responsible and Answerable words around a person thinking who is to deserve credit or worthy of blame

  of us.  This means that you need someone in your life with whom you share your temptations and challenges.  Who can you trust enough for this?  Think about it?  When my life got out of alignment for awhile, I realized how much I needed this.  I asked two men that I believed I could trust to serve this role in my life.  Both of them agreed, and I met each month with each of them–one of them on the phone because of distance–each month.  This required that I lay down pride.  It will require that of you as well, but if you want to hang onto integrity, this is a requirement.

Playing With Sin Leads to Failure

• A second lesson is that if you play with sin, you are more likely to fall and fail.  Does your television watching and computer use  align with the life that you are leading?  I find this statistic amazing: A Barna research study found most pastors (57%) and youth pastors (64%) admit they have struggled with porn, either currently or in the past. But less than 1% recommended telling their congregation.  That’s a majority of us!

Connecting With God Regularly Helps Hang Onto Integrity

• How is your devotional life?  I know that ministry gets busy, and there are many things that can intrude upon the discipline of regular prayer and Bible reading and reflection.  But if you slip in this area, you’ll be. on a slope downward.  Hang onto your integrity by regularly, daily, connecting with God.  Set this time aside as a priority in your calendar.

Watch Out For Pride, a Destroyer of Integrity

• Here’s how Garrett Kell describes this lesson in his post on Hendrick’s survey: Many of us think this sort of serious sin would not happen to us, just as those fallen pastors thought. But 1 Corinthians 10:12 warns, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Let us not forget that Samson, the strongest man in the Bible; Solomon, the wisest man in the Bible; and David, the man after God’s own heart, were all overcome by the temptations of sexual sin (Judg. 14-16; 1 Kings 11:1-8; 2 Sam. 11-12; Ps. 51). No one is above the temptation to sin in grievous ways. If you doubt, you are on your way to a great fall.Beware! Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Conclusion

Thank God!  He is a forgiving, restoring, constant presence and helpful.  You can hang onto integrity in your life, because God says that he will walk with you in your life, giving grace when needed and help each day.

Here’s some further reflection on this subject.