“Integrity is when you are one with God, yourself, and your loved ones.”
Dwight “Ike” Reighard
“He who walks with integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will become known.” —Proverbs 10:9
Integrity has been described as “doing the right thing when nobody is looking.”
When you try to hide your behavior behind a mask of lies, you live with the constant fear of somebody finding out! All of us know this experience to some degree. Some of us stay on track most of the time and only occasionally fear being found out, but others have lied so much to cover their tracks that they don’t remember what’s true anymore.
When the Bible talks about our “heart,” it is referring to the most inner part of us. Our spiritual heart is a seat of reflection, and it is the place in which we keep our motives and the secret thoughts of our life. Our heart enables us to look at our life clearly, without distortion or embellishment— if our heart is pure and seeks to be obedient to God. The truth about what is really in our hearts is probably a mixed bag. If we are honest, we have to admit that our motives are not always pure and that we also have big doses of selfishness that take over our lives from time to time.
The key to spiritual growth is being able and willing to look into our hearts and be honest about what we find there.
Do we find a heart that is focused on spiritual truth, integrity, and honesty?
Or do we find something else?
So integrity is a matter of the heart when you get to the bottom of it. Our integrity is a fruit of who and what we are, and we can no more stop our integrity, or lack of it, than an apple tree can stop producing apples and start producing peaches. If you want to know what the status of your own integrity is, just do some serious soul-searching, and that begins by taking a look at your heart, your motives, and the reasons you do everything you do.