THE SECURITY OF INTEGRITY

He who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will be found out. (Proverbs 10:9)

We have a massive steel support beam in the back of our church building that no one sees. It comes down in one of our staff offices, but there is one problem with it … it is flawed. It has a slight “wrinkle” in one side of the beam.

This flawed beam was in the back of the church where no one would ever see it. But over 25 years, we’ve turned every nook and cranny into offices and classrooms. So, there it sits, now prominent, in a staff member's office. It’s been found out.

Fortunately, this beam is huge and strong enough that the wrinkle doesn’t cause any structural integrity, but it is a visual flaw. With the right amount of pressure, the beam would bend there first.

OUR WRINKLES

Everyone has flaws. We all have our sins—the places where we bend first. It is wise to be open and honest and even accountable to others about those weaknesses to find the support that shared lives can bring. Such openness takes the danger away that a lack of integrity can bring.

Integrity means “soundness.” A building has structural integrity when there is no weakness that can cause a failure. For a man to have integrity doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have some flaws. He just doesn’t cover them. And, he is working, by God’s grace, to find greater victory in those areas.

A lack of integrity always manifests itself. Always. Satan will expose it at a moment that causes the most damage. He doesn’t care how long it takes to get you, but he is a “roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

TRANSPARENCY

The remedy for this is to be transparent with the appropriate circle. I have a group of three pastors that I have met with for 32 years. We gather every spring for a four-day accountability retreat. We talk and laugh and study and pray and play together. I contribute my share of bad, but respectable golf.

But the key is our transparency. There’s no question we will not ask each other or answer. We are kind, but ruthless when it comes to the matter of accountability. It would be impossible to measure how many times this honesty has saved us from the worst parts of ourselves. “He who covers his sin will not prosper,” the writer of Proverbs says, “but he who confesses and forsakes his sin will find mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

We’re all flawed beams, but we can be spared a fall that confuses and hurts many by an open, honest life of humility. A man who has not hidden his sin is flawed but has nothing to fear for he has voluntarily opened his life to others. And, to his amazement, he will find that bringing his sin into the light is the greatest means of finding the grace to overcome it.