Integrity
One of the most often cited reasons for people handing in their resignation to Boris Johnson last week was integrity. People didn’t feel that he could be trusted anymore. And as you’ll know he’s now stepping down as leader of the Conservatives.
One person who resigned last week was
Sajid Javid, outgoing Health Secretary and I quote…
“I am instinctively a team player but the British people also rightly expect
integrity from their Government”.
But just in case any of you were
worrying, this thought for the day is not about politics, its about integrity.
Integrity is about when something is whole and not undivided.
If you say one thing and do
another, you are divided. If your loyalties are split so that you seek to serve
people, but you are also seeking to serve yourself and your own agenda, you
lack integrity.
There is a verse in the Old Testament
that is so important to me that my wife did some embroidery to write it
indelibly in needlework on a piece of fabric that is framed in my study.
It says “give me an undivided heart
that I may fear your name”. It’s from Psalm 86:11 where David is asking God to
teach him his ways, and enable him to live with integrity rather than division
in his heart.
“Give me an undivided heart that I
may fear your name”. Help me to walk with integrity. I have to pray that prayer
every day, because I know how flawed my human heart can be, and how its motives
can be so mixed, seeking my own agenda and reputation rather than God’s.
Do you know, according to an interview with the BBC last
Sunday, it was a Christian event, a prayer breakfast in parliament that really
acted as the final trigger for Sajid Javid. And I quote from his interview with
the BBC’s Sophie Raworth… "It might
sound a bit strange but I was listening to the sermon by this amazing man,
Reverend Les Isaac - you know, he started Street Pastors, I was listening to
him talking about the importance of integrity in public life and, just focusing
on that, I made up my mind”.
May the Lord give us all the help
to walk in the footsteps of the only man who truly walked his talk, Jesus
Christ, and may we have integrity. Amen.
Followed by “Honesty”
by Billy Joel.
Charlie Newcombe 13/7/22