SPIRITUAL INTEGRITY

Believers should strive for spiritual integrity, which means being sincere and blameless in both attitude and behavior. Hypocrisy is a problem in the church, where people put on a mask of perfection but hide their flaws. Transparency is important in our walk with the Lord, as we need to be willing to admit our struggles and seek help. The church should be a place where we can confess our sins and support each other in healing and growth. Fear of judgment and rejection can prevent people from being open about their issues. Confessing our sins to one another and to God brings healing. with progress as believers, there's a level of maturity we should have or exemplify as believers. So tonight, the very first thing that we're going to start with when we're talking about being a matured believer is we want to deal with spiritual integrity. All right, that's what we want to deal with, spiritual integrity. So Philippians 1 and 10 will be my base scripture, but of course I got others that I'll be dealing with. So Philippians 1 and 10, the B part of that verse says, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ. So as we interpret that scripture, he talked about two things. And so the question, just to keep in the back of your mind, or if you're writing, the question is, what does it mean to be sincere and blameless? All right. What does it mean to be sincere and blameless? In that particular passage of scripture in Philippians, Paul was praying that the Philippian church, he was praying that they would be sincere and blameless, all right, which refers to the first inter-attitudes and then to the outward behavior. All right. So in general, he was praying for spiritual integrity and integrity is really the practice of honesty and morality, despite the situation. All right. It's the practice of honesty and morality. It doesn't matter what the circumstance or what the situation is. All right. We've got to always have that spiritual integrity as believers. So now if it's the practice of honesty and morality, no matter the situation, even when nobody's looking, because you know, it's some of the situations where you find church people so hypocritical when they're around other believers, they have one mask on. They make you to think that, oh, they're just the most devout Christian that you'll ever know on earth. They're Jesus' second cousin, the way they act when they come to worship. But then when they're home or they're away from the church setting, they're a whole different way. All right. That's hypocritical, right? Because being a hypocrite is professing to be something or someone that you're not. All right. Well, Paul here in this passage of scripture was teaching the Philippians, and it was his prayer that they learn how to be sincere and be blameless. All right. So let's look how Paul calls for integrity by first looking at the word sincere. All right. If you're writing, the word sincere carries the idea of testing something by sunlight. It carries the idea of testing something by sunlight. The English word sincere, it comes from the Latin word sin and then seer, S-I-N. There's a pause, C-E-R-E, but we put the word together, together, which means without wax. All right. In ancient Rome, those who made pottery often covered the cracks in the pottery with wax to deceive those who purchased the items. So there were imperfections in the pottery that they made, but they took wax, covered up the cracks to deceive the person that was buying the product. However, one could discern if the pot was sincere by lifting up the pot to the sun and allowing the light to shine through it. All right. So when Paul was praying for the believers to be sincere, he was not praying for perfection. He knows that the word of God says that the body of Christ will not be perfect until Christ come, but he was praying them to be free from hypocrisy or from being hypocritical, not to cover up their flaws in their life with wax, so to speak. All right. One of the problems in the church today is wax, the pretense of wax. We put on the wax of church attendance. We put on the wax of everything is okay. Therefore, we often never share our real life issues with anybody because we say we're believers or we put this mask on to make people think that I'm so anointed that I don't cry at night when I'm by myself. I'm so anointed that I don't have issues in my marriage or in my relationship. I'm so anointed that my children are not just like your children. They have problems of their own. I'm so anointed until I'm not real, until I want you to see that I'm not faced with life issues. But the reality of the matter is that no matter how much or how far we go in God, we're still going to be faced with real life issues. And the church sometimes ignores the real life issues of the believers and the non-believers because we teach this faith so much to the point we teach people to have faith until we don't teach them that, hey, you're going to have some problems in your life. All right. You're going to have some issues in your life that's going to try your faith. All right. You're going to have some things in your life that's going to shake you so bad until it'll make you go before God and say, God, do I really believe you? Do I really believe that you can do this? Your faith is going to be tempted believers at some point in your life. Now, it sounds good to say, I believe God. Okay. It sounds good to say, I have faith in God. But the reality of the matter, do we really have faith in God or are we putting on a hypocritical mask? I don't want people to know I hurt. All right. And sometimes are people that are overly anointed or overly Christian that's so big in the church that they don't want people to see their flaws. Those are the ones that are actually crying out for help, but they just don't know how to ask for it. The reality is I'm afraid that if I ask for help, you're going to think that I'm less than what I profess to be. All right. I don't want to hang that long. Let me go here. So we put on different masks or different rags and we never share our issues with one another. I think the problem is you can't ever get help with a situation until you come forward and be upfront and be forthcoming and say, listen, I'm struggling in the area. I believe God, but I'm struggling in the area. I need help in this area. This is beyond me. All right. I'm struggling. I need help. This is beyond me. I can't handle it. So our willingness to be transparent, because this is where we're going, because we got to learn to have transparency in our believer's walk, not Christian walk, but in our believer's walk with the Lord. We would rather act like everything is perfect than to admit our flaws before one another or even before God. The fact of the matter, there was a lot of hypocrisy in the church. All right. One of the consequences of sin in the Garden of Eden was that man began to hide both from God and man. All right. Adam and Eve ate of the tree and then they went and hid from one another because they covered themselves up. So that means when they covered the areas up and they noticed that they had stuff that they didn't know they had, they covered it up. So they hid from one another and then they hid from God. There was no transparency. This is how the world is today. The world hides their insecurities. They hide their pain behind nice cars, nice jobs, money in the bank, the perfect relationship, the perfect children. Y'all get where I'm going. All right. The bling bling. They hide behind their insecurities and their pain. All right. There's no more transparency in the world. The counseling industry has become largely, has become large primarily because people need a place to share their issues that they've been hiding and not telling nobody. This is why folks seek counseling and they go to all these doctors and they spend all their money going to the shrink because they just need a place to open up what they've been hiding from everybody else. If I go over here and I tell it, I've just got to tell somebody. Because, you know, when you tell stuff to your friend, every best friend got a best friend. You think your best friend is only your best friend. Your best friend is your best friend, but your best friend got a best friend. So quite naturally, when you tell your insecurities and your pain to them, they're going to say, girl, let me tell you. You know what I'm saying? You didn't hear this from me. Well, now it makes people insecure and it makes them want to run and hide in places and go to places where they feel like their insecurities and their pain can come out. So it's a place where, so this is what, this is the place where the church, this is the role of the church. The church should be a place where we could come to confess our sin before God and from one another in order to help each other heal and grow. All right? James 5 and 16 says, therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous man is powerful and it is effective. But sometimes you have to be careful even in that fact of even telling people your struggles and your issues, because they start to look at you different. This is where fear comes in, because if I say this, am I still going to be looked at the same way? So if I keep it hidden, I'm still struggling. If I say it, I'm still struggling because it's the fear of no longer being accepted. All right? And a lot of people inside of the four walls of the church struggle with the fear of no longer being accepted among the believers. Because is it going to disappoint them? Or is it going to make them, see I told you, he wasn't nothing like he said he was. This is the point that people are really going to be genuinely disappointed enough to assist me to do better or disappointed enough to say, I told you so. All right? And these are the struggles that believers have inside of the church. All right? This is what causes people to fall away from the church. All right? James called for the church to confess their sins to one another, to pray for one another, so that they could be healed. Even the Lord's prayer amplifies and it says forgives us for our trespasses. This implies a community of believers confessing their sin before one another and before God. So now when this happens, there is healing. God heals individuals, he heals churches, and he heals nations. So the question from here, how do we live sincere in our lives? How can we live a sincere life? I'm going to tell you that it's not by being perfect. All right? This is my definition. It's not by being perfect, but it is by being willing to confess our sins to others and before God. It is saying, I'm not perfect. I need mercy. I need encouragement from the community of believers to help me grow in Christ. This is what we're for. Bible says this, if your brother's overtaken in a fall, you that spiritual restore such a one, lest you also fall into temptation. Other words, when your brother has fallen into a place that he can't come out of, it's our job to restore, not to bash, to restore, not to judge, to restore, not to make feel bad, but to generally restore. Now, how do we restore? Because that's, you know, that may be like speaking Latin to somebody. What does it mean to restore? You go to them with a spirit of love and a spirit of meekness and you perhaps tell them, listen, I know you made a mistake, but you need to understand God still can love you where you are. All right? Because sometimes it's just good to just tell somebody that you ain't so far gone that God can't love you. 90% of the people that commit suicide, commit suicide, why? Because they feel like nobody cares. They feel like nobody understands. It's just me against everybody else. And this is a deception from the enemy. People generally love them, but they've already got it in their minds. Nobody cares. Nobody loves me. I might as well just end it. I'm better off dead. All right? And they fall into that trap because we as believers just fail to just tell them, listen, you don't have to, you don't have to stay like you are. I understand you made a mistake, but God wants to love you through your mistake. Perfect is not the sense of being sinless. All right? Perfect doesn't mean I'm sinless. And this is my definition. It means having a mindset that includes a desire and a willingness to please God. That's how you become perfect. Now, perfection is a continuous process that ends with the eternal progression. Perfection is a continuous process that ends with the eternal progression. Now, why would you say that? Because God may allow you to be perfect on this level. You may perfect this thing. You may perfect A, B, C, but D, E, F, I think I said A, B, C, D, E, yeah, right. D, E, F, Lord have mercy. D, E, F may be still in turmoil. So I've overcome one thing. I've perfected that area of my life. So I've overcome that. I've perfected that part of my Christian walk. So now what's left for me to do is deal with, what is it, A, B, C, D, E, F, deal with D, E, F. Lord, I have to say my A, B, C's. And so when I deal with that, then I can move on to the next three. I ain't going to embarrass myself. So I've dealt with the first set of what I need. God has perfected that. I've overcome that. Now I run to something else in my life. I have to perfect that and I have to overcome that. I believe that perfection is not done all at one time. Because the Bible says if a man says he don't sin, he's a what? He's a liar. That's what the Bible says. If any man tells you that they don't sin, the word of God says they're a liar. And you get some folks that profess to be all perfect before you and they make you think that because you have issues and you have struggles that you're less than what God calls you to do. But these folks got secret stuff. They have iniquity. They've got stuff that's hidden behind the scenes. This is what the lesson is about. Integrity. They tell you one thing, they preach you down and try to make you feel bad. But secretly behind the scenes, they got stuff going on. The Bible says this, the eye of the Lord is in every place, beholding what? The good and the bad. Which means God sees everything. Ecclesiastes says this, get the conclusion of the whole matter. Say every secret thing that's done in the dark, every secret thing that's done behind the scenes, say God sees it and he's going to judge it. In other words, you can't get away from God. The point about having integrity is just being transparent before God. When you go before God, he doesn't care about how many degrees you got behind your name. Some folks got more degrees than a thermometer. He don't care anything about that. He cares about your heart. Are you coming to me with a pure heart? That's what he means, come as you are, not how you dress. If you're a liar, come to me as a liar. If you're a harmonger, come to me as a harmonger. He said, though your sins be as scarlet, he said, but I'll make you whiter than snow. So whatever your, in other words, whatever your struggle is in your life, God say, come to me like that. Some people, you know, when you try to talk to people, I say, well, when I get myself together, I'll be there. I hate it so much. I hate it so much. And when I tell him, I say, well, you'll never come. Well, what do you mean? Because you'll never get yourself together. You could never get yourself together. And then that's contrary to what the Bible say. He said, come as you are. In other words, I try to tell church folks, you can't clean a fish in water. I don't think you can. Now I don't know nothing about fishing, but I ain't never seen nobody go out there into the river and clean a fish while it's still in the water. You can't clean a fish till you catch it. So in other words, if we're going to come before God, we got to come as broken as we are because you can't fix yourself. Whatever your struggle, whatever your issues is, you bring that before God and you allow God to fix that. So this is the mark that believers must have in their life. Number one, they are humble and they're open about their continual struggles and their sins. Remember this, Paul said this in the book of Romans chapter seven, he said, the things that I would do, I do not do. The things that I wouldn't do, I do. And that's a paraphrase. In first Timothy 1 and 15, he says that he was the cheapest among the sinners. When we act like we're perfect, watch this, we turn into Pharisees because the Pharisees were the most hypocritical people in Jesus time. They knew what the word said. They knew what the law said, but they didn't know the word. Now that sounds like a contradiction. I said, they knew what the word said, but they didn't know the word because the word was Jesus Christ. The Bible say in the beginning was the word and the word became flesh. So Jesus Christ was the word. They knew what the word said in the book, but when the word was right there with them, they didn't know the word. All right. This is what helped send Jesus to the cross for our behalf because they knew that a Messiah was coming. They believed that. But when the Messiah came, they didn't believe he was the Messiah. Because of how he came and because who he belonged to. All right. Jesus came to the earth by way of a carpenter and a virgin, but they only knew him as Joseph's boy. Oh, that's Joseph and Mary, little old boy. He ain't about nothing. He ain't no Messiah. So they knew what the word said, but they didn't know the word. You tell you something, don't be a believer that knows the word in the book, but don't know the word when the word is standing right next to you. All right. That's dangerous. All right. So the Pharisees acted like they was perfect, but they had deep down inside some real life true issues. All right. And they had, when we were talking about the wax, but I call it a mask, they had the mask of daily devotion. They prayed every day. They were faithful to the church attendance, but inside they were full of dead men bones. They were just as dead on the inside because they couldn't see the eternal light of God that was walking the earth with them. Isn't it something that we know scripture. You got people can quote scripture a whole lot better than I can. They can tell you the verse, almost the page it is on in the Bible. They know this, but when it actually comes down to the relationship, what we've been talking about the last few weeks, the relationship, they don't have, they got the religion, but they don't have the relationship. We're full of pride and anger. We're judgmental and unforgiving. We become just like the Pharisees. Judgmentalism is a characteristic of someone who is not sincere with themselves, others, or with God. So they have to judge. You know, you ever dealt with that person that have to make you feel bad in order to make themselves look good. Y'all ever dealt with somebody like that? You ever talked to somebody, everything somebody else do is wrong, but they do everything right. Then the type of people that you need to stay far away from. Let me tell you something. I don't want to be with no preacher that would constantly throw up in my face how perfect he is. I'm going to run for, I'm scared of you. The Bible says you're a liar. And the Bible says a liar won't carry in the sight of God. In other words, God hates a liar. The Bible says if any man say he does not sin, he is a liar. Am I condoning sin? No, I'm not. But there's the sin of omission and the sin of commission. In other words, I may sin and offend somebody and I'm unaware of it. Or I may purposely sin. Either way, it's a sin. Most people look at church attendance and their outwardly righteous behavior, and they look down on everybody else that ain't like them. I was talking to somebody the other night, and they was kind of coming down on the person because that person didn't believe like them. And I'm like, well, then you ain't going to gain them like that. They don't believe how you believe. Then the best thing to show a person is not tell them. But what's the best way to gain somebody? Show them. You know, we learn, it's sort of like on-the-job training. I'm the type of person, you could tell me all day how to do something. I will never grasp it. That's just how my learning is. But if you show me how to do it, you may have to show me about two times. On that third time, by the way, let me try it. Because what I see, I process. And I learn by what I see. Some people, you can give them instructions. You can tell them, you put three eggs in here, and a pinch of salt here, and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. I have to read it. I got to see it in order for me to do it. You can't tell me, I got to see it. You got to see the recipe written down in order for me to grasp. However, your learning process is. But there are people, sometimes they can't go by what you say. They're going to watch you. And they're going to learn by what they see you do. That's why we got to have integrity. I got a lot of preachers. And I'm not bad in the church, but I have to, these are just examples. A lot of preachers that preach heaven down in the pulpit on Sunday. But they go home and they're totally different ways with their wife and church, beating the wife, cheating on the wife, abusing the kids. So when they up there preaching, the wife don't know who, I don't know their name. That ain't the same man I just left home with. Hypocritical. That's why we got to, if we're going to have, because we're talking about integrity tonight. So if we're going to have integrity, we got to learn how to be one way. The Bible says you're going to either be hot or cold. Because Jesus said in Revelation, if you're lukewarm, I'm going to speak to you. He said, be one way, hot or cold. Ain't no in between. That's what Jesus said. Paul was praying that the church be free of hypocrisy. When Jesus gave the parable of the prodigal son, the purpose was not to condemn the son who came back home, but it was to condemn the older brother that never left home. I'm going to say it again. When Jesus talked about the prodigal son, many people hound in on the brother that left home. But the purpose of the parable was not to show you the brother that left, but show you the brother that had been home all that time and had done nothing. The Pharisees were mocking Christ because he was a friend of the sinners. They were the older brothers who judged the others and yet could not see their evil attitudes. They mocked and condemned those who sinned outwardly, but it was their sin of pride and self-righteousness that kept them out of the presence of God, who would ultimately condemn them to hell. They were not sincere. They were full of hypocrisy. So they condemned others. You ain't like me. You don't shout like me. You don't fall out and speak in tongues like I do. I'm sorry, y'all. And sometimes because others don't praise like us, we find ourselves being just mental toward their praise. But however you praise, let me tell you something, you may not run. You may just stand there and pat your foot. You may not pat your foot. You may bob your head. You may pat your knee. However you praise, that's your praise. But you want to know where I really believe praise starts? I believe praise starts in your heart because the best praise you and I could ever give God is gratitude. Who said praise had to be loud and boisterous? Where was that written? Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Who said praise had to be loud and boisterous? Why can't praise just give back to God gratitude? God, I thank you for what you've done. Because your attitude of gratitude, you may express that in a totally different way. So what is the way to praise God? Obedience to the Word of God is a way to praise. Y'all believe that? Hello? All right, let me move on. Y'all quiet. Obedience is another way to praise. I may not jump, run, and shout like everybody else, but I'm obedient to the Word of God. Now I'm going to ask you a question. Which one do you think God is going to receive? Your jumping around, hollering, or you being obedient to His Word? Now am I condemning that? No. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. He's going to receive your obedience. Now am I saying that it's wrong to do that? No. And I'm not condemning those that, you know, if that's their act of, you know, praise. I'm going to tell you this. You know, as black people, it's in our culture. We move with the music. We were just gifted or blessed with the talent of dancing. We hear music, we're going to automatically bob. It don't have to be church music. So the question is, am I really praising or am I just reacting to the music? I'm for real. Put R. Kelly on and you ain't going to be thinking nothing about nothing. You just listen to the music. You get caught in the music, you're going to find your footpath. You're going to be, you know, you swaying along with the beat of the music. Is that praising God? No. You're reacting to the music. Correct. All right. You know, I don't have anything against worship. You know, I just, I have to clarify this. But I just believe that God responds a whole lot faster to our obedience. I believe he responds a whole lot faster to our obedience. So now listen. So now we're dealing with hypocrisy. Let me tell you how hypocritical the older brother was. So now the younger brother went home and he disgraced his father by saying, you know, give me my part now. The daddy wasn't disgraced his father by saying, you know, give me my part now. The daddy wasn't even dead. Inheritance only comes when somebody dies. It ain't no good until somebody died and leaves you your inheritance. The daddy was still alive. And the younger brother of the prodigal son asked his daddy for his inheritance while his daddy was still alive. Now, what a slap in the face. You basically telling me as your daddy, that you wish I was dead or I'm better off being dead because you want your inheritance now. So his daddy gave it to him. But the other brother was sitting there. And when, when his brother come back home and his daddy was overjoyed, my son that was lost and come back home, he gave him a ring. The Bible says he put a robe on him. He killed the fattest cow. They had the biggest party boy. They ate, they partied and the brother sitting over there with a frown on his face. Huh? He gave him all that. He ain't never did that for me. And I ain't never left home. I've been here the whole time with daddy. You see where I'm going with this? But the daddy said that I'm rejoicing because my son that was lost has come back home. All right. Now my question to you all tonight, are you free of hypocrisy? The textbook definition of hypocrisy basically means a failure to practice what you preach. That's what basically the textbook is going to tell you. But my definition of hypocrisy is my definition of hypocrisy is failure to become the product of whom you believe in. I ain't worried about you practicing what you preach. If you tell me stop lying and, and if I tell you to stop lying, I'm lying. Yeah, I'm hypocritical. Let me give you another way to look at that. All right. Failure to become the product of who we believe in. We believe in Jesus Christ. All right. So if, if I believe in Jesus Christ and I fail to become a product or a mirror image of Jesus Christ, I'm a hypocrite. Right? Because our job is to become Christ-like. When God looks at us, he should see a reflection of himself or of Jesus Christ. It's still him, of himself. My question is, when God looks at you, what do we see? You know, gold, when they take gold, they melt it down and it's sent to the refiner's fire. And the goldsmith comes back and he looks into the pot and he, you know, he keeps melting, keeps, keeps the heat on, keeps the heat on. He comes back and looks again. He keeps the heat on, keeps the heat on. Now you may wonder in your mind, what is he looking for? When he looks into the liquid of the gold, he's looking for his reflection. Because when he sees his reflection, he knows that all the impurities in the gold has been burnt out. When God looks at you and I, let me say us, he looks for his reflection. So his Holy Ghost burns the impurities that we have in us. Now, is that an instantaneous process? No, ma'am, no, sir. I'm not going to tell you that that's just something that happens overnight. Sometimes you, you know, we have so many issues until sometimes God has to turn the heat up on us. And sometimes we just got to let it burn. Because folks have all kinds of issues going on in life that sometimes are unexplainable. Sometimes they don't know, you know what I'm saying? So, but when God looks at you, the ultimate thing that he wants to see is him. When the world see you and I, when the world see us, there ain't but one person that they should see, and that's Jesus. If they see anything other than Jesus in our lives, we're hypocritical. Because we fail to be the product of whom we believe in. It's easy. When you plant an apple seed, what fruit is it going to bear? An apple, a banana, a banana, a tomato, a tomato. Whatever you plant, whatever the seed is, that's the fruit. So if Christ is going to So if Christ has planted into us spiritually, God has planted into us spiritually, Jesus Christ, his attributes and his ways, then when it grows up, we should, we should reflect nothing but Jesus Christ. And if we fall less of that, we fall less of whom we're supposed to be. All right. My question is, this is an application question. Who do you confess your struggles to? And do you ask for prayer so that you may be healed? Let's talk about being blameless. The word blameless means without stumbling or without offense. God desires for us to be blameless as believers in him. You know, you want to walk in the light of Jesus Christ. And you want to walk in the integrity of Jesus Christ, where you can be blameless. Where can't nobody say, I seen Brother Wheeler at the club, but he's supposed to be a deacon in truth. Because if Brother Wheeler gone to the club offends me, then I shouldn't go. So I should be blameless in my attitude toward one another. I should be blameless in my believers walk. I shouldn't give anybody any ground to say anything other than I'm a son of God. So that means all of our characteristics that we live in our life from day to day should be a mirror reflection of Jesus Christ. Nothing more, nothing less. That's how you know you have integrity. But I'm going to say this, and I'm closing on this point because I'm running into my hours. The main thing about integrity, when it counts the most, is when nobody sees you. Integrity matters the most when you have your private struggles. When you're by yourself, you're not among the band of believers. You're not in a church setting. You're not in the church crowds, but you're by yourself. Can you still stand for Jesus Christ? Can you still say, I'm a son of God? I'm going to have to refuse this I'm going to have to refuse this, you know. And you know, sometimes you be caught in a situation you may be like, as bad as I want to do this, I can't do it. I got a different perspective. I'm a son of God. I can't do that. That's when it counts the most. When there's nobody around and you're by yourself and you're dealing with your private struggles, can you still stand? All right. Any questions? Any comments? Did y'all learn something? Yes. Yes. I'm so much so caught up on the praise thing because, you know, I believe that the only thing that God requires from us as believers is just our obedience. And I just know that as being a natural child, and we all have parents or, you know, our parents may have gone on to be with the Lord. But you ever notice that when you were obedient to your parents, you were always in favor of your parents?