Daily Devotionals

Bride and Gloom Week 1: Saturday

We are careful to be honorable before the Lord, but we also want everyone else to see that we are honorable. 2 Corinthians 8:21

We were challenged during the weekend sermon to date with integrity. Because integrity involves consistency of character, having integrity in that one area means having integrity in all areas of our lives. Because we are followers of Christ, we are to live with integrity that extends beyond our dating relationships to all our relationships. We must live with integrity in our friendships, work relationships, marriages, and much more. When we live this way, we honor God through our integrity.

The apostle Paul set an example for us of conducting our relationships with integrity in 2 Corinthians 8. In this chapter of the Bible, Paul wrote, "We are careful to be honorable before the Lord, but we also want everyone else to see that we are honorable" (verse 21). He explained in this verse that he and his ministry partner, Titus, did everything to live with integrity before God and the people around them. Notice that Paul said that he and Titus want "everyone" to see their honorable actions. They wanted everyone who observed and interacted with them to see that they were people of honor. They did not want anyone to see less than honorable actions from them. Why did they want to live this way? They understood that they were representatives of God and that their actions could point other people to Christ. It was this mindset that impacted the way they served God and others.

It is this integrity that Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians that we are to model in our relationships. Scripture compels us to practice integrity, whether married, dating, parenting children, or interacting with coworkers. Living this way means that we treat people with kindness and truthfulness. We do not lie to them. We remain consistent in all areas of our lives.

Moving toward action

Look up the definition of integrity in three different dictionaries. Then, when you finish, write your own definition of integrity based on the definitions you read. Then, evaluate. When it comes to your integrity, what is going well? What needs improvement? Think about one step to grow in your integrity beginning this week. Finally, pray. Ask God to help you take these critical steps to honor Him in your integrity this week.

Going Deeper

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (NLT)

"If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.

11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

13 Three things will last forever-faith, hope, and love-and the greatest of these is love."