Integrity = doing and being are aligned!

A friend once said, “Sometimes, to think right you have to do right.” She was responding to my statement that God wants our motivation to be behind what we do and our thoughts in line with our actions. I was convinced of that because of these verses:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1–2)

Yes, our bodies belong to God and what we do with them is to be an act of worship, yet the transformation starts with a renewed mind that can discern the will of God. It seems to me that I cannot obey the will of God unless I can figure out what it is and put my mind on it.

Tozer says that the Holy Spirit makes this happen. He gives us the ability to offer ourselves as a sacrifice set apart to serve God. Tozer also says we are in danger if we think we are delivered from sin but have only moved from one sin to another.

My first thought is about a small quilt that I just finished for another person. It was a sacrifice for me because it took time and effort and was not a design I would have picked to make for the sheer enjoyment of making it. Yet during the process of this ‘sacrificial’ action, I’ve noted pride. I’m proud of my sacrifice — moving from the selfishness I thought I’d abandoned to pride about doing it.

In a broader sense, this shift from sin to sin can happen to those who are not saved but start going to church. Tozer warns that we can think we have become Christians yet in reality, we have only changed location. He compared this to once “sinning in the far country among the swineherds but now chumming with religious persons” which might make us more respectable in appearance but not actually transformed by the power of God through His redemption.

Tozer adds that a saved person is convicted of sin, but also of sinfulness. God wants me to know that it is not just what I do that makes me need Christ; it is what I am. Doing is a surface issue; the root of it is in my being. That is, I cannot do a wrong thing, confess it, and be transformed without considering what motivated that doing. He calls me to dig deeper.

^^^^^^^^

Jesus, while this quilt-making seems a little thing, it reveals how much I can make myself the center of even a small sacrifice instead of doing it out of love for You, love for others, and to glorify Your name. I bow my head in need of forgiveness and the grace to live according to the new creation that You say I am.