Strengthening Your Integrity - Part 3

Anger is one of those emotions that makes some people want to act out in  hostile, aggressive ways. In others, anger produces withdrawal and isolation. Expressing healthy, normal anger can clear the air, articulate grievances, and establish better communications. Anger, when conveyed appropriately, can be the pathway to deeper intimacy and closeness.

Guilt, caused by inappropriate anger or by justifiable anger expressed  inappropriately, leads to damaged integrity. You can't mix integrity and guilt, just  as oil and water do not mix. Where guilt abounds, integrity suffers. As a rudder is to a ship, so integrity is to a person. Integrity keeps you on course even in the storms of life.

Integrity helps you come back from failure to reclaim God's purpose. Strengthened by God's word and the presence of Christ in you, integrity insists on confession, repentance, and forgiveness so you can do what is right to correct what is wrong. Where sin abounds, God's unmerited favor does much more abound. God's grace gives you power to change. 

Strengthening Your Integrity - Part 2

Integrity is a corrective force that keeps us on track when life seems to be lurching out of control. Accepting Christ as one's personal Savior gives strength to integrity as nothing else can. Christians are imperfect and subject to sin, so our integrity can be damaged when wrong-doing is justified to protect oneself from embarrassment or shame.

Someone said: "I don't understand what's happening to me. Instead of telling the truth, I find myself lying about everything, even small, insignificant matters of no consequence." Misrepresentations of truth result in erosion of integrity. Some Christians choose this behavioral pattern knowing it damages their integrity and self-worth.

Permitting your integrity to erode invites despair. God's plan for anyone who feels enslaved by this condition includes confession, repentance, and re-commitment of your life to Christ. Choosing God's way insures positive change, so decide now to anchor your life where there is forgiveness, a new beginning, and God's purpose for living.

Strengthening Your Integrity - Part 1

To believe all anger is wrong creates perpetual guilt. While anger may be frustrating, even destructive, normal anger can be healthy and helpful if properly channeled. Healthy expressions of anger take the initiative to correct what is wrong or unfair. Other healthy expressions of anger lead to the pursuit of knowledge and improved communications to clarify misunderstandings.

Our integrity is strengthened when anger is expressed in a non-accusatory way rather than as a means for harming and controlling others. Guilt is accrued when anger is used as a weapon against another person. Guilt will overshadow healthy integrity and eventually lead to despair.

Pursuing resolutions for anger enhances integrity. God calls us to follow his initiative in managing anger. Listen to Exodus 34:12: "The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithfulness and love." Choose to shield your integrity with these attributes, for they will prevent guilt from getting a foothold and dominating your life.