Are You Living with Integrity?

I love watching sports. I used to play quite a few when I was younger. During high school I was in the athletics team, the swimming team, the tennis, and netball teams. After high school I just did not have the time but got my enjoyment from watching anything to do with any sport on tv. I especially love the Olympic games – summer and winter. Of course, I would like my team to win (my country) but I applaud anyone who gives it a go.

At the moment there are pre-Olympic trials occurring all over the world in the different sports. Sports men and women competing to attain that ticket into the Olympic Games. To get that golden ticket that many sports people set as their goal.

Someone asked me the other day how do they sustain themselves? Not just stay fit but focused, not just have the ability but also the inclination and love to put all that effort in, even with the possibility of no reward. No medal. No Personal best time…….

Don’t most of them have personal coaches for their sport, for their minds, for their nutritional health????

This made me think about our lives.

How do we live our life day to day and sustain ourselves? Not just with bodily nourishment but mental and spiritual nourishment. It is ONLY God who can do that. The Holy Spirit sending us His gifts of strength, courage, perseverance, love, kindness, fortitude…. etc. He is the Sustainer of Life.

We cannot live life by ourselves. We need God and interactions with other people.

But not just any interactions. Most importantly we need interactions where we act as God would want us to. We need to have integrity in our lives. To live the way God has called us, as Christians, to live.

We ALL can receive the reward God has for us – eternal life with Him forever. It is NOT just for a few.

How to live our lives is described so well in Colossians and Timothy.

Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ.

Colossians 3:23-24 NRSV

And also

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by Him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of Truth.

2 Timothy 2:15 NRSV

So, this Lent we are being given, yet again, an opportunity to look at our lives. To look at how we live our lives and to change, return, renew our decisions to follow Christ in every aspect of our lives. But we don’t do it alone. GOD IS WITH US on every step of the journey.

May these jottings from my journal inspire you to believe in and fall in love with Christ- the hope of the world, as stated in Jeremiah 17:7, ‘Blessed is the man who believes and trusts in and relies on the Lord and whose hope and confident expectation is the Lord!’

Love

Rosemary

Every week groups of ladies meet together to chat about the things I raise in my weekly blog post and to chat about life in general. We call these ‘Heart Connect’ groups.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Are you turning to God to sustain you in your life? If not, what could you do to turn to Him?

What area of your life have you noticed needs to change and turn back to God this Lent? Where do you need to live with integrity?

What are you going to do to follow Christ at a deeper level?