LET'S THINK ABOUT an essential mark of following Christ: absolute honesty.
Remember these words?
Therefore, since God in his mercy has given us this new way, we never give up. We reject all shameful deeds and underhanded methods. We don't try to trick anyone or distort the word of God. We tell the truth before God, and all who are honest know this.
And how about these?
You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News to you boldly, in spite of great opposition. So you can see we were not preaching with any deceit or impure motives or trickery. For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts.
Paul's words offer a bracing tonic for our age of duplicity. Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it . . . as do followers of Christ who embrace such Spirit-empowered virtues. No ulterior motives. No hidden agenda. In Him was an absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality.
As honesty and integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others. We'll come to the place where all the substitutes will turn us off once we cultivate a taste for the authentic.
Think about becoming more like Jesus. Pray about becoming more like Him. Be real—that's what I want to get across. Be who you are deep within and then allow the Lord God to develop within you a style of following Christ that draws others to Him.
Devotional content taken from Good Morning, Lord . . . Can We Talk? by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2018. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved. The full devotional can be purchased at tyndale.com or wherever books are sold.
Used with permission. All rights reserved.
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