COMBINATION THAT WORKS
Job 2:1-10, Acts 19:11-20

Good intention without integrity is the same as spiritual emptiness. For every man who wants to be good without having integrity of backing up their good intention, there will be nothing in place to move God. The American Heritage College Dictionary defines integrity as: “steadfast adherence to a strict ethical code; the state of being unimpaired; soundness; the quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness”. Can you imagine God testifying you as being a person of integrity? God testified on behalf of Job in Job 2:3, “Then the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause..” God, by Himself, qualified Job as a man of integrity. For God to have described Job as a man of integrity, Job must have walked the walk and lived the Word. He earned it all before God, but yet the enemy was accessible in touching him. At the time the enemy was allowed to touch Job, among all who should have been encouraging to Job and not be a discouragement was his wife. Job’s strength before God was his integrity and sadly it became the tool for his wife in her attempt to discourage him because she questioned Job by asking, “…Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9) Despite the discouraging statement by his wife, his integrity remained intact with strong intention. The wife was supposed to be a helper to him, but in his situation, however, she rather turned into discouraging him.Keep your head straight up and your eyes only unto God in your current situation. With steadfast intention, hold on to your testimony before God. Job did not waver but held onto his testimony of integrity. Like Job, it could be that your current situation is your way to be multiplied in the blessings of God. In the New Testament, the case of good intention with no integrity was that of the itinerant Jewish exorcists. The itinerant Jewish exorcists, “…took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, ‘We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches’.” (Acts 19:13) These itinerant Jewish exorcists had the intention of casting out evil spirits, but the level of integrity that would cause God to look in their direction was absent from their lives. Faulting in the line of integrity does not require a big or consistent case of lying, but even a very simple and what can be considered as a minor lie is enough to disrupt your testimony of integrity.

Prayer for today: O Lord, help me and allow good intention and integrity to add up in making me a vessel of honor to the glory of Your Holy Name.