“Let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be.” Romans 12:6 The Message
“Practical integrity is about your being who you are created to be and handcrafted to do.”
My thoughts today are about “practical integrity.”
Do you know someone who struggles to differentiate themselves from others while not wanting to be too different from everyone else? Maybe you know a friend that you want to occasionally ask, “Who are you, really?” Ever wonder that about yourself? Better to be an original, than a copy mass produced. I think adolescence is a time for sorting some of that out, though I observe that for most of us it is somewhat of a life-long process. Imagine the tension that produces in your soul. I think that tension may be because God created you to celebrate your similarities and appreciate your distinctions, and how to do that seems a bit confusing at times.
Wonderfully, you are one of a kind – unique and distinct from all others, without being strangely separate from them. Who but God could figure out how to accomplish that? I am told that no two snowflakes are identically the same, even in the biggest blizzard. Of all the several billion people in the world that now live or ever have, there are no two individuals with the same fingerprints or DNA. A God who has never needed to repeat Himself in creating such a numberless diversity would certainly have made you marvelously unique and distinct from others.
Now, you need to believe in your designed uniqueness and discover the singular purpose for which God made you as He did. Only then will you feel free to celebrate how God made you, and commit yourself to fully realizing your calling and life-assignment. When you know this in your heart as true, you will not be tempted to compare yourself with others, play a role, nor allow peer pressure or culture to wrongly influence you to be anything other than you naturally are.
I think all of this is what practical integrity is about; I suggest that integrity is about being fully who you are meant to be, created to be, and shaped to do. Integrity in every area of life is essential, not optional – in business, in relationships, in your spiritual life, and in life as a whole.
Someone has written, “God’s gift to you is how He made you. Your gift to God is what you do with all He gave you.” You are special to me, and to God. You have a lot to offer that will benefit others and honor God, but you can only do that successfully, and feel truly satisfied in doing so, when you contribute what only you have been handcrafted by God to bring to life – yours and others’.
My prayer for you today is that you are free to be yourself and celebrate that with joy.