Jesus, Our Savior: Lenten Devotions From Time Of GraceExemplo

Jesus and integrity

I didn’t know about integrity until my junior year in high school. Some of the cool girls drafted me to become class president. I wasn’t the kind of guy they would go to prom with, but apparently they thought I was the kind of guy who could make sure there was a prom.

We were turning our gym into a tropical paradise and burning through our class treasury by making a massive papier-mâché volcano. The gym decorating came to a standstill because we were out of money and materials. Some of the guys carried in some shiny new rolls of chicken wire. I found out the wire was stolen. I kept my head down, loaded the rolls into my ’61 Ford Galaxy, and took them back to the feed mill where they came from. I apologized to the proprietor. He in turn donated the wire to us. Prom was saved.

The next day the principal called me into his office and said, “I heard what you did. That showed a lot of integrity.” Hmm. Integrity. At a critical stage of my development, my principal gave me a building block for my self-concept. He said I had integrity. He also said I had to find a date for the prom.

Temptation tests our integrity. Jesus faced it like we do. We are vulnerable because we are isolated, spent, and crave acceptance. We have integrity when we can consistently say, “Go away, Satan! Scripture says, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him’’’ (Matthew 4:10 GW).