Living with Integrity: A Call to Transformation
Devotional
Sermon Summary
Sermon Clips
"I want to say a special welcome to those of you who are new here today. So glad that you're here. My name is Alex, and we're delighted if you're joining us here for the very first time, whether it's in person or online. Welcome, welcome, welcome. A couple weeks ago, we rolled out our sort of a big kind of couple -year vision and plan of what we're hoping and praying God might do in us and through us, and maybe in spite of us, over the next three years between now and December 2027. And the way that we talked about it was that we're hoping and praying that God might make us into a kind of church that we're describing as a force multiplier for kingdom good, that we would be the kind of community where we might see more lives changed and more small groups, more people connected, and working through faith, growing in their faith in multiple kinds of ways, classes and courses, along with our small groups, and then making a bigger impact in our community than ever, ever, ever before." [00:00:45] (50 seconds)
"In this room, we've had people come alive to faith that didn't mean anything to them before, but is now sort of awakening and something new and experiencing grace and mercy in new ways. In our community, we've seen addictions broken. In our community, we've seen people who are anxious and alone find community, connection. We've even seen people battling illness be delivered from that illness, and those who weren't were just accompanied, no longer fighting on their own as they struggled against medical illness. God has done amazing things in us and through us. And so part of the why behind this whole vision is that we want to be a church that changes and impacts our community, our world, to the best of our ability." [00:01:26] (41 seconds)
"And what we're going to wrestle with today and ask the question of ourselves as we talk about what does it mean for us to be people who are changing our world around us is what does it mean to show up at work in the same way? And the way we're going to talk about is this. The way we're talking about Daniel's story is he's got integrity. That's it. Integrity is just integrated. It integrated life of faith, hope, love in his character and in his actions and his words and his witness. This integrated life of faith, hope, and love plus excellence in his work. And we're going to define work here in a little bit as anything you're doing that's like your day job, side hustle, Etsy shop, hanging out with kids full time, hanging out with grandkids. Some of you, grandparenting is a full -time job, right? Some of you like hazardous duty pay. You're like traveling all over the state. You're putting 60 -hour work weeks in, carting the grandkids around. So excellence in your work at whatever it is that you're working at, right? So integrity, integrated life of faith, hope, love, and your character and your words and actions and witness plus excellence in your work, that is a life that honors God and opens the door wide for God's kingdom to come." [00:04:42] (63 seconds)
"If there's any place where you're cutting corners, lying, plagiarizing, using materials that's not yours, not giving credit, student, adult, grandparent, if there's any place where you're doing shady dealings, I'm so glad you're here, today's your invitation to come into the light. Because lying, cheating, cutting corners, manipulating, manufacturing outcomes, cooking the books, whatever those things are, like all those are just lies that get on top of lies, on top of lies, and you're lying to cover up the lie that covers up the lie, and suddenly you're so deep in it, you don't even know what's true anymore." [00:17:19] (33 seconds)
"And then to deal with whatever comes out because you don't want to be hiding in the darkness anymore. And then to move forward with excellence, with integrity, because having integrity in your character, working out and integrating your faith into every area of your life, and doing your work with excellence and honesty, that honors God, points to his goodness, and it opens the door for his kingdom to come. Is there anything that you need to make right at work, whatever your work is, in order to honor the Lord?" [00:18:23] (32 seconds)
"When you're faithful in a place where sin abounds, it's true in a family, it's true in a friend group, a friend circle, eventually people who are very comfortable in sin, for whom this is working for them, they're getting something out of this, can become very uncomfortable with you. Some of us have had this experience where you've been in a friend group, a circle of people, you came to faith, faith became a more significant part of your life, and you started to make different choices than your old friends used to, and they start to get uncomfortable with you, right? They start to sort of push back, reject, make fun of, right? Whatever." [00:21:48] (31 seconds)
"Faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage. These are the cardinal virtues of Scripture. They apply to every situation. You drop faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage into any matrix of problem or challenges that you're facing, you become a better person and sometimes situation becomes better. Not always. You conducting yourself in the midst of a conflict. Some of you are in this right now, right? There's stuff going on at work. There's conflict. There's things being said about you that aren't true or that's partially true but twisted or whatever. There's stuff going on. You showing up as a person of faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage makes you a better person no matter what happens to the situation around you and can reshape the situation around you according to the way of the kingdom sometimes. Not always, but sometimes." [00:24:14] (42 seconds)
"And in Babylon, he cultivated this crazy, ridiculous practice. Three times a day, he prayed, giving thanks to God, even in Babylon. You know why? Because God is still God, even in Babylon. God is still God, even in Babylon. God is still God, even in Babylon. And he was going to anchor his resilience around the God who is Lord, even in Babylon. In a culture and a world drowning in anxiety and fear, here's the battle for your soul. You want to be resilient. If you want to be a resilient person, steal this prayer. Steal this practice. You pray three times a day with thanksgiving to God, even in Babylon." [00:27:05] (38 seconds)
"Even on the bad days, even on the hard days, even when everyone's conspiring against you, even when a law has been passed that's designed to throw you to the lion's den, you go home and give thanks to God three times that day, you're winning the resilience battle. You win. Daniel goes and does this thing he's habituated. And if you prayed three times a day for decades, then you keep praying the next day, even after a law gets passed, it's going to get you thrown to the lion's den." [00:27:46] (27 seconds)
"The community festival, the trunk retreat thing we did in the fall, the extravaganza coming up in a couple months, Christmas Eve was like the best party in Chatham County on Christmas Eve. We throw great parties. When I invite my friends and neighbors in my neighborhood, in my community, come to Chatham Community Church for this event, we throw great parties. We have people here who are frequently talented at throwing great parties. We put a ton of time, effort, and energy into throwing a great party because when people are willing to come to Chatham Community Church for a great event, we want to communicate to them excellence because excellence honors God and opens the door for the kingdom to come." [00:30:47] (33 seconds)
"around you, first and foremost, that we might live lives of integrated faith, that we might be people of integrity and excellence, and that you might be glorified in that and that your spirit might move through it to release new witness, new power, new grace, and mercy. Lord, for my friends who are here who aren't sure they believe any of this, Lord Jesus, would you invite them to come and see, come and see, come and see what a life of faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage might look like, to be that kind of people, to be shaped by that kind of ethos, those kinds of things that Jesus introduced. Oh, come, Lord Jesus, help all of us to be people who go to work, show up in our work in these ways, that in your kindness and in your mercy, you might work through us to change our world. We pray that for us individually, we pray that for Chatham Community Church as we love and serve our neighbors here in Chatham County, and we ask all this in Jesus' strong body name. Amen, amen, amen." [00:35:47] (51 seconds)
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"In this room, we've had people come alive to faith that didn't mean anything to them before, but is now sort of awakening and something new and experiencing grace and mercy in new ways. In our community, we've seen addictions broken. In our community, we've seen people who are anxious and alone find community, connection. We've even seen people battling illness be delivered from that illness, and those who weren't were just accompanied, no longer fighting on their own as they struggled against medical illness. God has done amazing things in us and through us. And so part of the why behind this whole vision is that we want to be a church that changes and impacts our community, our world, to the best of our ability." [00:01:26] (41 seconds)
"And what we're going to wrestle with today and ask the question of ourselves as we talk about what does it mean for us to be people who are changing our world around us is what does it mean to show up at work in the same way? And the way we're going to talk about is this. The way we're talking about Daniel's story is he's got integrity. That's it. Integrity is just integrated. It integrated life of faith, hope, love in his character and in his actions and his words and his witness. This integrated life of faith, hope, and love plus excellence in his work. And we're going to define work here in a little bit as anything you're doing that's like your day job, side hustle, Etsy shop, hanging out with kids full time, hanging out with grandkids. Some of you, grandparenting is a full -time job, right? Some of you like hazardous duty pay. You're like traveling all over the state. You're putting 60 -hour work weeks in, carting the grandkids around. So excellence in your work at whatever it is that you're working at, right? So integrity, integrated life of faith, hope, love, and your character and your words and actions and witness plus excellence in your work, that is a life that honors God and opens the door wide for God's kingdom to come." [00:04:42] (63 seconds)
"If there's any place where you're cutting corners, lying, plagiarizing, using materials that's not yours, not giving credit, student, adult, grandparent, if there's any place where you're doing shady dealings, I'm so glad you're here, today's your invitation to come into the light. Because lying, cheating, cutting corners, manipulating, manufacturing outcomes, cooking the books, whatever those things are, like all those are just lies that get on top of lies, on top of lies, and you're lying to cover up the lie that covers up the lie, and suddenly you're so deep in it, you don't even know what's true anymore." [00:17:19] (33 seconds)
"And then to deal with whatever comes out because you don't want to be hiding in the darkness anymore. And then to move forward with excellence, with integrity, because having integrity in your character, working out and integrating your faith into every area of your life, and doing your work with excellence and honesty, that honors God, points to his goodness, and it opens the door for his kingdom to come. Is there anything that you need to make right at work, whatever your work is, in order to honor the Lord?" [00:18:23] (32 seconds)
"When you're faithful in a place where sin abounds, it's true in a family, it's true in a friend group, a friend circle, eventually people who are very comfortable in sin, for whom this is working for them, they're getting something out of this, can become very uncomfortable with you. Some of us have had this experience where you've been in a friend group, a circle of people, you came to faith, faith became a more significant part of your life, and you started to make different choices than your old friends used to, and they start to get uncomfortable with you, right? They start to sort of push back, reject, make fun of, right? Whatever." [00:21:48] (31 seconds)
"Faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage. These are the cardinal virtues of Scripture. They apply to every situation. You drop faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage into any matrix of problem or challenges that you're facing, you become a better person and sometimes situation becomes better. Not always. You conducting yourself in the midst of a conflict. Some of you are in this right now, right? There's stuff going on at work. There's conflict. There's things being said about you that aren't true or that's partially true but twisted or whatever. There's stuff going on. You showing up as a person of faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage makes you a better person no matter what happens to the situation around you and can reshape the situation around you according to the way of the kingdom sometimes. Not always, but sometimes." [00:24:14] (42 seconds)
"And in Babylon, he cultivated this crazy, ridiculous practice. Three times a day, he prayed, giving thanks to God, even in Babylon. You know why? Because God is still God, even in Babylon. God is still God, even in Babylon. God is still God, even in Babylon. And he was going to anchor his resilience around the God who is Lord, even in Babylon. In a culture and a world drowning in anxiety and fear, here's the battle for your soul. You want to be resilient. If you want to be a resilient person, steal this prayer. Steal this practice. You pray three times a day with thanksgiving to God, even in Babylon." [00:27:05] (38 seconds)
"Even on the bad days, even on the hard days, even when everyone's conspiring against you, even when a law has been passed that's designed to throw you to the lion's den, you go home and give thanks to God three times that day, you're winning the resilience battle. You win. Daniel goes and does this thing he's habituated. And if you prayed three times a day for decades, then you keep praying the next day, even after a law gets passed, it's going to get you thrown to the lion's den." [00:27:46] (27 seconds)
"The community festival, the trunk retreat thing we did in the fall, the extravaganza coming up in a couple months, Christmas Eve was like the best party in Chatham County on Christmas Eve. We throw great parties. When I invite my friends and neighbors in my neighborhood, in my community, come to Chatham Community Church for this event, we throw great parties. We have people here who are frequently talented at throwing great parties. We put a ton of time, effort, and energy into throwing a great party because when people are willing to come to Chatham Community Church for a great event, we want to communicate to them excellence because excellence honors God and opens the door for the kingdom to come." [00:30:47] (33 seconds)
"around you, first and foremost, that we might live lives of integrated faith, that we might be people of integrity and excellence, and that you might be glorified in that and that your spirit might move through it to release new witness, new power, new grace, and mercy. Lord, for my friends who are here who aren't sure they believe any of this, Lord Jesus, would you invite them to come and see, come and see, come and see what a life of faith, hope, love, wisdom, courage might look like, to be that kind of people, to be shaped by that kind of ethos, those kinds of things that Jesus introduced. Oh, come, Lord Jesus, help all of us to be people who go to work, show up in our work in these ways, that in your kindness and in your mercy, you might work through us to change our world. We pray that for us individually, we pray that for Chatham Community Church as we love and serve our neighbors here in Chatham County, and we ask all this in Jesus' strong body name. Amen, amen, amen." [00:35:47] (51 seconds)
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