Matthew 6:19-21 (NKJV)
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up
for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and
where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also.
Worldly-mindedness is as common and as fatal a symptom of
hypocrisy as any other, for by no sin can Satan have a surer and faster hold of
the soul, under the cloak of a visible and passable profession of religion,
than by this; and therefore Christ, having warned us against coveting the
praise of men, proceeds next to warn us against coveting the wealth of the
world; in this also we must take heed, lest we be as the hypocrites are, and do
as they do: the fundamental error that they are guilty of is, that they choose
the world for their reward; we must therefore take heed of hypocrisy and
worldly-mindedness, in the choice we make of our treasure, our end, and our
masters. [Matthew Henry Commentary]
Integrity, whether at work or at home, is not the sort of
thing you work on every now and then. You don't set aside one day a month to
work on your integrity much like you might pay your bills. It's something we
have to address almost 24/7 because of the insidious nature of dishonesty,
which always presents us with small, seemingly insignificant openings. Few
people actually decide to outright lie or cheat; rather, they find themselves
taking shortcuts out of convenience. I read somewhere that according to a
company that conducted 3.8 million background checks on people applying for
jobs, more than half lied on their resumes. These aren't horrible people or
chronic liars but ordinary citizens like you and me who think those little
white lies are okay and will never be caught anyway. Unfortunately, even if
they are never caught, they erode our standards and make it easier to make
duplicity the norm.
In 1912, Leon Leonwood Bean started a mail order business
in Greenwood, Maine, by selling a hunting boot with a money-back guarantee.
However, defects in the design led to 90 percent of them being returned. Making
good on the guarantee could ruin his fledgling business, but Leon kept his
word, corrected the design, and continued selling the boots. L.L. Bean is now
one of the largest mail-order companies in the United States, in large part
because it has continued the tradition of treating its customers with
integrity. [Louis Upkins Jr., Treat Me Like a Customer (Zondervan, 2009)]
The Apostle Paul provides a good summation in 2
Corinthians 5:9-10, “Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent,
to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of
Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to
what he has done, whether good or bad.” Let your heart be with God in heaven that you
may live according to His will.
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