Text- Psalm 32:2- “Yes, what joy for those whose record the LORD has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty!”
Nowadays, it seems it doesn’t really pay to be completely honest; there are liars and sycophants everywhere, and most people don’t really care about the truth either; they just want you to sound nice. That’s all!
But God is not like man, He cares about truthfulness and honesty.
Psalm 51:6 tells us that God delights in truth in the inward being. I love how the Contemporary English Version of the Bile renders it; it says, “But you want complete honesty”
Beloved, God desires and delights in complete honesty; He wants us to exude complete honesty in every area of our lives – in what we say, in how we live, and in who we are.
I know it is not always easy to be completely honest. See what the renowned author; John Bloom says about this – “Sometimes I feel about seeking the truth like I feel about seeking the dentist. The truth [Just like the dentist] might (or perhaps I already know will) expose some decay… And who wants that?”
You know, that’s really the problem many of us have with living in complete honesty; it exposes some decay and makes us look less perfect, right? But then, God is not looking for perfect individuals; He knows already that we are imperfect.
God is not looking for perfect men, because they do not exist. He is looking for honest men and women; men and women who will be true to themselves, true to God, true to the word of God, and true to others around them.
Furthermore, if you examine closely, you’ll realize that the desire to always look perfect is actually a form of pride… that form of pride that gravitates towards a deceptive illusion of self-aggrandizement and pseudo-perfection. That form of pride that will not readily and humbly embrace the freedom and liberty of living
in complete honesty before God, and accepting His help in every area of decay
Now, when I talk about living in complete honesty, I mean not only to say that you should be true to your convictions, but much more importantly also that you should be true to the conviction of God’s word.
I mean to say that you should fully expose your life to the honest evaluation of what God says, what God desires and what God requires.
For instance, an homosexual that decides to finally “come out” may feel finally liberated that he/she is being true to himself/herself and is living in “complete honesty’… the big question is, is such a person being true to God and to His Word?
That gives more sense to the verse we saw earlier, Psalm 51:6 – “God delights in truth in the inward being”. “Truth in the inward being” is what CEV translates as complete honesty.
So then, there can be no complete honesty, until truth (God’s word) first takes root in the inner being; until your convictions are based on the truth of God’s word.
I admonish you today to place your life side by side with what the Word of God says. Evaluate your life on the basis of what God says, what God desires and what God requires. Admit where there is decay and humbly come to God to help you fix it. Live in complete honesty!
Shalom!
PRAYER
Father, I receive grace to live in complete honesty before you henceforth in Jesus Name.
Image Credit: flourishtherapy.co.uk