“But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29).

It seems that water balloon fights are now a “thing” at the Women’s Campus. I’ve seen the kids do battle at the playground and I’ve even heard that our ladies want to have a water balloon battle. I’m sure the water feels good when it’s so hot outside. Have you ever tried to fill up a balloon with water, or air for that matter, when it has a hole in it? The balloon won’t hold water, or air, when it has a hole in it. Well, duh, that wasn’t terribly profound. Lately, I’ve been frustrated by plastic squirt bottles that crack, and then when you squeeze them the air comes out in all the wrong places. Now that’s a problem when you are trying to use the contents of the bottle. Last week I wrote about the danger of a dam that won’t hold water because of chinks, erosion, and leaks. The point is that when the object in question is not intact, when it has a hole in it, then it won’t function properly. It lacks integrity which causes it to fail in its purpose.

The next problem comes when you try to patch the hole. Have you ever tried to patch a balloon? I tried to tape over the crack in my toilet bowl cleaner bottle, but it still wouldn’t allow me to squeeze out of the opening in the top like it was supposed to (so frustrating). In this case, I just needed pour the contents into a new bottle and throw out the old one. In the example from last week’s Chaplain’s Corner, engineers are filling in the holes, building backup dams, and all kinds of other fixes to repair, shore up, back up, and strengthen Center Hill Dam.

The good news, and I mean GOOD NEWS! in the gospel sense, is that God has made a way to fix people who are broken vessels. He does not want to throw us out like I threw out my toilet bowl cleaner bottle. He has made a way to repair us so that we are not just restored to basic functionality, but as believers in the life and work of Jesus Christ we are actually NEW CREATIONS with the ability to beautifully and fully live out our calling from God and have eternal life with Him. My heart wells up when I think about this. (I had to stop writing for a few minutes here so that I could just rest and rejoice in this amazing fact.)

As broken vessels, we do not have integrity. However, as new creations in Christ, we will have integrity, we will be whole. That means there will be no holes, no flaws in our glorified beings which we will possess when we exchange this physical life for our immortal life. I have heard this referred to as the “already/not yet.” Until that day, we are called to participate with the Holy Spirit in becoming flawless, or sanctified. As new creations in Christ, we should be of one mind, committed to growing in Christ.

“Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

I daresay you know what you need to do. It’s not the knowing that’s the problem; it is the doing. It is the wisdom, capacity, and ability to obey. Many times in the Bible, God and Jesus tell us they desire obedience. Jesus said in John 14:23“Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.  My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them”.

The starting point for true obedience is to have a desire to obey. And the best way to gain this desire is to pray for it. It’s as simple as that.  As you pray, meditate on God’s word, and ask God for the desire to fully and completely obey Him. When Paul says that he is forgetting, reaching, and pursuing, he means that he is praying and then obeying God’s Word.

Glenn often explains our Core Value of Extravagant Faith as believing that God is who He says he is, and that He will do what He says He will do. That is integrity in a nutshell. And that should be what we also aspire to, to be that good and wise servant, to be who we say we are and to do what we say we will do. Rick Warren put it like this: “The test of integrity is that your public life and your private life match—what’s in your heart and what’s in your life are the same thing. You ask yourself, ‘Would I want everyone to know about this decision that I’m making?’ The truth is, when it comes to integrity, even if you can fool everyone else, you can’t fool yourself. And if you violate your own conscience, you have to pay for that.”

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to begin praying for the desire to do God’s will, the desire to pursue integrity, and the desire to obey Him with your life. I would love to hear about how your prayers are answered, because I know they will be.

In Christ,

Judy