"Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, But a just weight is His delight."
-----------------
My kids will tell you honesty and respect are the most import character values to me. We have tried to instill these character traits into them for both Biblical and practical reasons. Throughout our lives, we will make thousands of mistakes, but if you stay true to your core character traits than you can recover from almost anything.
Of course all of us (most importantly me), fall short of God's expectations in these areas quite regularly. Honesty especially has not always been a core value for me. As a teen, I put my parents through many trials for various reasons, but dishonesty (and selfishness) were really at the heart of most of them. Even in my early twenties, I was not totally honest on a car insurance application and it cost me getting dropped by insurance carrier and having to pay several hundred dollars more in the end. And even today I struggle daily, especially in business, about how absolutely honest and open I should be on things like how my team is achieving or not achieving its objectives.
These struggles in this world will never leave us, but it is clear that God desires that we are completely honest in everything - yes everything. That means we need to be honest in our dealings with our family, our friends, our neighbors, other businesses, and in our place of work. A funny example of this is an old Andy Griffith episode called "The Horse Trader". I know you might be thinking Andy Griffith - a show from the early sixties? What can that teach us today? Well Rudy house rules have always been that there is no TV watching during the school week. But we make some exceptions and one of those is some Andy Griffith family time. And the messages that Andy teaches us are all true today, and he usually delivers them in a very funny way. In this episode, Andy actually gets taught a lesson about the importance of honesty from his son Opie - kids often teach us adults lessons, don't they? I know I had to clean up my life a bit when I had kids and even now they still convict me of short-comings and they also challenge me to grow.
Anyway, this Andy Griffith episode is about roller skates and an ice cream cone, root beer floats, cuff links from George Washington, and a genuine Civil War cannon used in the battle of San Juan hill. But rather than me explaining the whole plot, you can view it for yourself at the link below. The clip will start right at the pertinent scene and the segment is only a few minutes long. A key point this clip makes is that even when we do mess up and are less than completely truthful, we can always rectify the situation and ask for forgiveness from whomever we have offended and most importantly from our heavenly Father.
...and don't forget to love God with all your heart, love others as He does, and use every minute for His will and to His glory!
----------------------
Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment