Self Honesty

When I was 15 years of age, I remember seeking God seriously for the first time in my life. I spent hours day after day for the course of a month asking God for forgiveness, searching my heart without fail to make sure that I had asked God for His forgiveness for every past sin that I had committed.  Some would say, "That is overly excessive." I didn't think so, God was beginning a good work in me. I was learning the value of true repentance through "self honesty." Placing myself on the altar as Christ did for me.

The writer Spencer Johnson is credited with the following quote. “Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.” While both are equally powerful, I find myself looking really hard at the first sentence.  I am sort of lost in its meaning, staring incessantly at each word and in return being examined by them as well. Am I honest with myself, or am gazing above the facts walking aimlessly along a misguided path.  2 Corinthians 13:5 screams to us to, "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves."

I all to often fail this test. Even now I sit in a church writing this blog painfully aware of my short comings,  faults, failures, besetting sins, thorns in the flesh. Self honesty is by far the most arduous task anyone of us can, should and must undertake in order to walk uprightly before the Lord. 


When did repentance become a 5 second prayer. When did realization of what you are without God become relegated to the raising of a hand during the invitation. Don't get me wrong it is a great start, and a honorable one at that. Yet, unfortunately for a good many it has become the extent of many a relationship with God. 

Be honest with yourselves do you want to be only called a soldier of the Cross or to truly BE a SOLDIER of the CROSS?

I plead with you to considered "Self Honesty." It is the only way to have a life in Christ more abundantly. The apostle Paul said, "I die daily."