A short incident about integrity. My wife and I like to play games. As with all games my wife has great joy in my defeat; also it seems my children do too! We were playing the game of rummy; oh my a card game. If you are familiar with rummy you play to a score of 500. We were neck and neck; both our scores in the 400's with me trailing about 75 points. Well this last hand was exciting points being made by both of us... but no one 'going out to end the hand'. All the way to the last draw card. Doesn't happen often for us. Well I picked up the last card... discarded a card she couldn't use; because I was 'holding' (I still had a lot of cards). She couldn't play, the hand is over right. But no I took another turn picking up cards to get points and putting the cards I was 'holding' down as well. Sneaky... wrong... cheating... not good...
So what next? What's next? Well first of all that night; let's just say God decides to visit around 2am. No we were not having coffee and donuts... He was here to remind me of what I did; cheated. So here I am at 3:30am writing about it. Why because it fits with the armor of breast plate.
Righteousness involves a vast area of our lives. From moral issues, business, demeanor, behavior... it's a long list; even to the way we play a simple game. I blew it, I sinned, against my wife; that's pretty bad; but more important is that I also sinned against God.
So what do I do? Easy! Yes, but oh it's hard, we make it hard. 1John1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So I confessed to God the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ.
Oh there's more, now I need to go to my wife and confess to her... ask her to forgive me. Well the game; you see I cheated, I forfeit the game. It's part of the cleansing.
One last thing. When some one is being honest, truthful... especially when doing something wrong; that should be taken into account. I say this so that this trait of honesty and truthfulness has a positive result... That it is well known that telling the truth is of great worth.