painting a picture of integrity

integrity is difficult.  i realized that recently.  and i mean REAL integrity, when no one would know a wrong i did.  it's not often i come upon situations where it's really just between me and God, but in those situations, my heart's struggle for righteousness really shows.

starting a few days ago, i have the opportunity to paint the basement of the house of one of our church elders.  him and his wife are two of the nicest people i know, and are incredibly hospitable and loving.  when his wife was going to pay me and asked how many hours i had worked in the past two days, i was prepared for the question and responded with the number of hours i had already calculated.

i gave the honest answer, so it's all good and swell, right?  well, not quite.

on my drive back home, i couldn't stop thinking about, what if i said 8 hours instead of 7?  or 9?  or 10?  those would all fly, since while i'm painting, they're doing other stuff around the house, and sometimes they aren't even home, so they're definitely not keeping tabs.

i thought about how trusting she was, and also how much control i had in maximizing the situation for my gain.  i was thinking to myself, if i could re-do that question, and i was given time to consider my answer, would i still give the honest answer?  my actions did the right thing, but was/is my heart in the right place?

it was then that i was reminded that integrity isn't just about lying about hours worked to make more money, but also about the state of my heart.

it brought me back to being in that basement by myself, and the thoughts that occasionally run through my head while painting the walls hour after hour.

i realized..  you know, if i don't work that hard at painting, if i slack off and dilly-dally and waste time, i would get away with it.  first of all, they haven't painted before, so they don't really know how long it would take to paint all those walls.  second, no one can really estimate how many hours it would take to paint that huuuuge basement that's literally the size of the entire first floor of my house.

i even had a bunch of different factors i could blame on things taking more time.  such as my hands getting sore (which was true) and needing to rest (not that true), or needing to move stuff away from the walls first to make room (which was true), or setting up the dropcloth and ladder and mixing the paint and all that stuff takes time (which was true, but could be greatly exaggerated).

basically, i could work at pretty much any pace and it would be satisfactory.

so, if i were working with my focus on making money, it'd be as lazy and slow as i could in order to spend as much time there as possible to rack up hours and $$$.

okay, with those sinful thoughts out of the way (of which there were a lot more than i initially thought..), now onto the good stuff!

the only way to keep myself working hard and honestly is i keep preaching to myself Colossians 3:23-24

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving."

i don't remember when it was, but the day i stored that verse in my heart was the day my view on work was changed forever.

God's challenge for me today: preston, does me being pleased with you give you enough motivation for righteous living?