Proverbs 13:5-6
There is a protective factor when you do
what is right. If you always drive the speed limit, you never have to worry
about the police pulling you over for speeding. But if you speed sometimes, you
are always on edge, even when you go within the limit. You check and recheck
your speed as you pass the police on the highway. You look in the rearview
mirror as you pass by to see if they start to follow you.
If you always do the right thing,
righteousness in action, then no weapon formed against us can succeed in taking
us down. But the wicked carry with them the stench of past and present
“accidents”, choices made and the negative consequences. They have no way to
remove the stench. It might fade over time, but one poke and the smell is fresh
again.
I want to be a person who can be poked and
still smell good. I want to be a person of integrity, the same through and
through, day in and day out, 24/7 365. I don’t want to be a plastic imitation
of a human being. I want to be human through and through so that the LORD can
easily infuse His Spirit into this empty vessel. I don’t want leftover pockets
of unconfessed and therefore uncleaned areas of my life waiting for discovery.
I want to live with a clean stale.
Those pockets, or boatloads in some folks
lives, weigh you down, keeping you from living a full life. I think about
someone in the witness protection program. They are given a new life, a new
identity, a new place to live, but they constantly have to live with the fear
of being discovered. They can never talk about their old life. And at any
moment, without notice, they could be discovered and have to start all over
again in another town, in another life. If they have family, they are dead to
them.
Righteousness stands as a guard over our
hearts and lives.