“For the Lord God is brighter than the brilliance of a sunrise! Wrapping Himself around me like a shield, He is so generous with His gifts of grace and glory. Those who walk along His paths with integrity will never lack one thing they need, for He provides it all!” 

(Psalm 84:11 TPT)

Part One: The Way Up from Adam

Integrity is moral soundness. And it can take some walking through life for us to reach the same conclusions that the Creator already provided in His Word about our human nature. Human beings need help in their hearts and minds. We are fallen. The sin nature came into our race through satan when he tripped up Adam, and Adam turned from His Father God. We do miss the mark in the way we behave towards God, ourselves, and the others with whom we share the abode of planet earth. 

Yahweh had His prophet Jeremiah declare, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly perverse and corrupt and severely, mortally sick! Who can know it [perceive, understand, be acquainted with his own heart and mind]? I the Lord search the mind, I try the heart, even to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10 AMPC). 

In fast forwarding to the New Testament, we receive the revelation of God’s answer to our condition. Paul, too, writes on human nature. Yet, Paul goes on to explain the way in which God is now creating a brand new human race indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God as the solution. Indeed, through the new birth, we are indwelt by the three-in-one Godhead through the Spirit put in us at the moment we repent and accept Christ’s atoning work on the cross. At that point, we are regenerated by a Sovereign work of God. We are placed into union with the Lord and all that He accomplished on the cross. His death becomes our death, and this death is the means of the power to die to the flesh nature in us. His resurrection life then begins to flow through us and out from us. Jesus invites us into this new creation life through His words in Luke 9:23, “If any person wills to come after Me, let him deny himself [disown himself, forget, lose sight of himself and his own interests, refuse and give up himself] and take up his cross daily and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying also].” [To further understand the way of dying to live, see Jessie Penn’ Lewis classic book, Dying to Live.]