This is where we get down to a particularly challenging aspect of soldiership, which is how your spiritual life fits in with your daily life. In a previous blog I quoted a definition of Integrity as "doing the right thing even though there's nobody looking". This definition has particularly helped me get to grips with this particular aspect. It's easy to keep your commitment sitting in the Hall on a Sunday but not quite so easy late at night at home during the week! Living up to Christian standards every day of the week can be a challenge to any Christian, but it's particularly true of Salvationists who tend to be very visible in their own community (this can be turned to an advantage - more on this later). The secret of success is in personal discipline... which needs to be the subject of a separate blog entry...
It's also very interesting when you dig a little further into this subject, by turning the negatives that we need to avoid into positives that we need to embrace. We need to be pursuing things that have merit, are clean, true, consecrated, honest and moral. For a 'seeker after truth' (as I often style myself) I don't have a problem with pursuing truth - however one person's opinion of 'truth' can be so different from someone else's!! It can be so confusing... wrong can often seem right...
So here's the great challenge - and it's particularly a challenge in the 21st Century! Ask yourself whether each and every aspect of your life fits those positive headings. That TV show - that magazine - that pastime - that regular habit. And if you have difficulty confirming whether that particular thing is true, or clean, or moral - perhaps there's some doubt - then why not take steps to give it up? It could well be leading you away from God - or at least preventing you from following Him to the fullest extent.
Interesting, therefore, to see that this sort of self-examination was encouraged by William Booth for his soldiers ever since the earliest days of the Army. Maintaining Christian integrity is therefore a constant battle for all Christians - but then Salvation soldiers are not afraid of a bit of a battle...
"We are called to take His light
To a world where wrong seems right."
(a line from 'People Need The Lord' by Steve Green)
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