Last year I was privileged to take a wonderful class called Christian Virtue. What a joy it was to be with a group of ladies all wanting to be more virtuous for the Lord. While praying for the direction of my blog, God impressed me to begin sharing what I learned in that class. This year I will devote the third week of each month to a particular virtue that I believe relates to areas women struggle with.
Let’s start first with definitions…
Virtue: a positive trait deemed morally excellent; a valued foundation of good moral behavior.
Vice: a habitual practice of wrongdoing, essentially corruption of the virtue.
Sadly, our modern culture doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on virtue these days. However, if we listen to conversations around dinner tables or watch the evening news, it’s easy to see most of the problems we face relate directly to the lack of virtue in our world today.
Honesty: the quality of being honest, upright; truthful, sincere; freedom from deceit.
There are two ways we can look at this virtue: honesty with ourselves and our honesty with others. More than likely, if we’re not being honest with ourselves, we probably aren’t being honest with others either.
Often, we see a virtue and think to ourselves, I’m an honest person. I don’t really need to work on this one. I’ve found by looking at the opposing sin or vice, I see better my areas of weakness.
Vices: Dishonesty, duplicity, cheating, lying, deception, treachery
As a recovering addict, I’m all too familiar with the above list of vices. What a relief it was when I was finally able to be honest with my husband after being deceptive for many years.
An honest life is a simpler life. You don’t have to remember all the lies you’ve told!
No matter what our struggles are, we can’t deal with them unless we are first honest with God and with ourselves.
Take just a moment… Ask God to show you where you are being dishonest. He is always faithful to reveal our brokenness when we are willing to make the change.
Without beating ourselves up for past behavior, let’s go forward a new creation today!
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