Restoring Warriors Core Values | Integrity

Integrity isn’t just about what you say—
 it’s about alignment.

Matthew doesn’t directly define it, but Scripture makes it clear:
 Integrity is being the same man in private as you are in public.

It starts with your word.
 Small commitments. Showing up. Following through.

Because if you can’t keep the small promises—
 you won’t be trusted with big ones.

But integrity is really revealed under pressure.
 When it costs you something.
 When it’s inconvenient.
 When no one would know if you cut corners.

That’s where character is exposed.

And here’s the truth:
 Integrity isn’t built in one moment—
 it’s built daily.

Through consistency.
 Through discipline.
 Through choosing what’s right over what’s easy.

Jesus modeled this perfectly—
 truthful, obedient, unwavering—even when it led to the cross.

Big Idea:
Men are only as good as their word.

Question:
Where in your life are your actions not matching your words?

Challenge:
Pick ONE commitment this week—and keep it.
Even when it’s hard. Even when you don’t feel like it.

Prayer:
Lord, align my life with Your truth. Help me become a man of integrity—consistent, disciplined, and trustworthy in every area. Amen.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, what's up, men? Welcome back to Restoring Warriors. Hey, we're so grateful to be with you tonight. Hey, really quickly, if you call this place home, if this ministry has impacted your life, if it's helped you become closer to God, if it's helped you break chains, break patterns, break um strongholds in your life, and you want to help other men experience this as well, we would love to partner with you through through a donation or generosity. We've got a couple different ways you can do it. You can make a one-time donation to the ministry uh directly. You can set up recurring donations at hit also, uh, or you can do uh make this your monthly, weekly place of tithe, however you do your tithing. Uh, we'd love to partner with you. Uh, whether you choose to give or not, continue to show up. Thank you for showing up. Continue doing the work, continue growing in your faith. And I hope that this can be a resource for you to do that. So, hey, it's so good to see you guys tonight. Um, let's jump into a prayer before we dive in. Heavenly Father, we're so grateful for your word and we're so grateful for this message tonight. Father, as we jump into integrity, I pray that that this uh subject matter lands um softly within these men's hearts, Lord. But uh, but I hope that it also shakes them up a little bit. You see, as men were called to integrity, and that looks a number of different ways, Lord. I just pray that these messages, um, the message that you have for these men tonight takes root, Lord. And anything that's from me, anything that's not from you, Lord, that that these men just pass aside, but anything that is from you, that is your direct message, Lord, pray that it takes root and it grows fruit in our lives. It's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen. All right, fellas, so quick recap. Last week, the lesson was on restoration. So uh we dove into our core value of restoration. We looked at different ways that God uses restoration in our lives. Because life oftentimes has a way of knocking us down, okay? Sometimes uh we're the person who is betrayed. Uh, we get betrayed by people we love, sometimes we're the ones that get hurt, sometimes we're wounded by people in our lives, sometimes we're wounded by the world. It doesn't have anything to do with the people in our lives, and sometimes we feel pain and we experience pain and it feels completely unjustified. Are there situations where we show up and we do the right thing, but for some reason we still feel pain? All right, we we try to live the right way, but things still don't go the way they should. But we also talked about the other side of that reality. Sometimes we're the ones holding the spear, right? Sometimes we're the ones who cause the damage. Sometimes we're the one who betrayed another person. Sometimes we created the wound that another person's walking around with. All right, sometimes we act out of alignment and somebody else has to pay the price for the decisions that we made, right? And that's where restoration became a real thing. We looked at the story of Joseph, which is uh a number of different angles on restoration. All right, Joseph, he was betrayed by his own brothers. He was sold into slavery by the very people who should have been protecting him, his older brothers, right? And as a slave, he worked hard. He worked really hard and he stayed faithful to the Lord, and he eventually rose within the slave rankings to become the right-hand man of a very powerful leader in Egypt. All right, but then something else happened. He was falsely accused, right? He he was lied about and he was punished for doing the right thing. You see, Potiphar, the man he was working for, his wife came to him and courted him one day and said, Hey, sleep with me. And David, or excuse me, Joseph said, No, I'm not gonna do it. He ran away, but he paid the consequence for those sins that he never created. All right, Joseph walked away from temptation that moment and he honored God in a moment when it would have been really easy to compromise. Let's face it, single dude, the master's wife. I mean, a lesser man would have failed, right? Uh, but because of his decision, his decision to stay moral, to do the right thing, it actually ended up sending him to prison. All right. And while he was in prison, he was forgotten. It was said for two years he sat there waiting, wondering, but trusting in the Lord at the same time, until one day Pharaoh, Pharaoh, the ruler of all the land, calls on him to help interpret a dream. And and David, or excuse me, Joseph didn't rely on his own strength. He called upon God to help interpret this dream. And then in that moment, everything changed. God restored him, God elevated him, God placed him in a position of authority where he was actually uh put in a position to oversee all of Egypt. He was the man controlling all of Egypt. He became Pharaoh's right hand. And then came a really defining moment where years later, during the famine, Joseph's brothers came to Egypt looking for food. And it's the same brothers who not too long ago betrayed him, sold him off into slavery. The same brothers who lied to his father about Joseph's death, right? And there Joseph stood, one of one of the most powerful men in the world at that time. He stood there looking directly at the men who wronged him so many years before that, and he had every opportunity to punish him. He could have condemned them for their behavior. He had every opportunity in that moment to get revenge, but instead, he chose restoration. For what they intended to do evil, God intended for good. And that's the posture that Joseph chose. He forgave them, he restored them, he brought his entire family into Egypt. And through that decision, God used Joseph to save the entire Israel people from famine. And that's the power of restoration, fellas, is God can take a betrayal or an injustice, he can take brokenness, and he can turn it into purpose if we allow him to. It's how we show up in situations, it's how we act when nobody else is watching us. It's the things we do behind closed doors. Am I the same man in private as I am in public? Because integrity, it's not about your reputation necessarily out there. In some sense, it is, but it's also about inner character. Who shows up when nobody's around? Not who people think you are, because we can play a role out there and get people to think we are who we're not, right? But who are you really when the spotlight's off, when nobody's watching? So tonight we're going to dive deep into what integrity looks like and how it shows up or fails to show up in our daily lives and why it matters for every man who wants to lead his family, who wants to lead in his workplace and his faith with strength and consistency. All right, so let's dive into it. So at restoring warriors, integrity is defined as this integrity is the unwavering commitment to align our words, our actions, and decisions with God's truth. It means living authentically, being honest in all circumstances, following through with our commitments, and standing firm in our convictions, even when faced with challenges or temptations. Always striving to reflect the character of Christ. All right, fellas. So I'm gonna start here because I think at every point in our lives, uh one of us has experienced this in some degree or another. Okay, you've got a friend, you've got a business colleague, you've got somebody in your life, a spouse, a girlfriend, whatever, who's habitually late. No matter what, they can't show up on time. You you know that person, right? You show up on time. All right, maybe you're even five, 10, 15 minutes early, because in your mind, right, in my mind, you're not really on time unless you're like 10 or 15 minutes early. That's how you respect people. That's how you show up and respect their time. But here you are, yet another time. You're waiting. You're you're sitting there, you're waiting, you're sitting there, you're waiting. They don't call, they don't text, they don't give you a heads up. And it's not just a one-time thing. All right, if it was a one-time thing, a one-off, okay, that's okay, we can handle that. But no, this is consistent behavior. This is the type of behavior you've come to expect from this person. All right, and and what happens here is something starts to happen inside of you. You start to grow bitter and you start to grow resentment. And it's not because you're an impatient person. No, you've shown a lot of patience. But it's it starts to feel, it starts to get to a spot, it gets to a point where this person doesn't respect your time. It feels like it, they just have a blatant disrespect for your time, your schedule doesn't matter, and your commitment to them to showing up at a time and a place agreed upon doesn't matter to them. All right, now let me flip that script. Are you that person? Or are you that person? What are you the one who shows up late? Are you the one who shows up unprepared? Okay, are you the one who walks in talking on your phone instead of being ready to go, distracting everybody in the room, making making it a show about you instead of being ready to go at the time you agreed upon? Are you the one that cancels an appointment an hour before it's supposed to happen? Right? You cancel on your personal trainer, you cancel on your therapist, you cancel on your coach, you cancel on your accountant, you count, you cancel on your commitments. Right? And it's always something crazy the last minute, right? Something just came up, or I didn't sleep well the night before, so so they'll understand, or, or no, I just don't really feel like it. Or life, life got in the way, right? It's too, it's too much for me to go across town and fulfill this commitment that I made. And listen, I get it, life happens. There's times where life happens. But here's the truth, fellas, is every single time you do that, you are communicating something to that other person. You're telling that person that, hey, my word doesn't mean anything. My word doesn't mean much. I'm not a man of my word. It also communicates that, hey, your time isn't valuable. I have no respect for your time. Whatever I'm dealing with, whatever's going on in my life, matters a heck of a lot more than anything that you have going on. That's the message that you're sending, whether you intended to or not. And here's the other message that it relays. All right, but it relays it to yourself, that you don't mean that much to yourself. You're not worth it, right? That you don't value your time enough to keep commitments that you've made with yourself. That whatever excuse you're making as to why you're stuck in life, but why you're not ahead, why you haven't achieved more of what you've wanted to achieve, is because it's not worth it to you. Right? You're telling yourself that you're not worth showing up for every time you break a commitment. And we say things, right? We show up, we finally show up, and we say, hey man, yeah, traffic was crazy. I'm sorry. Uh yeah, I know, dude. We live in Denver and traffic's crazy every day. I drove to get here. There's traffic every single day, every single place we go. Account for it. You're a man controlling your schedule. Account for the traffic. It's always there. Block in that extra time, and if you can't make it, change the commitment. All right, because here's the reality is men are only as good as their word. And when we don't fulfill our obligations, when we don't show up, when we don't prepare, when we don't follow through, we're slowly training the people around us not to trust us. We're telling them that our word doesn't matter. All right, we don't do it in these big dramatic ways, but in small, repeated actions, we're telling them that our word doesn't matter. All right, and here's a belief that I've carried for most of my adult life is how you do one thing is how you do everything. How you do one thing is how you do everything. So the real question is this where else does this show up in your life? Where else is it showing up in your life? Where else are you habitually late? Where else are you habitually unprepared? Where else are you canceling on yourself? Is it showing up at work? Maybe your boss is on you because you're late to work. You're late to work yet again, and you tell yourself, ah, it doesn't really matter. It's only five minutes. Man, why is this guy so hard on me? Because I'm five minutes late. It can happen to anybody. Jimmy was five minutes late a couple days ago and he didn't say anything to him. Well, five minutes every day turns into 25 minutes a week. And an hour over two weeks, and two hours over a month, right? It gets old, fellas. It gets really old, right? And maybe it's showing up in your health, all right? Have you noticed you look down and you're carrying an extra 20, 25 pounds? All right, it didn't just show up overnight. And it's not there because you don't know what to do. You know what to do, right? It's because you keep canceling the appointments you're making with yourself. You said you'd go to the gym, you said you would eat better, you said this week will be different from last week. All right, but then when the time comes, when it's time to follow through on the commitment you made to yourself, the drive-throughs wins, right? The excuses win. Netflix wins. So let me ask you this very directly. Where else are you letting yourself down? Where are you letting yourself down? Because this is what integrity looks like in a man, right? It's not having good intentions, it's not having a strong motivation at one moment, right? Integrity is being disciplined enough to show up for what you committed to, especially when you don't feel like it. That's what integrity looks like. Have you committed to things that you're not honoring? And maybe it's a volunteer role, maybe it's a leadership role, maybe it's a responsibility at work, maybe it's a responsibility at home. Yeah, babe, I'll get to the lawn. Just get off me. I'll I'll get to it. I promise I'll get to it. Next thing you know, weeks and weeks go by, and you wonder why she's up your butt about it. It's because you don't honor your commitments, man. And what does it say about your integrity when you step into your roles and then you consistently fail to show up? Where is it showing up in your life? Fellows, in the book of Matthew, all right, in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 33, Jesus says this again. You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made. When you make a commitment, think of it as you're making a commitment to the Lord, even if it's with your stepsister, all right? Think of it as a commitment you've made to the Lord. It said it says this way in Ecclesiastes, right? Ecclesiastes 5, verses 4 and 5. When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools. Fulfill your vow. It is better not to make a bow, a vow, than to make one and to not fulfill it. Maybe you're taking on more than you can chew when you say yes to all these different things. Right here in Ecclesiastes, Solomon says it's better not to make the vow than to break it. Alright, man. So so when I think about integrity, I don't just think about keeping your word. All right, that's a big part of it. We have to show up as men who keep and honor our word. Man, remember back in the day when a handshake was as good as done? Now we've got all these contracts and we've got all these addendums, and you gotta sign 15 pages and initial and everything, and then we still fail to follow through with those things, right? Man, back in the good old days. But but it's so much more than just keeping your word. I I it it's not just about showing up on time, it's it's about something that's a lot deeper as well. It's it's also how you show up under pressure. When the pressure of life is getting to you, how are you showing up? Because it's easy to do the right thing when everything's going your way. All right, when all the circumstances are going my way, I can do the right thing. And it's easy to be disciplined when life is smooth and there's no obstacles, and it's easy to be honest when there's nothing really at stake. But integrity, it gets revealed immediately when pressure hits. All right, when the heat gets turned up, when when doing the right thing actually costs you something. All right, so so that's why I look to the story of Daniel, right? In the story of Daniel, we're gonna go to Daniel uh chapter six, verse three here. It says, Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the entire kingdom. Now think about that for a second. All right, David was such a man of high integrity, he was distinguished. That's integrity, man. He was a man of such consistency, he was a man of such character that he was first in line to oversee the entire kingdom for King Darius. All right, but that created a problem because there were other people, the the administrators that they're they're talking about here, they wanted to be in charge. Okay, they were threatened by him and they were offended by him and they wanted him out, so they started looking for dirt. Okay, they started looking for dirt. They looked at his work, they looked at his leadership, they looked at his conduct, they looked at his character, they looked at his behavior, and in verse five, they finally say this. Finally, these men said, We will never find any basis for charges against this man unless it has something to do with the law of his God. The only way he'll fail is if we make him try and fail God. Holy smokes! So, in other words, the only way we can make him fall is if we attack his faith. That's the kind of integrity this man has. So, so these guys they go to King Darius and they say, Hey man, you're the greatest. Nobody, listen, you're so great that nobody, nobody should bow to anybody except for you, let alone God, right? Let's create a law. Okay, let's create this law. Stick with me here, that if anybody prays to any other God than you, then they are sentenced to death, but not just any death. We're gonna throw them into a den of lions. And Darius is like, you're right, I am the man. I want everybody to bow to me. Let's make that a law, right? Not knowing that he was trapping Daniel in that moment. All right, so the king signed it, prayer was outlawed, faith was criminalized, worship became illegal. And now here's the moment where integrity shows up. Daniel finds out about the law. He knows the consequences, he knows the risks, and he knows it could cost him his life. And look what he does in verse 10. Now, when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem. Right? Everybody from the city could see into his into his room. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God just as he had done before. He didn't change at all. He didn't adjust, he didn't compromise, he didn't hide. He knew that there was uh responsible, excuse me, he knew that there were going to be consequences to his actions, but he kept doing what he had always done. That was the decision to remain in integrity with the Lord. And eventually that got him thrown into the den of hungry lions. Daniel didn't build integrity in that moment. Okay, that's what's easily missed. It wasn't just a moment of integrity, his integrity, his character that he had been consistently portraying his entire life showed up in that moment because that's what he conditioned himself to do. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Consistency over time is true integrity. All right, and then when I think about King David, man. David, he's being hunted by Saul. It's unjust. He didn't deserve to be hunted down by the king. Saul's trying to kill him, he's got his soldiers after him, chasing him through the wilderness. David's hanging out in a cave, and then one day Saul is literally handed directly over to David. All right, Saul doesn't realize David's in the cave. Is that the text says he's in there relieving himself, all right, taking a taking a number one? And David could have walked up behind him and ended it. Could have slit his throat, could have become king, could have could have taken the fast track to his anointed kingship, right? He could have he could have taken the throne, he could have justified it. And his men were telling him, Man, do it, this is your moment. Like God delivered him right into your hands. But instead, David slices a piece of his robe off. And even that convicts him. Even that convicts him. And he says, I will not lay a hand on the Lord's anointed, because Saul was also anointed. All right, integrity shows up in what you don't do. All right, what you do when nobody's watching, what you don't do when nobody's watching. When you have the opportunity to do it, when you could get revenge, when it when you can cut corners, when you could shave the budget a little bit, right, to make a job more profitable for you. Ah, you know, the client, they're not going to notice if we change the underlayment. It's under the floor. We don't give them what they pay for, right? When nobody would No. Nobody's going to see if we swap these things out. But if you take that corner, you're going to know it. And choosing to do the right thing, even though nobody would have any idea if you did otherwise, that's what integrity is. And if we truly want to see integrity modeled perfectly, then we look to Jesus. He was tempted in every possible way. He was pressured, he was betrayed, he was mocked, he was tortured, he was plotted against, and still he spoke truth without any sort of compromise whatsoever. He didn't justify anything so that he could step out of line of truth. No, he walked it. He didn't create shortcuts. He didn't create excuses. He didn't justify bending the line with anything. He loved without conviction. He obeyed the Father fully. In fact, in John 8, 29, it says this the one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him. Always. Even when doing that, doing what was right led to suffering. All right. Even when it led to rejection, even when it led to a brutal, bloody death on the cross. So here's the truth I want you to hear tonight, fellas, is integrity isn't just a behavior modification. That starts it. Okay, it's compounded over time. But it is truly a Christ formation. It is having your life completely transformed through Christ. You don't have to try harder. It's about becoming different. It's about becoming more like him. The more we become like him, the more integrity stops being something that we have to force. It starts becoming who we are. So, man, I leave you with a challenge this week. It's a three-part challenge. Go figure. That's what we do every single time. This shouldn't surprise you at this time. You shouldn't be surprised anymore of these three three-part challenges. But but but part of the first challenge, right, is discovery. Identify the leak. Okay, identify where you're out of integrity. So this week, take an honest inventory of your life and ask yourself this question: where is my integrity leaking right now? It's not necessarily where you intend to do better or where you're currently inconsistent. Look at the real places. Like, are you showing up late? Are you blowing off commitments altogether? Are you canceling them? Are you just not showing up to them without canceling? That's even worse. Are you cutting corners? Are you avoiding hard conversations that you should have? Are you breaking promises to yourself? Are you out of integrity with yourself? Write down one specific area where your word and your actions aren't aligned. Just one. Okay, don't make it ten. We're not trying to do a whole full life transformation. Jesus will do that over time. Start with one area. All right, and ask yourself this question, looking at yourself in the mirror. Where am I the man? Excuse me, where am I not the man that I said that I would be? Where am I not the man that I said that I would be? Alright, number two, all right, here's here's an action step. Keep one hard commitment. Keep a commitment that's gonna be hard. All right, choose one commitment this week that will require discipline and keep it. Okay, not ten things. All right, and don't make it some vague thing that can't be measured. One very clear commitment. All right, here's a couple examples. I'm gonna show up 10 minutes early to every single appointment that's on my calendar this week. I'm not just gonna show up on time, I'm gonna show up 10 minutes early. I'm gonna go to the gym at the exact date and at the exact time on all the days that I've planned this week. I'm gonna keep my word on a task that I've been delaying. I'm gonna follow through on a responsibility that I committed to either at home or at work. I'm gonna spend daily time with God when I say I'm going to. I'm gonna wake up early and I'm gonna read two chapters of the Bible every morning. And here's the key. Do it, especially when you don't feel like doing it. Because integrity, it's not proven when motivation is high. Anybody can do something when they're motivated. It's proven when discipline shows up during those hard times, during the times you really don't want to. So your goal this week is to keep your word. Keep your word when it would have been easier to break it. That's it. And last, number three, invite accountability and brotherhood. That's what this group is all about, right? Integrity grows in community, not in isolation. So this week, I want you to tell one other man the commitment that you're making and ask him to hold you accountable and ask him to check in with you midweek and again at the end of the week to see how you're doing. Here's a simple way to do it. Hey, Bob, here's the commitment I'm making this week. I am going to get up early at 6 a.m. and I'm going to be at the gym at 6:30 every single day this week, Monday through Friday. All right? Will you do me a favor? Will you check in with me on Wednesday and see if I followed through? And then again on Friday to ask if I've followed through. And if I don't, don't let me off the hook. Call me out on it. Men with integrity don't just make promises, they build accountability around them. Alright, man, I'm gonna pray and then I'm gonna hand this off to your group leader. Your group leader is gonna go through your small group discussion questions. He's gonna go over all of the ground rules. Hey, I know this is a hard subject today. Uh I know that it might seem like I came at you hard. I only do it because I love you. Listen, we're men. Okay, it's time to show up in the world as men. All right, men follow through. Men show up, men do the hard things, especially when it's hard, and especially when we don't feel like it. I love you so much, man. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this message tonight, Father. I just pray that, man, this this message doesn't incite any shame or any guilt, but but it just lights a fire under these men that, hey, we are called to be different. We are called to be leaders. And as leaders, as men, we have a duty to show up. We have a duty to show up well, and we have a duty to wear your name well, Father God. Father, I pray that you can make us worthy of the name of Jesus Christ that we claim to follow, that we claim to love, Lord, that it shows up in our life with one act of integrity after another. Father, hold me accountable. Father, expose in me the areas where I need to grow better. Father, make me a man of my word and a man after your heart. It's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. I thoroughly love doing this with you every single week. Hey, if you have any questions, if you want to chat, if you want to book a 15 or a 30 minute phone call where we can just kind of get to know each other, uh my email is below. Don't hesitate to reach out. I love each and every one of you. God bless.