A person of integrity is like an oak tree. Strong. Tall. Towering. Deeply rooted. Growing upward. Fruitful. Productive. And, yes, exposed to life’s storms. In a thunderstorm, which tree is likely to draw the lightning strike? More times than not, lightning strikes the tallest object. Consequently, we can expect that those who stand tallest for God will draw the lightning. Daniel is a case in point.

We often associate Daniel with just one event: the lion’s den. Instead we need to remember him because of the message of his life: his integrity. It was the reason he was thrown into the lions’ den in the first place.

The story of Daniel reminds us that sometimes life throws us a curve ball when we least expect it. Our integrity will determine how we respond.

“So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions’ den” (Daniel 6:16). Daniel was not in the lions’ den because he had done wrong, but because he had done right. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror, I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the one thing you think you cannot do.” Daniel looked fear in the face and lived through the horror. From his experience (meeting life honestly and courageously,) you and I can learn how to face the curve balls thrown at us and walk away with our integrity intact.

A few years ago my friend Karen faced a dilemma. Part of a management team at work, Karen is responsible for cost and schedule management. “In other words,” she explains, “it’s my job to make sure my company delivers whatever we’re developing to our client on schedule and for the price specified in our contract.” Working with the space-station program, Karen realized a few years into the contract that her company would not be able to deliver what was promised. She went to her superiors.

They told her to massage the figures. “Make it work.”

“But I can’t do that,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“Either do it or we will find someone else who will do it.”

Karen wrestled with her decision over the weekend. She was in a real lions’ den predicament. What would she do? On Monday, she faced the threat of losing her job because of doing what was right. As a matter of fact, on Monday she was fired.

At an early age professional golfer Tom Watson had his heart set on being a champion. He also had his personal code of honor firmly in mind. In the first state tournament he entered, he put his putter down behind the ball on one of the greens. To his dismay, the ball moved slightly. No one saw it. Of that he was certain. He was under great pressure to win, and there was no time whatever to add up the pluses and minuses of the alternatives. But he knew without hesitation what he must do. He went to an official and said, “My ball moved.” That action cost him a stroke, and he lost the hole. Tom Watson placed his personal integrity ahead of his keen desire to win.

Tim, a recent high school graduate, learned early in his adult life that being a Christian and being a “friend” can pose problems. Last summer he accepted an invitation to spend the night with some high school buddies. Early in the evening the group decided to go to a nearby nightclub. The very idea sent shock waves through Tim’s value system, yet telling his friends he wouldn’t go was difficult and painful. Tim said no and it cost him his pride and his friends.

Daniel was not the last man to suffer for doing what was right. It cost him to keep his integrity intact. Likewise, Karen suffered. Tom suffered. Tim suffered. And we will suffer. Count on it. Integrity often draws fire.

Three actions from the life of Daniel make him shine brightly. These same three actions need to be implemented in our lives. And, by the way, they need to be practiced before the lions’ den experience of our lives. Robert Freeman said, “Character is not made in a crisis—it is only exhibited.” If we wait till the moment of testing, it is too late.

Consistently pray to God. “Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10). Daniel didn’t turn to prayer in a panic. He had made prayer a regular habit, a part of his daily ritual. Prayer was his first priority, not his last resort.

Continually serve God. “The king said to Daniel, ‘May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!’” (v. 16). Peter T. Forsythe was right when he said, “The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its master.” Once we find our master, Jesus Christ, we will find our freedom. No one can successfully serve two masters. To attempt to do so is to become a fractional person, and a fractional person lacks integrity. Daniel would not serve two masters. He would not compromise his convictions.

Conscientiously trust in God. “And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God” (v. 23). Regardless of the outcome, Daniel would trust God. That takes courage and conviction. Integrity is the ability to choose faithfulness while resisting compromise. He chose to trust God regardless of the outcome. He was willing to lose his place, his friends, and his status because he would trust God no matter what.

Remember what happened to the king after he regrettably sealed the den of lions with Daniel on the inside? “Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep” (v. 18). Daniel had a visible affect on the king.

Here’s the point. Men and women of integrity distinguish themselves by their sincere lives. People take notice of lives lived with distinction.

One of my favorite movies is To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, an Alabama lawyer defending a black man accused of raping a white girl in the early 1930s. Upon taking the case, Finch immediately comes under the abuse and scorn of the people in the town. The man was innocent and Atticus Finch defended him capably; but when the jury came in, nobody was surprised that its verdict was guilty.

The lawyer’s two children were at the courthouse. Unable to find seats downstairs, they had gone into the segregated balcony and had sat next to the town’s black preacher. As the judge retired and the spectators filed out of the courtroom, Jean, Atticus’s daughter, was engrossed in watching her father. He stood alone in the room, transferring papers from the table into his briefcase. Then he put on his coat and walked down the middle aisle toward the exit—a beaten man but with soul intact. Jean felt someone touch her shoulder. She turned around and noticed that everyone in the balcony was standing. The black preacher nudged her again and said, “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’ by.”

Those people were visibly moved by one man’s integrity. Likewise, people may trick us, deceive us, test us, ignore us, and criticize us. But know and understand this: one day they will stand up when we pass by because we faced life’s tests with integrity. |L