Walking with the Wise #80: When Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You

“The integrity of the upright guides them,

but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.”

—Proverbs 11:3

When we live a life of integrity there is no worry about secret sins coming back to haunt us. There are no worries of people we have hurt coming back to seek revenge. Integrity is born in adversity over time—shaped through various circumstances as challenges are confronted and acted upon in a way that seeks to do the right thing when it is not the easy thing. Integrity helps shape our character; indeed, it can often define it because it shows who we are when no one is looking and reveals the priority of our hearts. Integrity cares more about doing right than being right.

Being a Christian means becoming like Christ. In essence, we have something in us that makes us like Jesus—His Spirit. His Spirit is bringing our sins to the surface so that they might be confessed and forsaken, while He is continually honing, directing, and growing us in righteousness by His Spirit as we are nourished on the Word of God. As we begin forsaking sin more and more, and doing that which is righteous, our character is transformed. As we meditate on and memorize the Word, applying it to our life, we begin to think God’s thoughts, so much so that we begin to value what God values, love how God loves, and forgive as God forgives. This way of thinking enables us to become men and women of integrity—the upright who are guided in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

The wicked do not fare so well, however. They are continually looking over their shoulder, waiting for the day when their past comes back to haunt them, for it eventually will—in this life or the next. God is not mocked; what one sows, that he will reap (Galatians 6:9). If you sow a righteous life by faith as God is working in and through you, you will reap a great reward. But if you sow according to wickedness, you will receive the wages of death and destruction.

Our chief goal is to delight in God, to find our satisfaction in Him and Him alone. And when we do, we will quickly discover that decisions will become easier as God is leading us into truth so that He might be glorified.

How are you being led? Are you worried about your past coming back to haunt you? Forsake sin, embrace the Lord Christ, and He will forgive that. Satan cannot haunt us with that which has been confessed and covered by the blood of Christ. Guilty consciences are cleansed through Christ’s blood shed on the cross.

May God enable us to live lives of integrity that are reflections of the resurrected Savior—pure, spotless, clean, and victorious over that which seeks to bind, blind, and be a burden to us. May His name resonate from our lips as we become more like Him through the power of His Spirit working in conjunction with His holy Word. Amen.