HELP! We Need To Build Our Character … Hello weekend readers. My musings are about character—what it is, what it does for us and why it’s failing in our society. Where does character come from and why is it so important? Well, because God has things to tell us about how important are character truly is!

Sadly, what we are seeing today is increasingly a lack of character in people who have a huge amount of influence in our society. As I look at some of the problems we face right now, the biggest thing we need is people of character because character is defined as the attributes and features that make up a person. Character is ‘moral excellence and firmness, strength of moral fiber.’

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer described character as “the excellence of moral beings.” As the excellence of gold is its purity and the excellence of art is its beauty, so the excellence of people in their character. Persons of character are noted for their honesty, ethics, and charity. Descriptions such as “a man or woman of principle” are assertions of character. A lack of character is moral deficiency; persons lacking character tend to behave dishonestly, unethically, and uncharitably. It’s pretty straightforward but hard to attain!

We see in our society today that there is a huge lack of character. While a lot has been written on character, here’s a few thoughts on how we can grow in our character as followers of Jesus. If we do, we might just change the world around us for the better!

1) Character is built on consistent experiences
2) Character is influenced and developed by our choices
3) God desires to develop the character already in us
4) We need to learn and need to live

In 1 Corinthians 15:33-34 using the The Passion Translation, the Apostle Paul lays it out like this: “So stop fooling yourselves! Evil companions will corrupt good morals and character. Come back to your right senses and awaken to what is right. Repent from your sinful ways. For some have no knowledge of God’s wonderful love. You should be ashamed that you make me write this way to you!”

Obviously, Paul was upset about the breakdown of character in his time and now, if he were to be here, he would say the same thing and he wouldn’t be happy! We’ve grown so accustomed to apps and systems doing work for us that we sometimes expect character development to happen the same way, but that never works. There are no shortcuts to building godly character. It’s a process that requires crucifying our flesh, obeying Jesus, going the distance in our spiritual race, and sharing the good news of salvation with others.

Let’s face it, this is HARD WORK! But…it’s also the best work we’ll ever do! It’s what shapes us into the person God created us to be. Our society wants to bend those ideas because they don’t want to be called out. Sadly, many of us get sucked into those ideas that are truly not from God and we incur a breakdown of our character.

So, let’s choose to be all that God has called us to be no matter how challenging the path we must walk through. Remember the God of the Impossible who is always ready to release miracles on our behalf and showing us that our character comes from God alone—not what society wants for us. We are God’s children so let’s show the world what a beautiful character God has given us and so we can share this with others as well! AMEN