What about being honest? There's absolutely no dishonesty in any area of your life; that's your character. What about generosity, where you're abundantly generous and bless the people around you, sow into them and give to them and assist them and encourage them. These are character areas. What about the area of courage, the ability to be able to stand in the place of compromise and say no, I'm not going to go with the crowd. So I've seen heaps of gifted people over the while, but the only ones I've seen produce lasting fruit and go forward in God are those who actually address the issue of having an excellent spirit, a right spirit, and also develop their character so they've got a strong, reliable character. Give me character anytime, because at least I know can rely on him - but if I can get character and gifting and good spirit, you've got someone who can really produce, someone who'll go forward in God.
Now you see character is something you can work on. How often do you give a little word, say you're going to do something and don't do it? These are the kinds of things that are part of our character, so all of those issues we can work on. Now let me give you a couple of people, one who missed their destiny because of their character; the other one who got his destiny because of his character. Here's one of them, 2 Kings 5:20-27. There was a man by the name Gehazi. Now Gehazi had a unique opportunity. Elijah was a man anointed by God and he chose a disciple Elisha. Elisha received a double portion of what Elijah had. He did twice as many miracles. His servant was Gehazi. His disciple was Gehazi, so Gehazi was positioned to be able to flow in the anointing of the supernatural and to replace Elisha when Elisha died. What an amazing opportunity! And so he was positioned in his life by serving Elisha to eventually have the mantel of Elisha on him, and be able to have a unique influence in the nation.
But Elisha had a different heart and character to him, so what happened was when the Syrian came along Elisha spoke to him directions and the man received a miracle, and Naaman the Syrian wanted to give to Elisha some money. Elisha said no money, I'm not taking any money - because if he took money there'd be a sense where the obligation had gone. By taking no money he showed a pure heart and attitude, and he left the possibility of a strategic relationship open. But you see what happened Gehazi looks and says man, this Syrian, well we should have taken something off him. He got this miracle. He's going to die you know, he's a leper. Man, this is wrong, I need to do something about this - so he sneaked out and he said listen, my master's had a change of mind and what he wants is a little bit of gold and a bit of silver and some clothes. Can you help him out? And he said yeah, fine.
He gave him all the clothes. He took them all away, took the silver and the gold, and of course Elisha saw in the spirit what had happened. Elisha confronted him and the result of his sin was he got leprosy, his family got leprosy, his descendants had a curse of leprosy over them and they missed their destiny completely. Now this is not written there for nothing. This is written to help us to see that character has a huge impact on the destiny that we have. I look at the years of ministries I've seen that have fallen; they never fell because they weren't gifted, never fell because they weren't - a love for God. They fell because in the area of character there was compromise somewhere, so think about your own life and ministry. Think about what you do. Build and develop character, faithfulness in small things. Here's someone, Daniel 3:17-18: Daniel's three friends and they're faced with this compromise. The king had put a huge gold idol up and he said everyone has got to bow down and follow the culture.