Here are four character qualities that Billy Graham spoke about at a Civic Luncheon in Denver, Colorado in 1987. When you consider where Colorado is spiritually today versus when the late Billy Graham spoke these four truths into their life, you realize that God always positions his messengers in strategic places to speak life and goodness.

The first quality that I would like to mention is integrity. Integrity has to do with soundness, completeness, unity and consistency. Wayne Porter wrote in TIME magazine last month, “Integrity has increased steadily in importance as a public issue since 1985.” When we speak of integrity as a moral value, it means a man is the same on the inside as he claims to be on the outside. There’s no discrepancy between what he says and what he does; between his talk and his walk.

The second quality necessary for leadership, it seems to me, during these difficult days is personal security. I do not mean this in the sense of physical security, job security or financial security. Newsweek magazine ran an article some months ago entitled, “Uneasy Men at the Top.” They described the job insecurities of some in the top levels of corporate management in large companies. It set the stage for one newly installed CEO to say in jest; “I didn’t mind it when they wrote my name on the office door in chalk but I did think it was a little unethical to have a wet sponge hanging from the doorknob.”

Besides integrity and personal security, the third quality which is necessary in a leader is a sense of priority. This is the ability to separate the important from the unimportant, the critical from the trivial, the vital from the insignificant, the eternal from the temporary. It is essential for our daily tasks, but it also is true for the overall directions of our lives. Until a man gets his priorities in life straight, everything else is going to be out of order.

Then, there is one final quality that I would mention briefly, the quality of vision. When there’s no vision, the Bible says, the people perish. This is the quality of seeing what can be and ought to be done and how to get there.

So, I challenge you today to be a person of integrity, a person of security, a person with a sense of priority and a person of vision. But most of all, I challenge you to be individuals who are committed to Christ.