Why Authenticity Matters

I started this blog out of a desire to share my story in an authentic way to empower others to see the value and the beauty in their stories as well.  My target audience is women (no offense, guys, but I GET women), and particularly women who have walked through abuse or addiction or co-dependency.  As women, our heart is our greatest weakness, because we will love and give and nurture and connect and support at great cost to ourselves without hesitation.  But our hearts are also our greatest strength, because we will love and give and nurture and connect and support at great cost to ourselves without hesitation.   Do you see the paradox?  It is the very paradox of Christ himself – “Greater love has no one than this – to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13, New International Version).  Our hearts get us into trouble, because we get hurt and used and abandoned and disappointed time and again.  Our tendency toward unconditional love is risky, but I firmly believe – and said in an earlier blog post - that we must never stop taking those risks.  C.S. Lewis famously put it this way:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. (The Four Loves).

 

I believe with all of my heart that authenticity is the key to freedom, to relationships, to healing and wholeness, to connection and to life itself.  Yet it seems a rare commodity.  How is authenticity possible in a world full of hackers and scammers and users and abusers?

First, my authenticity is only possible because I am redeemed by the blood of the Lamb!  Without Christ my story is simply about broken-ness, but through Christ, my story is about redemption and healing.  Authenticity, however, requires that I tell the WHOLE story – and that includes the broken-ness part.  As such, there is beauty in broken-ness because the story doesn’t end with my failures or losses or tragedies.  I heard Joyce Meyer say it this way last weekend, “The biggest way we can give Satan a black eye is to give God our mess and let Him make it our message."  That is what drives my authenticity. 

But Scripture also challenges me over and over again to focus on truth, and isn’t truth at the very heart of authenticity?  There are well over a hundred verses in the Bible that speak of truth (or lack of truth), but these are some of my favorites:

Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?  The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart. Psalm 15:1, 2

Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.  Psalm 25:5

In your majesty ride forth victoriously in the cause of truth, humility and justice; let your right hand achieve awesome deeds.  Psalm 45:4

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32

I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right. Isaiah 45:19

These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts.  Zechariah 8:16

But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.  John 3:21

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. John 4:23

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 1 Corinthians 13:6

Our Abba God loves authenticity. He loves the truth of our stories and the truth of our hearts, no matter how broken or bleeding.  I'm here to tell my story... care to tell yours?