Authentically Me

Good morning!

In the Cambridge English dictionary the definition of Authentic is given as “If something is authentic, it is ​real, ​true, or what ​people say it is.” Thus if our Christianity is to be authentic, it must be real, true and what we say it is.

And this is what authenticity really means – for something to be Authentic it can’t be a copy or a replica – it needs to be the real thing. The real deal. 

The original.

And our world is so desperately looking for something real. We are inundated with false advertising, false promises, and false prophets. From the big scale politicians who promise the earth but deliver dust, to close friends who lie to us – we all know what it’s like to look for truth, for authentic love, authentic relationships, authentic leadership – and the world is looking for the authentic church.

Brennan Manning made the following statement that has often been quoted “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."

And apparently Ghandi said, “I love your Christ, but I dislike your Christianity.” Whether he said it or not the truth remains. People look at the church today and they judge us on being Authentic.

Are we for real? What does it mean to be authentic?

Last week we looked at the basis for our faith – he looked at what it meant to be authentically Christian. He presented the gospel to us and challenged us to follow through with where we were personally – have we handed over our lives to Christ? Have we admitted to him that we cannot do it alone and we need him – that we need his forgiveness and his mercy? Have we abdicated the throne in order to allow Him to be King and Master?

This morning – we are going to be looking at what it means to be authentically me. Who are we? Having understood the gospel, how should we view ourselves? How can we be authentic, true and real versions of who God made us to be?

Our reading to help us unpack this idea comes from Romans chapter 12 – if you’ll turn there with me in your Bibles its on page…– Romans chapter 12 and we’re just going to read the first three verses:

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

May God bless to us the reading of His holy Word, now and forever

Let us pray: Father may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing and acceptable to you – Lord speak to us, to our hearts through your Word this morning. Reveal your truth. In Jesus name we pray – Amen.

The book of Romans is one of the best systematic layouts of the gospel we have anywhere in the Bible. Paul slowly and systematically unpacks the basics of the Gospel in the first eleven chapters, from unpacking the fact that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” to “the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” to the Spirit testifying with our Spirits that we are God’s children.

It finishes with a doxology, a praise song to God at the end of chapter 11 –

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
    How unsearchable his judgments,
    and his paths beyond tracing out!
³⁴ “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
    Or who has been his counsellor?”
³⁵ “Who has ever given to God,
    that God should repay them?”
³⁶ For from him and through him and for him are all things.
    To him be the glory forever! Amen.

And then we launch into chapter 12 with the word, “Therefore…”

“Therefore I urge you…”

And this is an important word to begin our journey into what it means to be authentically me – because we need to start with what we have already established. In many ways the first 11 chapters are what it means to be authentically Christian – from here on it looks at what it means to be authentically me because of what God has done.

This is the shift from what God has done for us – to what that means and looks like in our day to day lives. It moves from an explanation of this is what God has done – to this is what we do in response to his mercy.

And it’s one of the glorious truths of the Christian faith and one that sets it apart from all others. In other faiths, and even in the world’s way of seeing things – you earn… you do in order to get, you perform tasks and achieve things to gain approval, love acceptance or mercy.

Here we are given grace and mercy and acceptance and love – and therefore… we respond.

Our first place of understanding who we are and what it means to be authentically me, is to understand who God is and what God has done for us. It is understanding that God loves us so much that he gave his only Son that we might have life. Not because of anything we have done, or will do. Not because of who we are or where we live or what we look like. Not because we are worse or better than anyone else.

But because God loves us. Because he chose us. Because he cherishes us. Because he delights in us.

Being authentically me means knowing that I am loved, accepted, cherished and that I belong to him. I don’t need to try be something I’m not, I don’t need to try earn his favour, I don’t need His approval – I have it.

It is a place of security. A firm, solid rock to base all that we feel and think about ourselves on. A port from where we go out and live as the loved children of God.

If you remember the definition of authentic from earlier, it’s that which is real, true and it matches what people say and people do. The Scriptures tell us what is real and true about us – but part of the struggle of being authentic is that we often tend to journey between two extremes when it comes to what we think and believe about ourselves.

There is the inflated self – the person who believes that they are the Master of their fate, the self-made-man, the one in charge and in control and who has it all together all of the time. ‘I did it my way’ is the song on their lips. And people like this are often praised for their confidence and surety. Trust no one but yourself. You get nothing for nothing in this world. But it is not true, and it is not real. Our very next breath is a gift from our Maker. We cannot control our own heartbeats let alone the course of our lives. And the truth that the gospel tells us here is that we cannot save ourselves – the reality is that God reached down in mercy and pulled us up. That is what is true and real.

The second trap is that we live with a deflated sense of self. This is the feeling of unworthiness, of being unloved, not good enough, and unimportant. Interestingly, this low self-esteem can often lead to behaviours and character traits that seem contrary to it. Brene Brown, a researcher in the areas of vulnerability and authenticity talks about narcissism saying:

“When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.” 

The deflated sense of self says – I’m not loveable or I’ve done such and such that God could never forgive me. What we don’t like to see is what this really is saying is that God isn’t enough. That the cross wasn’t enough. That my sin, badness, ordinariness, unlovely-ness is greater than God’s forgiveness, grace, delight and love.

And the problem is that both extremes result in us gazing at ourselves, 

whether with delight or disgust and not gazing at God.

How do we do this? How do we learn to be authentic? How do we fix our warped perceptions and skewed ideas of who we are – and become truly real, become who God says we are?

Our passage gives us three tasks.

Firstly it tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God as our spiritual act of worship. Authentic worship is what we’ll be looking at in detail next week.

The message Bible has a lovely way of saying verse one of Romans 12:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

Worship is about living a life that is focused on God in every way. Offering everything we do to him – keeping our eyes on Him not just as we stand here and sing songs – but Monday through Saturday. That we do everything knowing that it is an offering to Him. Our work is an offering. Our rest is an offering. Our very lives are His.

Paul in his letter to the Corinthians talks about whatever you do – do it for the glory of God. And this simply helps gets our focus right. We realise it’s not about us but about how we are honouring him. But at the same time we have purpose and meaning – we live lives of peace, justice, mercy, graciousness and love because we live to honour him.

The second task we have is to not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed.

E.E Cummings wrote, "To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight- and never stop fighting.”  

The standards the world sets for us result in us comparing ourselves to others and judging both others and ourselves. This results in us feeling better than “those people” and having an inflated self, or feeling that we’ll never be as good as “those people” and having a deflated self.

The world’s standards are false. We are constantly being told – This is beautiful. This is perfection. This is success. This is happiness. This is love. If you have this job, this house, this car, this brand of cool drink or pair of jeans you meet the standard.

We see this judgment come through in parenting styles, in how you should dress, in what you should do with your money and where you should live.

And it goes even deeper than that. We see it in what are acceptable character traits. Being business smart is placed higher than having integrity. Being right over being kind. Doing things quickly and cheaply rather than doing them well.

We live our lives constantly being told by the world what we should do and who we should be.

God’s word tells us who we are – and because of that what we should do. Our task is to change our measuring stick. Throw out the comparisons you make of yourself to others. Ask God who it is that you are and who he is making you to be.

Verse 2 in the Message Bible reads:

 Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Our final task comes in verse three

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

Our first task is to worship, our second is to not compare ourselves to the world, and the last one here is to be real and honest about who you are, both in how you think and in what you present to the world.

Think of yourself with sober judgement… sound judgement… with modesty. Realise your incredible worth – the fact that someone loves you enough that he was prepared to die for you. Realise that while loved and chosen, we are just dust. Psalm 103 says it so beautifully – and compares it so clearly saying:

“As a father has compassion on his children,
    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
 for he knows how we are formed,
    he remembers that we are dust.
 The life of mortals is like grass,
    they flourish like a flower of the field;
 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
    and its place remembers it no more.
 But from everlasting to everlasting
    is the Lord’s love.”

In our interaction with the world, we need to remember who we are. And we need to be secure enough in it to not present any other self, other than one is broken, sinful, and limited, and yet loved, secure and accepted. We need to show the world that we are simply servants and worshippers of a great God, and that any glory actually belongs to Him. We need to present to the world a real person, not someone who is perfect, or who has it all figured out, or who knows it all and therefore can judge. But what if rather we went out as fellow travellers on a journey, seeking God, being transformed and learning to worship Him with our lives.

Being Authentically me means knowing who I am before God. It means understanding who he has created me to be, and rejoicing in the fact that all his work is good and beautiful and his plans can be trusted. It means not falling into traps of thinking we are better or worse than we are – but rather realising that in order to see ourselves clearest we need to look at the mirror God holds up rather than the world’s mirror. And then we need to live out this truth into the world.

I pray that as you go into your week, that this will be something you ponder over, pray about and ask for God’s help in understanding what it means to be authentic.

God who am I to you?

God who do you want me to be?

God help me to see the truth.

God help me not to be caught up by the world.

God give me the faith and courage to live as you have called me to live everyday.

Amen.

Authentic Worship

We are on to week three of our Authentic series – and this week we are looking at what Authentic Worship is. And it’s a really interesting topic to research on the internet. Different people have such different perspectives and criteria for what makes worship authentic or not!

Some say that having a minister up front who might have some dodgy theology ruins the authenticity of worship. There are great debates on styles – some would call us the frozen chosen… that because our worship doesn’t often involve raised hands, closed eyes and intensely focused faces we can’t possibly be worshipping authentically. Others would say that churches that turn down the lights, set up the smoke machines and crank up the volume have lost authenticity in favour of the concert approach. There are articles on authentic worship and justice, authentic worship and song choice, authentic worship and lifestyle or liturgy or love.

But yet under all this, amidst the opinion and the preferences and the styles – I believe that worship, especially authentic worship, speaks to something far deeper than raised hands or pretty church buildings. And so this morning to unpack this a bit further I’m going to be looking at three different Bible passages.

But before we continue, let’s pray.

Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing and acceptable to you – Father reveal yourself to us in Spirit and in Truth – may your word sink deep into our hearts and change us. In Jesus name – Amen.

Our first Bible passage comes from the book of John, John chapter 4, and it comes from the middle of a well-known story and well known conversation that Jesus has with a Samaritan woman beside a well. Jesus has stopped to rest in the middle of the day, his disciples have gone to find food, and he meets a woman coming to draw water alone. A conversation begins when much to her surprise he asks her for a drink – a hugely controversial thing to do firstly because she is a Samaritan – and Jews generally hated Samaritans, and secondly because she is a woman. In their conversation Jesus reveals to her that he is the source of living water, symbolic of the Spirit, and also that he knows her and her past. In verse 19 then we reach this piece of the conversation:

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ 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. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

While this may seem a slightly bizarre line of questioning, and commentators differ in opinion as to whether her question is genuine or simply a distraction because things were getting too personal, Jesus treats the question as deserving of an answer. The Samaritans had been banned from the Temple, the one place where one could go and meet with God – and so they created their own place of worship. In many ways her question is – where is it that I can find God? Where is it that true authentic worship can happen?

And in many ways, here she is standing before the true God, before God made flesh, and asking about where to worship Him.

Jesus response gives us our first point about authentic worship: “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth.”

What Jesus is saying is that worship is not about a place, but rather worship is about what is in the heart. Worship is not bound to a building, or a style or a song – worship is about a heart attitude and a relationship. This is what makes it authentic.

And there are two things we can look at from this – the first is about what we do here on Sunday, and what happens in worships services throughout the world. True worship is not about the song choice, the building we stand in, about raised hands or sound quality. While these things are tools that can facilitate worship – worship is about what goes on within our hearts and souls and minds while we sing, while we fellowship, while we give, while we listen, and while we pray. The question needs to be – are you truly here? Is your mind and heart focused on God? Are you aware of the awesomeness that the Spirit of God enables us to pray? Are you spending these 60-90 minutes talking to your Father and listening to what He is saying?

Our minds are funny things and incredible things. It is totally possible to be somewhere and doing something with your body, while your mind plans, thinks, worries and imagines about something completely different. True worship means being present with God – using this time to engage with Him fully.

But it’s not just about here – Because true worship takes place in the heart, true worship then takes place wherever we go. Worship is not a box to tick once a week, and then we get back to our ‘normal’ lives. This is life. Worship is an attitude and focus that we take with us everywhere. And every single thing we engage in, from taking out the rubbish to playing with our children to running a board meeting to driving our cars is an offering to God.

And this leads us to our second point and our second reading – so if you’ll turn with me in your Bibles to Romans chapter 12: Romans chapter 12 and we’ll be reading from verses 1-3

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

This links in with last week’s topic of being authentically me… But it points to a life that is lived for God’s glory and not for self. That a life of worship is a life where the focus is on others, on service, on justice rather than on gain. Billy Graham said: that “The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service.” 

And when we come here on a Sunday we do not leave behind the secular space of business, politics, law, and so forth, and enter a sacred space. There is no secular space or sacred; God is always there.

As we enter a church for worship we carry with us our daily life in order to present that life to God. In daily life we can live, as it were, with God behind our backs; now we turn around and, facing God, present to God everything. We thank God for what we have found good in our lives and that of others, we lament to God for what we have found painful in our lives and that of others, we confess to God what we and others have done wrong, and we praise God for His incomparable majesty.

And we can do this in our daily quiet times, in prayer moments in the car or in moments where we come together as a family to give thanks for a meal. Worship is about life done with God, for God, and through God’s power within us.

So worship is not about a place, but about a heart attitude. Worship is not something we do in our life – but rather about offering our whole lives to God as an offering.

Our final reading comes from the prophet Habakkuk – and it comes from chapter 3, if you could turn there in your Bible. Habakkuk is one of the minor prophets and so comes near the end of the Old Testament.

The book of Habakkuk speaks about the coming Babylonian invasion of Judah, as God’s wrath on a nation that has become unjust, self serving and idol worshiping. It paints a pretty grim picture of the future and describes the coming calamity in detail. In many ways the chaotic future it describes is quite similar to the one we struggle with in our country at the moment. He speaks about violence and corruption, greed, fear and injustice. But then right at the end in verses 17-19 he says this:

“Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

¹⁹ The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    he enables me to tread on the heights.” Hab 3:17-19

And this is our final point – that worship does not depend on circumstance. Worship does not happen in the little vacuum packed place where everything in my life is perfect and so I praise. Worship happens because God is worthy, because God is true and just, because God is faithful even when the world is broken and evil and false. The darkness of our circumstances only allows the brightness of God to shine brighter – and for us to worship the one who is able to deliver us – and able to work in our lives despite the chaos and fear. CS Lewis has this beautiful quote which reads:

 

And what happens when our worship is authentic, when we realise it’s not about us, but about God, that he is worthy and holy and beautiful and just – is that our focus realigns to His and we find peace, we find hope and we find strength to face whatever the world may throw at us. The Bible is full of examples and exhortations to worship God in the midst of heartache and trouble. Paul and Silas, beaten and thrown into prison are worshiping and singing songs of praise when God chooses to use an earthquake to free them.

Job, in the midst of agony, and unexplained suffering says: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him;… Indeed, this will turn out for my deliverance,”

Many of the Psalms begin with struggle and crying out to God – lamenting the struggle of life and the injustice of people – and yet end with praise:

“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.”

Authentic worship happens because of who God is – it is a response to His love for us as displayed on the cross. It is a response to His power in conquering disease and darkness and death. It is a response to His faithfulness – that his promises of hope and deliverance will come to pass.

When we are authentically Christian, we know Jesus, we have a relationship with Him where he is Lord and on the throne of our lives, when we are authentically ourselves we recognise that we are loved and cherished because of who God is and not because of what we’ve done – it’s a place of humbling recognising that all I am and all I have is a gift.

And it is in the space of knowing who God is and knowing who I am that authentic worship happens. It is about our hearts. It is about our lives. It is about who God is, and that he is bigger than the circumstances around us.

To finish I’m going to quote some words of the song “Heart of Worship - Matt Redman that we sing here sometimes. It was a song composed during a period where his church was learning what it truly meant to worship, the bridge and the chorus say:

“I’ll bring you more than a song, for a song in itself is not what you have desired. You search much deeper within, past the way things appear – you’re looking into my heart.

I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about you, it’s all about you Jesus. I’m sorry Lord for the things I’ve made it – when it’s all about you, it’s all about you Jesus.”

As we conclude our service here, and as you go out into your week, may it be all about Jesus. May your life be lived authentically, with a heart attitude of worship.

Let us pray