In the seventies, Billy Joel sang a song entitled Honesty. In that song, he sang, "honesty is such a lonely word, everyone is so untrue, honesty is hardly ever heard, and mostly what I need from you." Honesty was the fourth most important thing that my wife, Debbie, and I chose to accentuate to our children during their growing up years. One could consider authenticity a synonym for honesty. Authenticity about oneself and toward others is an important thread in the fabric of ministry. Debbie and I wanted to train our boys to love people by enabling them to be themselves whenever they were around our boys.At the very core of authenticity is honesty. It has been said, "honesty cuts through deception and creates an healthy environment wherein the oxygen of truth can heal what deception has ripped apart." The end result of our lives is this: how has our lives impacted others for eternity? Honesty and authenticity is crucial for truth to do its work in the soul of another. In I Thessalonians 2:3, we read, "So you can see that we were not preaching with any false motives or evil purposes in mind; we were perfectly straightforward and sincere."
The advancement of the truth in the lives of others happens when it is couched in the context of the vulnerability of honesty. No pretense, just honest authenticity will do. Brene Brown states, "authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” In fact, the Apostle Paul makes this clear: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified…My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the power, so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.” The Apostle goes on to write in 2 Corinthians 4:7-10: “Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body.”
Throughout the scriptures we learn that integral to our authentic usefulness for the kingdom of God is how we meet pain when it comes. Pain gives us all the possibility of a heart. A heart that cares, a heart that empathizes with those with whom we share the truth. The Apostle sums it up with these words in 2 Corinthians 6:4-6: “Instead, as God’s ministers, we commend ourselves in everything: by great endurance, by afflictions, by hardships, by difficulties, by beatings, by imprisonments, by riots, by labors, by sleepless nights, by times of hunger, by purity, by knowledge, by patience, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love.” Can you hear the Piano Man? And his words, "honesty is such a lonely word...."? Be the one today to be used of the eternal God in the lives of everlasting people. Be the one who has learned from pain and give hope to a dying world through your honesty of the way it is in this world with the Almighty one at your piano.
