Journey into Lightl

Being authentic seems to be important to us today. And it should be! It is spiritually healthy to be real with others and God (Psalm 51:6). Yet, so much of life seems to block us from opening up and being real. We often do not know what being real is.

Real for us is living in the reality of being who God is creating us to be (Ephesians 2:10). Being real comes as we live in the reality that though we are flawed and limited, we are still deeply loved, valued, and accepted by God.

Nevertheless, we fear rejection when we are real. We think we need to impress and receive people’s approval in order to be okay. Because our parents and other important influences did not perfectly meet these deep needs in our development years, we have become skilled at using the world around us to get our deep needs met.

For example, I used school to gain worth and acceptance from my parents. I did not study to be equipped to better function in this world, but to get good grades so that I could feel important and accepted.

The Challenge

What happens over time is that we lose track of who we really are. We forget what our true interests and abilities are, and the grace that makes us special and loved. Instead, we substitute a frantic pursuit of not being real so that we can better get our needs met.

So, we become an engineer because we think that then Dad will give us worth. We may become “nice” because people will think well of us. We leave behind the fact that we may hate engineering, and that our being loved (by God) is not affected by not being liked by everybody.

We become afraid to be real. Instead, we often give power to others to love us, value us, accept us, and keep us safe. But this is not always safe to do. This often requires us to hide and not be real. We choose to present a false self to get our need for approval met from man, rather than from God (John 12:42-43).

However, if we were living in true reality, we would know that God already knows our flaws and sin, and still accepts us. Relying on our acceptance by God is the key to being real with others.

One way we can tell the extent that we are being real is how sensitive we are to the praise and criticism from others. This helps us assess to what extent we have allowed others to define how important, acceptable, and loved we are. Certainly, God uses people to help us realize how much we mean to him. However, people are not a reliable gauge to always depend on to communicate to us our intrinsic worth and acceptance by God.

However, experiencing who we are to God, and being real with others is a process. We are profoundly influenced by how people treat and react to us. All of us have become skilled at leaving God out of our lives. This leads us to use people and things to get our great needs for worth, love and acceptance met.

Becoming a Christian and growing in faith does not automatically cause this over-dependence on people and things to get our needs met to disappear. It is a daily battle to rest in the security of a warm, loving, abiding relationship with God. And it is a daily battle to be real with others.

Nevertheless, being real with others is worth seeking. The alternative is to stay in the turbulent and scary world of using people and other things to give us our importance, acceptability, and safety. Relying on the Spirit enables us to experience a loving relationship with God (Romans 8:13). This reality gives us the power to be real!