Authenticity : Being Honest with God and Others

by Bill Hybels with Kevin and Sherry Harney

• ISBN13: 9780310265887
• ISBN10: 0310265886
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-01
• Publisher: Zondervan

Summary

Identify the trappings of Christianity and trade them for a vibrant faith that integrates Christian values into your everyday life. Discover the inconsistent areas of your life, proven ways to align them with the teaching of the Bible, and find a new joy that comes from growing closer to God. (6 Sessions)

Table of Contents

Interactions	p. 7
Introduction: Being Honest with God and Others	p. 9
A New Dimension in Spirituality	p. 11
Truth-telling: The Pathway to Authentic Relationships	p. 19
Honest Emotions	p. 25
Unstereotyping Evangelism	p. 31
Work: Turning Drudgery into Fulfillment	p. 39
The Seduction of Money	p. 45
Leader's Notes	p. 53
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Authenticity
Copyright © 1996 by Willow Creek Association
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
ISBN-10: 0-310-26588-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-26588-7
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International
Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of
Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—
except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Interior Design by Rick Devon and Michelle Espinoza
Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 /?DCI/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
We want to hear from you. Please send your comments about this
book to us in care of [e-mail]. Thank you.
S E S S I O N 1 A U T H E N T I C I T Y
A NEW
DIMENSION
IN
SPIRITUALITY
T H E B I G P I C T U R E
I backed the car out of the driveway as I do every morning at
5:45. I switched the radio from a program on ethics to the
Tokyo stock closing, and drove through the neighboring subdivision,
mentally critiquing architectural designs. I bought
coffee at the twenty-four-hour coffee shop and successfully
avoided the talkative cashier. As I turned onto the church
campus, I formulated a convincing defense for a ministry plan
that I hoped the staff would adopt. I climbed to my third-floor
office, wondering about the productivity of the nighttime
maintenance crew. I shuffled through the mountain of mail on
my desk and wished someone else could answer it.
I spun my chair around and looked out the window at the
church lake steaming in the crispness of the morning. In that
quiet moment I saw the previous quarter hour for what it had
been—time tainted by purely human perspective. Not once
during that time had I seen the world through godly eyes. I
had been more interested in international finances than in the
moral demise of our nation. I had thought more about houses
than the people inside them. I had considered the tasks awaiting
me more important than the woman who served my coffee. I
had been more intent on logically supporting my plans than
sincerely seeking God’s. I’d thought more about staff members’
productivity than their walk with the Lord or their family life.
I’d viewed correspondence as drudgery rather than a way to
offer encouragement, counsel, or help.
It was 6:00 A.M., and I needed a renewed heart and mind.
Like a compass out of adjustment, my thoughts and feelings
were pointing in the wrong direction. They needed to be
recalibrated—to be realigned with God’s accurate, perfect
perspective.
You see, in the space of a day, your relationship with Jesus
Christ can fall from the heights to the depths, from vitality to
superficiality, from life-changing interaction to meaningless
ritual. That’s a humbling admission, but it’s true. In a mere
twenty-four hours, you can slide from spiritual authenticity
into spiritual inauthenticity.
A W I D E A N G L E V I E W
1. How have you seen yourself slide into patterns of
inauthenticity?
What factors contribute to this slide?
A B I B L I C A L P O R T R A I T
2. This psalm clearly addresses the stress and strain of living
in this world. In eleven short verses we read about
troubles, cosmic chaos, earthquakes, conflict among
the nations, kingdoms falling, and the reality of war.
After this list of life’s turmoil, the psalmist writes: “Be
still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among
the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (v. 10). How
is it possible to “be still” in the middle of a life filled
with busyness and stress?
Tell about a time you found a quiet place in God even when
the world around you was like a raging storm.
S H A R P E N I N G T H E F O C U S
Read Snapshot “Put It in Writing”
3. What is your first response to my suggestion to journal
as a means of examining and evaluating your life?
PUT IT IN WRITING
Over the years, as I’ve traveled and spoken at churches and conferences, I’ve occasionally met leaders
who somehow seemed to avoid the daily slide into artificial Christianity. Whenever I could, I
asked what their secret was. In almost every case they said “journaling”—the daily process of examining
and evaluating their lives in written form.
Now, if you think I heard that and ran right out to buy a journal, you’re dead wrong; I thought the idea
was ridiculous. People who had time for journaling were not like me. They didn’t have my schedule or live with my kind
of pressure. Still, I had to admit that too often I repeated the same mistakes again and again. Too often I went to bed
with regrets about my actions. Too often I made decisions inconsistent with my professed values. In a rare moment of
honesty, I faced the fact that I was living under the tyranny of an unexamined life.
At that time I was chaplain for the Chicago Bears. Occasionally before the Monday morning Bible study, I’d join them
while they watched films and did postgame analysis. They would go over every play of the previous day’s game so they
could learn from their mistakes and not repeat them in the next game.
Finally, I understood. The journalers were simply telling me to do a postgame analysis! How could I expect to be
conformed to the image of Christ without evaluating my mistakes and progress? How could I grow without examining
my character, decision-making, ministry, marriage, and child-rearing? Maybe journaling was for me.
Read Snapshot “Yesterday”
4. Using the space provided, take no more than five
minutes to try journaling. Use the guidelines given in
the above Snapshot “Yesterday.” Don’t try to be overly
deep or profound; simply write about what you did
yesterday and allow yourself to examine your day.
What did you learn about yourself through this brief experience
of journaling?
YESTERDAY
After I was convinced of the value of journaling, I was still worried about facing a blank sheet of paper,
until a well-known author offered a simple suggestion: Buy a spiral notebook and restrict yourself to
one page a day. Every day, start with the word “Yesterday.” Write a brief description of people you met
with, decisions you made, thoughts or feelings you had, high points, low points, frustrations, Biblereading—
anything about the previous day. Then analyze it. Did you make good decisions or bad
ones? Did you use your time wisely or waste it? Should you have done anything differently? Were you authentic in how
you lived your life or inauthentic? Journaling can become a chance for daily honesty and learning.
Read Snapshot “Now What?”
5. Use the space provided below to write out your
prayer using the A.C.T.S. outline explained above.
Adoration:
Confession:
Thanksgiving:
Supplication:

---

Excerpted from Authenticity: Being Honest with God and Others by Bill Hybels, Hybels
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.