One: Be True to Yourself

Be True To Yourself
(Proverbs 8:1, 10, 20-21)

A. Introduction
1. Rosemary and I met Ray Waterman at church when he was a widower in his 70s. Wonderful man, a retired professional engineer and author. He lived alone in a house filled with books and with an expansive yard and garden. After his wife Mary had passed away, his children had wanted him to move to a smaller place, just too big to tend, but Ray wouldn’t leave his garden.
a. When it was tilling time, there would be an announcement in worship. A few people would be at Ray’s the next day. Likewise when the radishes were ready, then the onions, peas and beans, the tomatoes, the melons, the squash, there would be an announcement and people would be at Ray’s to pull and to pick. Same way with the blackberries and the grapes.
b. You see, Ray didn’t harvest radishes, or melons or blackberries or grapes, Ray harvested people.
c. I recall the first workday that I had attended at our church. The brush-cutter that I was using belonged to Ray Waterman. I was told if you wanted a tool of any kind Ray had it. His garage was filled with tools. Someone asked Ray why all the tools? Ray had commented that since he didn’t drink, didn’t really have any other vices, that he figured he’d indulge in buying tools. One person, commented while looking at all the tools, “My God, I’d have hated to see Ray if he’d been a drinking man.”
d. But then Ray hadn’t really bought the tools for himself, you see, he’d bought them for people.
e. Ray knew what was important in life and he tended to it. He was true to himself and he was intentional about it.

2. And I think our friend Sarah was too. Sarah was a gifted speaker, Director of Lay Speaking when I first attended in Connecticut over 20 years ago. I was to find out that Sarah was well to do, but she was a servant, gave her time and gifts to others. She believed that she was called to a ministry of the laity. Deeply interested in her faith, she attended and graduated from the Yale Divinity School but she chose not to be ordained because she believed her calling was as a lay person. She was reflective on her life and who she was. She remained true to herself, and she used her speaking gifts to talk to audiences from Maine to Maryland. She understood what mattered to her and she lived her life intentionally. Tragically, Sarah died at the age of 53.

3. If John Izzo, the author of **The Five Secrets We Must Discover Before We Die, was to ask, “who were the wise elders in my life and who had something to teach us,” I probably would have recommended Ray and Sarah. That’s what he asked 15,000 people. Who would you recommend that he interview? Sarah wouldn’t have been old enough. And I can see that. Sarah had flaws that I know would have healed given more time. Author Izzo wanted to talk to people who had lived long enough not only to have experienced life, but had reached an age where they had reflected on their lives. They knew what mattered. They tended to it. He selected 235 people from the thousands that had been recommended. They aged from 60 to 106. They came from all backgrounds and faiths, barbers, educators, business owners, authors, and homemakers, priests and poets, Holocaust survivors, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, tribal chiefs, and atheists. What do you have to teach us about living? What do we need to discover before we die?

4. Die. Why did the author use this harsh word “die”? (p 5) By choosing “Before You Die” in the title, Izzo was setting a tone of urgency. And he recognizes that there are two fundamental truths in life. The first is that we have a limited and undefined amount of time. It may be 100 years, it may be much less. Our Jeff died at 18. Rosemary nearly died at 31. There is an uncertainty to the time we have. Our time is limited and undefined.
The second fundamental truth is that we have a nearly unlimited number of choices we can make as to how we will use our time, what we choose to focus on, what we choose to but our energy into, what will ultimately define our lives. There needs to be some sense of urgency associated with how we choose to live. We have unlimited choices, and wisdom is in short supply. Izzo was searching for those who could impart wisdom. As the Proverbs told us, “Choose wisdom instead of silver, knowledge rather than the finest gold.” Wisdom is in short supply. Who can teach us wisdom?

B. Body

1. The first of the five secrets that John Izzo (p 25) deduced from his interviews was “Be true to yourself.” The corollary was, “Live with intention.” If you don’t reflect on your life, if you don’t live life awake, how can you know what God intended for you? To be true to ourselves we need to live with intention.
a. Thoreau said, “Tragedy is spending your whole life fishing only to find out it was not fish you were after.” Ray knew that it was not tillers or tools or blackberries but people he was after.
b. A recurring theme in Izzo’s interviews was that we have to follow our heart, but we have to live awake in order to know what our heart is telling us. We have to live with intention. Socrates had said “An unexamined life is not worth living.”
c. Seems like that is consistent with the church season that we’re in now, Lent. Lent is a time of examination. At the opening of his ministry, Jesus called us to repent. We can’t repent without self-examination, without putting our lives under the spotlight of the Holy Spirit and asking how are we doing. Are we being true to what God intended for our lives? Are we living our lives using our gifts, our talents, our means for the family of man and the community of faith in a way that matters?
d. God calls us to love him and serve one another. We possess an infinite combination of gifts. We therefore love and serve in an infinite number of ways, as many ways as we are people. Izzo (p27) suggests to live with intention, we need to consistently and regularly and intentionally ask three critical questions:
i. Am I following my heart and being true to myself?
ii. Is my life focused on the things that really matter to me?
iii. Am I being the person I want to be in the world?
e. Now there are some God questions that must be asked before you can answer these questions. If the answer to being true, to being focused, to being the person I want to be all come back “I want to rob banks; I want to be a bank robber” somehow we’ve missed the mark. We’ve missed the God-principles by which we need to live our lives. Principles like, do no harm, do good, stay in love with God. As a religious person, I don’t think that these questions and God questions can be separated. Nor do the answers mean we are being called to a religious vocation, instead to a religious life. We can be faithful as a cobbler or a carpenter or as a farmer or a flute player.
f. We’ll leave the God principles for other days. The point is we need to be intentional about self examination.

2. Does it matter that we follow our heart? Izzo (p 27) interviewed George a college professor that could easily tell the students that were following their hearts from those who were there because their parents wanted them to be; they were living their parents dream. Those following their hearts even if they weren’t the brightest students excelled while those whose heart was not in it struggled. And as he followed the careers of many of his students the success or struggle continued. We know people like that. An we know others who have chosen their heart paths, are passionate about what they do and light up a room when they enter it.

3. Now, before we say, “Does this mean I need to move or change jobs, or change partners?” being true to yourself does not mean you have to leave your spouse and family to follow your dream; but it may mean that you want to make changes in how you spend your time. Izzo (p 40) tells a story of Jackie, a 66 year old successful banker who went to a seminar while in her 40s. Participants were asked to introduce themselves and tell why they went into banking. When it came Jackie’s turn she said, “Well, I’ve been a banker for 25 years but I always wanted to be a teacher. Business was my father’s passion.” The words had come out. They were a shock to her. She had never vocalized that before. She’d always enjoyed banking, but she had known something was missing and she’d never said it until then. Rather than quitting her day job, she began tutoring and volunteering with children. She then found that her bank sponsored many programs with children and got involved with that eventually becoming the bank person responsible for the program. She integrated her professional life with what she had come to determine most mattered to her.

4. Me, I’ve been a soldier, pilot, a manager, a business owner, and a preacher; but I think I’ve always been called to be a teacher. As it turns out I have been.
a. I was a teacher for seven years of my Army career; and leadership in all the others always involved teaching.
b. At Sikorsky, I taught saw a need and developed program management courses and leadership courses and taught them to the other managers.
c. As a boss, there’s always a lot of teaching going on.
d. And I’m a director of lay speaking, responsible for planning and teaching training courses for lay speakers.
e. You may have also noticed that my preaching is a lot of teaching.
f. A few weeks ago, I was in a one on one discussion with a young man who had asked for counsel. When I reflected on the passion and animation of the discussion, I realized I’d been teaching.

5. Sometimes our passions can’t be satisfied by our vocations. Nor can we make our lives our passions. Sometimes we have to make our dreams our avocation; and sometimes that opens unexpected doors. I want to show you a clip of a young man whose dream could have been nothing but music. He came from a poor home, was bullied in school, lacked self-confidence, but when things got tough he would walk in the country and sing. He paid for some voice lessons, sang in some amateur productions. He had come to know that the thing that mattered most to him was singing, even if he could only do it on the amateur stage. But then was injured, laid up, he hadn’t sung in four years when a new show opened in London called “Britain’s got talent.” He was working as a mobile phone salesman when he made this audition. You tell me if Paul Potts could have been anything but a singer. (youtube.com/watch?v=bEo5bjnJViA)

6. Paul had been true to himself all of his life by using his gift as an avocation. But for some, our gifts our passions may not be as obvious.
a. I often worry about Toni, she does so many things so well. I hope that she will finally select something that she is truly passionate about. Yet the job she finally selects may not have been created yet. She’ll have to examine her passions against the world she will live in.
b. In order to hit the mark we need to live with intention. The world changes, opportunities change, interests change. When I chose my college major in 1960, software engineering wasn’t even on the list. Three years ago, I could be passionate about developing software applications for iPhones. But wait, iPhones weren’t invented until two years ago.
c. We need to continually examine our selves, our lives, our environment, our opportunities. Wisdom is that a person like Toni should plan on re-educating herself at least 3 times in their lifetime. Maybe more. Her world will be changing even more rapidly than ours.

7. So how is it that we find what is fulfilling? How is it that we hit the mark? Interesting that the Greek word for sin is an archery term that means “missing the mark.” Repentance then means changing so that we get closer to the mark. We examine ourselves, but by what criteria?
a. First we need to understand that happy lives are filled with happy days. You can’t have a happy life unless you have happy days, an accumulation of many happy days.
b. John Izzo’s (p30) grandfather used to talk about having a “good tired” at the end of a good day. That’s opposed to the days that end with a “bad tired,” a kind of empty gnawing fatigue. You know both feelings. Izzo suggests that one of the ways to have happy days, fulfilling days, good days is to discern the difference between the two, to know what makes a “good tired” and a “bad tired.”
c. One of ways is simply reflecting more. Asking what make a good day good?
i. It can be as simple as being outside, of being in the garden, of completing the planting or the haying, of finishing that vexing task.
ii. It can be reading a book.
iii. It can be time with the family, with the children. Nothing made a day better for me that watching our Jeff play football.
iv. It can be a day on which you taught someone something, or made a tangible difference in another’s life.
v. Depending on our personalities, the way God made us, it can be myriad of things. We need to ask to realize what makes a “good tired,” and what makes a “bad tired,” and move away from one toward another.
d. A good life is one made by stringing together good days, as many days as possible, and to do that we need to live with intention.

8. We need to know too that destiny takes time, destiny is a process not a destination. Destiny is a path. Jesus says it is through the narrow gate. One that we find by examination and by moving ourselves closer and closer to the centerline. And it takes time to get there.
a. I’ve said it before, and I know it to be true, that I would have been a terrible pastor had I answered the nudgings that I received when I was 19. God needed years to move me along a path to the point that he could effectively use me.
b. It was grace over a 30 year period that moved me. Yet I learned the hard way. I learned by trial and error. Sometimes I didn’t learn at all. Had I immersed myself in grace, subjected myself to examination, I could have learned earlier what it means to be true to myself, to live life with intention.

9. To be authentic, to become authentic, we must have the discipline to set aside time to really listen to our hearts and what God is telling our hearts. What better time to examine our lives, how we live our lives in order to live them more joyfully than during Lent.

10. You have a card to help you, to use as you and God examine your lives. Here are the questions that Izzo (p 45) suggests.
a. Did this week or day feel like my kind of week/day? What would make tomorrow or next week feel more true? (This is part of trying to find out what makes it a good day, a bad day and moving closer to the mark.)
b. Was I the kind of person I want to be week? In what way do I want to be more like the kind of person I want to be tomorrow or next week? (Who are you really in the eyes of God. How do I move toward it?)
c. Am I following my heart now? What would it mean for me to really follow my heart now? (What am I made for? How can I live that out in vocation, avocation, learning? What first step can I take?)
d. How do I want to live this secret more deeply next week?

C. Close

1. One last thing. George, the professor who told us that those students excelled in class and in life were following their hearts also advised his students, “Don’t Cram.” (Izzo, p 45) Just as you cheat learning when you study that way, you cheat life when it’s lived that way. Author Stephen Covey advises that everything worthwhile follows the law of the farm. Everything of value takes cultivation and planting and watering and feeding and weeding before that harvest can come. Our Lenten examination is in some ways weeding, examining our condition, separating the good from the bad. Living with intention is feeding, providing food to life that will yield a full harvest. Jesus taught us the Word of God is the seed, the planting. The law of the farm applies, a good life cannot be crammed.

2. I told you about my friend Sarah, gifted speaker, but it was not always so. Sarah had a traumatic childhood and was an extreme stutterer. But just like Mel Tillas knew he should sing, Sarah knew she should be a speaker and overcame some of her childhood stuttering. But not completely. After she was married, she still knew that speaking, especially for God, was her calling. Her husband hired the best speech therapist and speech teacher in New York City. I met Sarah in her 30s about 10 years later. It had been a long process, no cramming allowed, the law of the farm applied. Sarah had become who God had envisioned her to be.

3. But the law of the farm pays off. If you decided your calling was to be a horticulturist, say a rose gardener, and you decided that you would read about and work on roses 30 minutes a day. In a year you’d know more than half the people on the planet. In 3 years, more than 95 percent on the planet. And if you had spent an hour over those three years, you’d be world class. The same applies to just about any endeavor you want to pursue.

4. Paul Potts didn’t become a world class opera singer over night. His destiny was a process, singing to himself, then in glee clubs, church choirs, digging deep in his pockets for private lessons, then amateur theater. It was his passion, it was who he was. To be true to himself he had to sing. But he didn’t reach world class over night. He had to each day move a little closer to the mark that he knew was God’s vision of himself. It took examination, it took intention. In the final analysis, he could have remained a mobile phone salesman and an amateur singer all his life and he would have been true to himself, but he was also ready when the opportunity arose.

5. God has an ultimate vision for each of us. We place ourselves in his grace by reflection, asking him if we lived each day each week following our heart, the heart that he has given us, then moving with intention closer to that vision. So may we become the vision that God intends us to be. May we follow the heart that God has spoken to. Amen.

**Izzo, John. The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publications, Inc., 2008.