So, I gave a talk at church and it wasn’t the best talk that I have ever given but it wasn’t that bad either. I take communication seriously and so I spent some time thinking of ways I could have improved it or communicated better and I ended up beginning to feel discouraged.
As I began to feel discouraged I remembered that one of the key themes of the talk had been that no one is perfect and that God still uses and works in and through us even when we get things wrong.
I wasn’t discouraged for very long as I continued to reflect on the good and positive messages that I had communicated, but I still have in mind 2 or 3 things I would do or say slightly differently if I was giving the talk again.
One of the illustrations I used in my talk was from the movie, ‘Inside out’. The film’s central characters are emotions and in this picture we see Joy telling Sadness to stand in a circle and to keep all the sadness within it. I must confess that as I watched the film recently that I sympathized with Joy’s attempts to sideline sadness. After all, who wants to be sad? The film though, cleverly helps us to see what an important role that sadness has in our lives and this was really helpful in helping illustrate another one of the points I was trying to make:
It’s okay to not be okay!
We shouldn’t have to pretend that things are fine or that we are okay if we are not. Church should be a safe place where we can be honest and real, but often people feel like they have to appear to be okay when they go to church. Christianity is fundamentally about us being accepted by grace, so when did pretending that we are perfect become so important?
When you think about it, pretending to be okay or to be perfect is actually the complete opposite to the Christian message and we need to be free from any type of pretence.
So here we go, it’s confession time.
I’m not okay, I’m facing all kinds of pressures in life but God is helping me through.
I didn’t give a perfect talk yesterday, but I believe that God still used it for his glory.
We all need to be encouraged by the truth and if that involves us speaking to ourselves then so be it!
This is the video clip I used as a part of my talk:
