Authenticity

One of the things that I have learned working in a recovery atmosphere is that people can really relate to the Authenticity of the speaker in a meeting. When the finger is pointing at them instead of someone else for the reason for their situation, our crowd responds.

In the book of Philippians it describes the authenticity of Jesus: Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. It continues to say he "humbled himself" even though he knew he was God.

When we speak to people there is an aura we project, maybe as a leader, a teacher, or just a person telling a story. Jesus did all the above without ever really saying he was better than anyone else. He knew their sins, their weaknesses, their struggles but yet he related to them on a level they understood, rather than as someone who had it all together which of course he did.

Most of us in this addiction recovery world start off what we are saying by indicating the similar struggles we have faced. This humility, the willingness to lower the bar of where we are at to the the bar of the audience, then raise it to the level that we have attained as it relates to where they too can go is exactly the same way Jesus spoke as he spoke in those many parables.

Of course Jesus never sinned so the finger pointing at him was always to show the way to salvation, but if we follow his approach, we will always speak authentically with humility. Want to see a great example of this, come to Smooth Talk on Tuesday nights or go to the Smooth Talk page on Facebook at 7:30 and listen to a man who asks me every week to help keep him humble.

Here's the great thing, I never have to because he is always authentic!