I told you yesterday about the Oklahoma debate tournament and how my oldest two daughters possibly let their focus fall away from the Lord and onto winning. Today I want to share with you an example of DD #3 letting the Lord steal her show!!
At this speech/debate tournament they offered a junior tournament the day before the senior tournament begins. My dd #3 decided that she wanted to participate in this for the first time and that the main event she wanted to compete in was persuasive speaking.
In persuasive speaking, you have five minutes to give a memorized speech on the topic of your choice. So the week before the tournament, she set out to write a speech. I had her spend some time praying about the topic and she chose to talk about Americans learning from our mistakes.
She felt really passionate about this topic, specifically learning from the mistakes in our past. This is because we spent time in our history studies the last couple of years learning from American history and we were all shocked at some of the things that our country did and allowed to happen, mainly dealing with the Native Americans.
So anyways, she wrote her speech and we spent time correcting it and she memorized it. After seeing her speech and hearing her give it, I needed to have a talk with her.
She dealt with some harsh realities of America, past and present, that many people don't like to hear about or admit to. I let her know that it was possible that her judges would not like hearing what she had to say or agree with her, and sometimes that can effect your placement in the tournament. More of less, she had to decide if it were more important to her to win, or to get her message across. She chose her message.
We worked on ways to neutralize her words in a way that would not immediately alienate her listeners while still getting her point across and also toning down the passion she portrays when she speaks of the subject (it sometimes comes across as her being very angry! :)).
So fast forward a week and we are at the tournament. She speaks two times in the persuasive speech category and pours herself into the five minutes she has to impact the lives of the six judges. I was so proud of the choices she made, not only on what to speak about, but in the fact that she put her goal of winning on the back burner and let God steal her show!!
So at the awards ceremony, neither of us expected what was announced...she won first place! We were all so happy for her. But you know what the best part was, I believe that she was able to touch the lives of the six judges that heard her that day. They all commented on her ballot sheets about the topic and several said that she gave them something to think about.
Now, I am not trying to say that when we let the Lord steal our show, it will always turn out this way. We won't always win first place, sometimes we won't even make it to finals!! But that becomes irrelevant to getting His message out and allowing Him to work through us.
We have the ability to change the world!!.......one stolen show at a time :)
No comments:
Post a Comment