Why I Used to Be Afraid to Talk About God and Faith in My Business

In this episode, I open up about why I used to be afraid to talk about God and faith anywhere, but especially mixed with business, content, and podcast, and what changed everything.

Growing up as a pastor’s kid, I've seen it all and it also held me back from sharing or even wanting more for myself.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Faith and Vulnerability
• 2:31 The Journey of Authenticity
• 5:20 Reconnecting with my Faith
• 8:20 The Tug of War: Faith in Business
• 10:39 Visibility and Authenticity in Sharing Faith

Transcript

0:00

I have never wanted or felt courageous enough to talk about God and my faith and my content and my videos and my podcast. And I want to be very clear, I am not here to preach to you. That's my dad. That's what he does. And I'm only here to share my own experiences and the hope that you can take away something that really resonates and apply it for yourself. And maybe it's the fear of being vulnerable or something else that this helps you through. But I really want you just to listen. And I challenge you just to find ways that you can connect with us or resonate with this content today. And I also want to be very clear. I'm not going to preach to you about the Bible. I'm not going to preach to you about my faith. I'm going to share these experiences, but I will not stop preaching to you about visibility because that is my thing. growing up as a PK or a pastor's kid, church was my life. Everything surrounded my life was church. You don't plan anything on Sundays. you will be at church on Wednesday nights. If there is vacation Bible school, you will be at church. Like nothing comes before church. And although I understand and I see why my parents did this, it did not make me enjoy it even more anymore because I, especially when I was a teenager and I had plans and you know, I really learned to what I would say is talk the talk. visually look like I was walking the walk. Was I living it? No. And so I started to spot a lot of hypocrisy in the church. You know, really just I would say the honestly the way that my family was treated and talked about and how people were always negative. And I'm like, should you be this negative in church? Like this shouldn't this shouldn't be like how church is. And I really struggled with if this is what Christianity looks like, do I really like want to be a part of this? Do I want to be associated with this? That everybody who says they're a Christian, you know, condemns other people or judges other people or they're miserable all the time or they complain all the time or they're negative all the time. But again, it was my takeaway and it was the thing that I was seeing because of what I where I was at and. I didn't want to go to church. was mad that I had to go to church all the time. Not all the time, but I mean, I wasn't mad all the time. I did have to go to church all the time. But, you know, for so long I rejected it. And there's been times in my life where I've, you know, dived back into it a little bit, maybe reading like a Joyce Meyer book or, you know, listening to a sermon or something like that. And I don't know, over the past probably two, three years, I've really gravitated towards people who start... started talking about God in their business. And even though I wasn't doing anything about it on my end, I just felt connected and pulled towards those people. And about a year and a half ago, a girl that was in a mastermind I was in created this program called GodLed. And I was like, you know what? I feel like this is me. I'm ready to be connected to my business. in this program, I started reading more Christian books, especially like Kingdom Builders and like books that they were also entrepreneurs. And just connecting the dots between the Bible and entrepreneurship, business owner, all those types of things. And... last year in November, I finally, I'd read, I don't know, 20, 30 books last year. And I finally decided in November, I said, why am I reading all these books from other people interpreting what the Bible says when that's not how I, I've never done that in my business? I mean, I will go to a training, but then I will also implement things myself and see how it works for me. Like I always test everything. And I'm like, how can you test things from these books when you actually haven't read from the main book? And so last year in November, I started doing the Bible recap, which is a great free way to read the Bible in chronological order. And I'm like, if you're listening this live, I just finished day three hundred and thirty three. So I have like what? 33 days left of reading the Bible. Is that right? I guess it is right. That's insane. But anyhow, I just started growing so much more in my faith and really hearing it from the book, right? Not secondhand from somebody else, not somebody else telling me the way that they feel that it should be interpreted, like really me reading it. And it honestly changed the game for me. And I started to see things so much more clearly. And honestly, let me even go back a little bit further. 2023, a lot of things happened in my life. And what I saw and realized was people aren't who they say they are. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors. And I reconnected that back to what I thought about people at church. And I was like, Okay, I've been here condemning people that go to church and say they're Christians. like there are people I hear say they're such and such coach and they're exactly the same way. Like they're really not living what they say. And then I read the Bible and I find out, my gosh, all these people got a bunch of issues too. Like they're all like sinners. They all got things going on. And it just made me realize if somebody wrote a book on every thought you had on everything that you've done, Chrissy, would you be proud of it? No, I would not. I absolutely would not. And so I really had to own like, we're not perfect at all, not even close. We all do things that we're not proud of. We all may think that we have specific reasons for doing it doesn't make it right. But we're all put in situations where we do things that we're not proud of. And I really just had to take a step back and really look and be like, okay, you know what? I'm not perfect either. I'm a hypocrite sometimes too. We all are if we really look at it and really own it and we're really honest with ourselves. And so when I realized we all fall short and we all have work to do, it helped me realize that this is where I wanted to go and what I wanted to invest more of my time in and where I wanted to focus. And so instead of just reading the chapters every day and listening to eight minute video, I got the study guide and I started taking notes and I started really, really getting in and researching more and going outside, you know, above and beyond like getting a study Bible and getting a leadership Bible. Like I really was just like so into it. Like this is my morning. This is the new start of my morning routine and it seriously changed my life. One of the things when you read the Bible recap that I loved is she has I don't want you to think about how I can see myself in this. I don't want you to think about this because it's what we tend to do. We want to see ourselves in everything. We want to be relatable. But she said, I want you to see God. I want you to get to know God through this. And I was like, OK, I would have never done that. you not said that. And one of the things you do every day is you do a God shot. And so what did you learn about God in this? Or what surprised you about God in this reading? And so it really just opened my eyes on so many levels. But anyhow. That being said, after reading this so much, I realized I was starting to hide a piece of myself. And so I started like adding the word God or Bible or faith, just like little tidbits and just kind of like tiptoeing my toe in. And then I would see people who... just were like full on preaching to their audience. Like they were holier than now. And then I would kind of shrink back again. And I really just had this like tug of war back and forth that I had to just realize, you know what? I'm not here to preach to you. I'm not here to do any of those things. What I'm here to do is actually share my story and share what things you know, reading the Bible is done for me, doing the Bible recap is done for me, sharing my faith is done for me. And so it's been a constant tug of war, but it's also been a game changer and it's evolved so much. And I really believe that there was this disconnect between what I believe privately and what I shared publicly. So I used to talk about human design, my certification, we really got deep on human design. I was fascinated with human design and I just started feeling like that's not really me. I don't wanna talk about human design anymore in my content or in my coaching. If it comes up, sure, I'll have a conversation, but it's not what I wanna teach. And so I really just got to the point where I started being more authentically me with what felt aligned with what I was reading in the Bible. And when I did that, I started creating so much more confidence in myself because I was being so much more authentic to me. And, you know, when I started reading the Bible for myself, you know, I realized how much growth every single one of us has. And we still have and will always have, right? Perfection isn't the point. And choosing to give God my heart anyway and learning to lead with authenticity and learning to lead with grace and, you know, forgiveness was like a huge thing for me. Like I was angry and I can hold a grudge with so many people. Like the least I can do is forgive people, right? And not sit here and hold grudges. And so this really led me to share deeper connections with my audience. But again, it was just from my experience. And I'm not saying that's the only way that I'm ever gonna share my faith and God, but right now that's what feels really natural and authentic to me. The great thing is, that in my program, my closer proximity programs, I've always had clients who asked to pray, pray over all of us or pray before dinner when we're together. And no one has ever, ever had an issue with that. So I knew that, you know, even if my clients aren't doing the same things I'm doing, reading the Bible every day or whatever, right? I know that they, they don't have an issue. with the faith conversation. It's not my place to preach to people, right? But it is my place to share in the times that it comes up. My close proximity clients, there's a lot of personal conversations, right? There's a lot of personal things going in people's lives, right? And understanding when it makes sense, not that I'm hiding it, but can I pray for you? Well, Do you want to talk about this? Like what the Bible says about this? know, like being able to say those things and giving them, you know, the opportunity to tell me no has also been just more authentic feeling. they no one's ever told me no, but if they want to tell me no, I'd absolutely honor that and I would be okay with that. But I really think it is just, you know, being more authentic and true to yourself, whether it's, you know, talking about faith in God in your business or you know, whatever your values are, because your values are going to attract the right clients and it's going to repel the wrong ones. And that's okay, because authenticity is really the real magnet. And even if people don't believe what you believe sometimes, because you are so confident and you are so authentic about it, they see and feel the confidence in that and they're attracted to you because of that, even if they don't have the same feeling or strong feeling as you do about something. And when we think about that, like business growth accelerates when your voice, your values and your visibility all line up. how can I hide my faith if I'm telling other people to be vulnerable and be authentic and be genuine and have values, right? I can't, it doesn't make any sense. And so, Even though I'm not gonna preach to you, I'm not gonna talk about my faith in every single post because it just, it doesn't come up or it doesn't make sense. If it makes sense, don't worry, I'll be sharing. But you don't have to share everything about your faith, but when you try to hide something that's a part of you, it's really gonna weaken your message, right? And so I added in, especially if it feels natural, especially if it feels, I feel conviction to do it. I don't hide it because when you can own your truth, you give permission for others to do the same. And I can't truly be visible if I'm not showing up fully. Showing up fully is being real and raw and honest. So if there's been something that you've been afraid to share, maybe it's your faith, maybe it's your values, maybe it's your truth, know that your visibility expands when you stop hiding who you are. People will be more connected with you when you stop hiding who you are. the first time I put that post out, I was a little scared. Not that, not that people would be like, Oh, I don't want to talk about the Bible or God. So I'm going to unfollow. I don't even care about that. But like that people would tell me that I was wrong for the way that I said something. And I had to get over that really, really quickly. Because if you think that you're probably not my person, and it's okay. And I felt the same way when I started talking about creating content and, and it started really putting myself out there and my craft and you know 2018-2019. So there are always going to be people who know more than you or think differently than you in your same industry. And I'm just going to say show up anyhow because they're not your people. But the people who may be you may be two chapters ahead. They may really need to hear what you have to share. And if you hold it in they're not getting the support. that they could possibly need because you are the perfect person for them to work with. So share your values, share your faith if you want, stop hiding it. I know so many people seem to be coming out a little bit more and talking about their faith today, but as my journey has just been going on and on and on, I just wanna give you as somebody who talks about visibility and showing up authentically, I just wanna give you that permission if you didn't think you had it. to talk about your faith more and that, again, I'm not for everybody and neither are you. And if they don't align with it, that's okay. Whatever your faith, your values are, it's okay. They don't have to be. There's somebody else for them. And there are lots of people who are looking for someone just like you.