it's an honor to be here it's a privilege it's an honor I've heard that you have sat through some amazing conversations and dialogues about you know the Lord Jesus being the reason man and being able to give a reason for the hope that's within you and I I can only pray in hope that God would use me to add to anything and everything that you have gotten over the last few sessions a few days you know I'm it's like what do we got here middle school in the building tonight okay junior high high school alright
anybody graduated already congratulations congratulations I remember graduating high school actually and I had a job at a grocery store I thought it was amazing I worked at this grocery store and I had a great time you know working at the grocery store that summer but I had a friend and he struggled to find a job that summer man he looked everywhere it looked high look low could not find a job to save his life finally you know last-ditch effort he gets a phone I mean he puts in an application and he gets a phone call
they they called him back on his application and it was the local Zoo and so he was like bro I'll out whatever they want me to do I'm gonna do it and well I said you know I thought okay well you know you know it's great you could work at the zoos be fine but apparently this zoo this was a pretty terrible Zoo I'm not gonna lie to you all zoo was really bad and the gorillas had gotten sick and so because the gorillas were sick they were taking care of him and they they weren't
out you know doing the gorilla things they do so they wanted him to actually wear a gorilla suit and pretend he was a gorilla to entertain people that's how this is bad suit terrible zoo yo so of course he agreed to do it because he needed the money so what does he do he puts on his gorilla suit and he goes to work every day and he's in there first he was no nervous right I'll be nervous too he's kind of like do they really believe this and a suit look really real so it was
very believable and he started off kind of like timid he was like ooh you know I mean like but as the the time rolled by and the days went on he got really into it and it was just like you know he was all into the whole gorilla thing and he got so excited about his job he started swinging on the tire swings and just doing all kinds of crazy stuff and well he got a little too excited because one day he swang up and over the cage into the lion's den so he lands in
the lion's den kind of comes to realizes where he's at and you know there's kids watching everyone's like oh my goodness what's gonna happen and in full gorilla costume he starts screaming hey freaks everybody out right kids are crying mommy what's happening right now confused so he's screaming again like full gorilla costume what a lion starts walking over to him and he keeps screaming even louder then the lion takes off running toward him and he says the lion stops and the lion says if you don't shut up we're gonna lose our jobs man that is
absolutely not a true story I'm sorry but it's funny though I tell you the story to say listen things are not always what they appear to be right things not always what they appear to be and sometimes we are not always what we appear to be we call ourselves Christians and then we get out here in this world and some of us are just wearing a mask wearing a costume pretending to be trying to fit in to the crowd pretending to be just one of the crowd instead of recognized and realizing the distinction that we
have as Christians the distinction that God has given us and called us to we are unique we are designed with a glorious purpose and I want to talk about that tonight because the the purpose that God has given us the purpose in Jesus Christ it's something we don't want to shy away from it's something that we want to fully embrace recognize and be able to shine that light wherever we go so uh I'm gonna pray and ask God to bless this time and we're gonna dive in father God we thank you for your word it
is sharp as a double-edged sword it is it cuts it it transforms us it is alive it's living and active and god I pray that this living an active word would be carried by the Spirit of God into the hearts of any and everyone who has ears to hear tonight god I pray that you are using me it's not about anything that I have I actually have nothing to offer except my voice and I pray that you would use my voice to say what you want to say through your word Oh God give me the
power to speak on your behalf in Jesus name amen the book of Hebrew is one of my favorite books Hebrews chapter 12 it says this in verse one through three it says therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that set before us looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and is seated at the
right hand of the throne of God there's a lot in back we could unpack that for a whole week I promise you we could but essentially it's saying run this race keep your eyes fixed on Jesus lay aside anything that would keep you from focusing on the one who you're supposed to be focused on and why is that because Jesus is the one who has endured the cross endured the shame why for the joy set before him there is actually joy for him on the other side of this costly sacrifice there's joy on the other
side of it and that part of that joy is knowing that 2,000 years later you would be sitting here as his followers continuing to change the world but more than anything is that he's sitting at the right hand of the throne of God honoring and glorifying the Father in heaven so I'm here to tell you all that there actually is joy on the other side of your sacrifice on the other side of the cost of following Jesus Jesus is our hope and to to acknowledge that in every aspect of our lives is going to cost
us it's costly it's gonna cost you your reputation it's gonna cost you your popularity you know Jesus actually tells his disciples take up your cross and follow me it's not like a you know like a wooden stick that he's basically saying take up your execution stick and come after me it's gonna cost us to follow him but that's okay because on the other side of that cost is joy unlike any other kind of joy you could ever imagine it's joy and knowing that you have the answers to life's problems it's joy knowing that you have
the meaning of life at your fingertips it's joy and knowing that the hope of the world rests in Jesus and you have that inside of you there's joy on the other side of the sacrifice of the cost I know something about costly things okay I've been with my wife for I don't know since I was 18 years old we met and I'm 19 now and so it's been a it's been a journey but we met we were 18 we got married young and I remember after the first year we were married I I wanted to
do something special said man I want to do something special I didn't have a lot of money you know I was really broke but I said I got to do something and my friend said Lecrae there's this incredible jewelry stores called Tiffany's celebrate the first year anniversary you got to go in there and get her something now if you don't know about Tiffany's it's pretty expensive I mean you walked through the door it looks like a castle door on the outside and so I go in the into the to the mall where Tiffany's was located
I open up this castle door I walk inside I hear doves and birds chirping when I get in the building and then I look at the prices and then I walk right back outside of Tiffany's and and I said I can't do it it's too expensive I can't afford that man that the cost is too high and they said look ray trust me you got to get her that blue box when she sees the blue box from Tiffany she's gonna cry she's gonna love it forever I said why don't you tell me that I'll just
go in here and get a blue box I said no look ray you gotta go man I said man don't they have somebody I was there Tameka Ora Tasha's because Tiffany's is too expensive Stella crazy just suck it up and go in there so I I did it y'all took all my little change scraped and saved and winning Tiffany's I got our bracelet and we just paid it off yesterday so I'm excited but I gave it a bracelet in uh and and you know what she didn't boohoo like I thought she was she appreciated it
but was what was really special is I gave her the bracelet years ago but just this year she passed that bracelet on to my daughter and now my daughter wears this treasure that has so much history and love that was given to my wife on our first year anniversary I would have never known the joy I would experience way back then when I paid that price its costly but it was worth it on the other side of that cost now I know something about cost I know something about the pain of sacrifice I know something
about pain and maybe you all do too but I I've been knowing about pain for a long time I've known about it since I was around seven years old seven years old I experienced a very traumatic thing I was abused by a close family member abuse terribly by ten years old I've been abused by another one and so I'm wearing these scars on the playground at recess I'm wearing these scars on Saturday mornings while I'm watching my cartoons I'm wearing these scars of having my childhood innocence just stripped away from me and I had to
carry them everywhere I went I knew I will forever be different from a lot of my peers so I learned something also in that time period I learned something very unhealthy I learned to take all of this trauma and all of this pain and stuff it down and pretend like you didn't happen because no one else addressed it no family members no one else addressed it so I thought oh I must I'm just supposed to stuff it down well you add to that a chaotic environment that I grew up in with drugs and gangs and
violence and I saw my father once when I was four years old I never saw him again and so this was the world that I was living I knew about pain and I knew that this world was was was just ugly and I hated it and I would go places and people say you look just like your father you act just like your father and I hated it I hated it because what they were saying was I reminded them of this guy that just was so terrible in my mind so I want to do everything
and anything I could to never be associated with this man whatever he did I want to do the exact opposite so I worked hard you know I pushed all my my problems down deep and I just worked really hard and I worked hard at school and I got scholarships in them and I got to college then I was on the deans listing I graduated college and I took on a corporate job and I created a business and I just kept going going going and on the outside it looks good but on the inside I was
headed for a disaster I thought my reason for being was success in working hard and not being my father but that wasn't the truth the truth of the matter was I had some stuff inside I had not dealt with it I needed to deal with I learned to take the worst circumstances of my life and push them deep down inside and internally I was bleeding but on the outside I looked fine so moving a million miles an hour I got a marriage I got three kids I'm running multiple businesses I got a successful music career
I get to hang out with Steph Curry and Justin Bieber you would think life was great and on the outside it was but on the inside there were still issues that needed to be dealt with I was a ticking time bomb that God had to work on I was disturbed I started having nightmares about friends of mine that I saw going through gun violence and I started dealing with old childhood wounds and I started wondering man Jesus some of your people out here are not acting very Christian like is this really what it's all about
and you all I started losing hope I started losing hope I start losing faith in myself I start losing faith in in God I start losing faith in faith and and honestly I needed to know the reason for the hope within me not so I could show the world at this point in time so that I could tell myself why I needed to stand firm in Jesus see my dilemma was that I hadn't fully formed my own identity I knew who I didn't want to be but I didn't know who God had called me to
be I had let the acceptance of everyone else tell me who I was and and I had let all of the negative things in my past tell me who I was but I wasn't hearing who God said that I was you see I learned a powerful lesson during this time period I was living for people's acceptance and what do I always say this if you live for their acceptance you will die from their rejection if you live for except than she died from rejection well I didn't recognize this at the at this point in time
and it took some time and I remember you know going through this dark period this period where I was just struggling I was saying God I'm anxious and I'm sad and I'm I'm crushed inside and I I don't know where I'm at and I remember coming across Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and he was praying and he went to his disciples he said can you guys stay up and pray with me and they fell asleep on him he kept praying and it got to a point that he he's so knew what God had called
him to do and what God had called him to be he started sweating blood he was so anxious about everything going on around him he started sweating blood and it was at that moment I realized Jesus was was sweating blood because he knew he was called to endure that cross because there was joy on the other side of it and at this moment I realized all the struggling and all the anxiety and all this the stuff I was wrestling with internally was it new to God God wasn't like I don't that's rough one I can't
handle that God was saying I've been there Lecrae I was there in the Garden of Gethsemane but there is joy on the other side of this if you will trust in me as Jesus trusted in the father if you will rest in me there's joy on the other side and I realized something very special in this moment that God was not here to be transactional transactional means you snap your fingers and it's all done transactional is what happens when you go to the grocery store here's my money give me my thing and I walk out
the door see God is not transactional God is relational he wants to walk with us through the pain through the struggle through the trials and Jesus let me know in that scripture that he was walking with me that he had been there I had a high priest who could empathize with everything that I was dealing with and there was joy on the other side of his sacrifice and and it let me know if I put my trust in him there could be joy on the other side of this for me so I took a stand
now I wish I wish I could say that I just overnight I just switched it up and I just change and that's not really what happened it was a process now I had to go through a process and processes are hard you know I'm trying to stand up for what I believed in and say the things that I felt like God was calling me to say and everybody didn't like that now some people push back on that lost a lot of followers I know that kills a lot of you I know oh my gosh she
lost followers Lost followers on social media but I had to keep going in the midst of that chaos I had to open the claws that I had to stare at my ugly past and recognize that that did not define me that my identity was in Christ you know if I if I had a hundred dollar bill if I took that hundred dollar bill and I crumbled it up how much is it now worth still worth a hundred dollars okay let's say I take that hundred dollar bill I crumble it up I spit on it I
throw it on the ground step on it pick it up how much is it worth still a hundred dollars okay I take that hundred dollar bill I go two days without wearing deodorant how much is it worth it's worth a little bit more now right it's still worth $100 so you mean to tell me no matter what has happened to this it's been stepped on it's been spit on even if it was told you're worth nothing it never loses its worth and you all we have eternal Worth and value through Christ Jesus you can be
spit on stepped on people can talk about you talk about your past that does not define you that does not define you we've got to be able to say you know what my identities in Christ I am who God says that I am see that I had to embrace the trauma and let it mold me into someone new I had to wake up and accept that this darkness does exist but there is joy on the other side of it if my eyes are fixed on Jesus as the scripture says the shift is being able to
die to whatever we were before the pain to birth the person that God wants us to become see we we get so attached to who we have been we're so attached to fitting in we're so attached to looking the parts and not admitting that we don't have it all together and we can't be who God really wants us to be we've got to be able to die to who we've been we've got to be able to say you know what that's gonna be costly but it's worth it because Jesus is my hope because he endured
for the joy set before him so I'm willing to do it all we got to be willing to walk through judgment and inconvenience in order to grow we got to be willing to be ridiculed we live in the social media era I get it we live for likes we're hoping for likes but guess what if you woke up this morning and you were loved by God any like is just a bonus [Applause] now some of you may be saying cray I'm only 14 bro let me tell you something 14 changes the world 14-year old you
know it's biblical historians basically Bible nerds who know a lot more than I do they say Mary was about 14 when God revealed to her that she was gonna give birth to the Messiah he imagined me at 14 years old knowing that the savior of the universe it's gonna be birthed through you there's nothing anybody could tell you at school I don't like your shoes so what I'm gonna have this Messiah one day get out of here like so what you didn't like my picture like do you realize that Jewish boys by the time they
were 13 years old they had to know the whole Torah or the what we call the Old Testament they had to know it all and then they would go to school and be tested if they passed the test they could be a disciple if they didn't they had to go find a regular job all these boys wanted to be disciples so bad they studied and studied and studied and they hope some teacher would pick them and some rabbi would say you can be my disciple well when we look at Peter and James and John what
were they doing when Jesus found them fishing what does that tell you they didn't pass they didn't get picked it also tells you they were probably just teenagers just learning their fishing gig and Jesus comes and Jesus says you you follow me of course they drop their poles or their nets and oh my gosh we got chosen you mean to tell me a group of teenagers changed the whole world I'd say so so this message is for you this is not for you when you get older this is for you right now you are who
God says that you are and you can change the world and I get it it's scary right it's scary to be who God has called us to be when we look at that verse it says you know fix your eyes on Jesus it tells us to to run the race that's been set before us and lay aside everything that would would hinder us from running this race it's scary right I was scared when I think about running a race I think about myself in high school and I ran track I was so skinny I mean
I was like this y'all I was so skinny and they would tell us that we had to wear these little tank tops and his little baby shorts I didn't want to wear it I don't want to wear it because I was skinny and my little noodles would hang out the side of the tank top my little straw is coming out the baby shorts so I didn't want to wear it until I realized the baggy stuff I was wearing the baggy clothes was slowing me down when I put on the tank top and the baby shorts
I was faster and and that's what the scripts are saying lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race had before us you all we've got to lay that stuff aside and run I know it's scary to be who God has called you to be I know it's scary to stand up for Christ in the midst of a school in a society that's doing going the opposite direction I know we want to chime in and do what's popular and do what's regular but God has called us
to something else it's called us is something different he says lay aside everything and run with endurance looking to Jesus the founder and the perfecter of faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross despising the shame you know what it also says before that it says since we are so surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses we're talking about me running track and my noodles running around well guess what my mom would be there every time my biggest fan let's go let's go come on run you know this is saying this
is saying we're all in a race right now we're in a race to be who God has called us to be to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and to live this Christian life out we're in a race right now and guess what the Bible saying right here that people are cheering you on we're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses Moses David Jacob Joseph Ruth Mary they're in the stands right now of heaven saying let's you can do it keep pushing keep running they're cheering you on you got a grandparent who's passed on is with
the father now they're sitting there watching you run this Christian race right now saying you can do it I know it's hard I know you fell get back up now I know it's ugly I know it's costly get back up keep your eyes fixed on Jesus the finish line is there it's coming stay focused y'all I I get it it's difficult you're walking into something new you're stepping into something that that that looks scary right you're on the you're on the edge of something and you're afraid to jump because you what are people gonna say
about you we're worried about our reputations witness narcissistic society and all but what if I stand up and share the gospel with my friend or I pull you know I'm reading the Scriptures at lunchtime or or or what if you know I got scriptures written on something I'm I'm not gonna do what everybody else is doing and I'm not gonna follow this person I'm not gonna comment on this or I'm not gonna get in a relationship right now because I'm focused on who God wants me to be I know that's scary not scary stuff you're
standing on the edge and you're like whoa I don't know that's a long drop lecrae I know let me tell you I know about long drops I had to do a conference in New Zealand I'm out there in New Zealand they say Lecrae everybody who comes here climbs up the 600 foot building and BASE jumps I said everybody except me okay I don't know if you noticed I'm a black man black people we don't we don't tend to like jumping off a building it's not our thing they said uh-uh Beyonce did it I said man
that's tough and I'm gonna lie to you my probably best of me that day my pride kicked in I said y'all say they're not gonna do his thing I'm going up here man Beyonce jumped and that was bad logic cuz Beyonce has done a lot of things I have never done and I can never do like birth the child okay so I get to the top of this building 600 feet down I'm looking over the edge and I'm like what did I get myself into I look down there I see Michael Jackson and Tupac waving
at me like come on man I say y'all I can't do this this is a bad idea I can't do it I took the step back I said okay can you move back a little further to this 11 year old girl can jump I said okay bye watch out watch out watch out it's my turn to jump I took the plunge it was scary it was difficult but there was joy on the other side of it because I lived to tell the story to you all today see I'm saying [Applause] y'all I went through a
lot of crazy stuff in my life and I had to push through that and I had to focus on being who God had created me to be I had to focus on saying okay Jesus mold me into the person thing to be I had to look at all the ugly stuff about myself and say it's okay God can change this I am a mess but God can make a masterpiece out of this mess and that's okay God forged the new me in that time I was in the fire I wrote the biggest song of my
career is called I'll find you Tori Kelly God used all that pain to birth something great right there was joy on the other side of that sacrifice on the other side of that cost I no longer had the option to be who I used to be I was now whom God wanted me to be and that's what I'm working on every day if you never know trial you'll never know triumph if you never know trial you'll never know triumph we want so badly to eliminate the pain we don't see the joy in becoming something new
that's what God has called us to be who he's called us to be it's not gonna be pretty I'm not gonna lie to you it's not gonna be pretty you may lose friends you may lose followers you know we like to paint it as all rosy like you you know stand firm for the hope that's within you and you like yeah you know yeah I'm gonna just tell Jimmy about Jesus today you go tell Jimmy and Jimmy's like you're a nerd and you're like that may happen but guess what a year later Jimmy comes back
and he says man you know that stuff you were talking about last year I've been thinking about that I want what you got right I needed that hope I needed to know the hope that Jesus brought for myself I needed to know like you know what the crazy it is ugly but God has something more than this circumstance this circumstance doesn't define you I say that's to encourage you all you know I am I look at this verse and it says looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of faith who for the joy that was
set before him endured the cross despising the shame now look at this verse says he despised the shame right we do think it's shameful a lot of times to be an outspoken Christian in this society in this world we do think it's shameful sometimes to to say the thing that everyone else is like oh my gosh here's the Christian person here's the bible thumper here's the Holy Roller we do think he's shameful but Jesus it says here he despised the shame you know what that means it means he said bring it on bring on the
shame I'll take it doesn't bother me I despised it it's nothing yeah bring it on I know it's bad let me tell you the kind of shame Jesus endured when they crucified Him before they crucified Him obviously they they mocked him they punched him in the face this is a man who had healed many people had fed thousands of people people were clamoring at his feet to say please heal me help me he done countless acts of love and compassion and they punched him in the face put a robe on his back and a crown
of thorns on his head and laughed at him ha ha no he'll put a sign above his head that says King of the Jews shameful they drove him out into the street bloody and beaten up so everybody could see is this the guy that that made you see again buddy this is guy that made you walk this is your your Messiah your Savior this him shameful what's even more shameful as that they stripped him naked I know and a lot of pictures and things we see he's covered here the reality is he wasn't they had
him naked in front of the world hanging there in broad daylight for people to walk by and see him the Romans wanted people to know you don't mess with Caesar you don't cross you cross him we will kill you and shame you our Savior suffered ridicule abuse and in his final moments hung there naked on the cross because he knew on the other side of that shame was the joy of seeing you be with God forever and ever in eternity how much that's how precious we are to him that's how precious the glory of his
father was to him that he endured people looking at him and mocking him he despised the shame he said bring it on for the joy set before him there's joy on the other side of whatever it is you're going through you're young you might not be going through much right now but let's talk about the little things right now let's talk about just wanting to fit in and wanting to be popular and wanting to be seen some of that we got to do away with some relationships might have to end some things might have to
let go maybe she gotta let can't play Xbox as long as you normally would it's worth it there's joy on the other side of that sacrifice talk a lot about track talk a lot about my childhood and I I I did I definitely passed on my noodle arms and my straw legs to my son but he's fast he's running track now and you know I grew up in such a traumatized childhood and I didn't know who I wanted to be and I was struggling to figure out who I should be and how I should be
and comparing myself and trying to fit in and trying to find out you know if I mattered and I was that attract me for my son you know he's really good so he's doing every event so it's taken forever sitting there in the heat for hours and I got my youngest one with me it's five so he's going out of his mind [Music] so I'm trying to entertain them and I'm like no let's have a conversation um what do you want to do with your life I don't know what to do uh so we start
talking about it you know like so what do you what do you want to do and he's like I don't know but then he kind of takes it serious and he gets a little upset about he's like I don't know panics but then a calm comes over him and he says I know I know I want to be like you talking about add a data track me holding them back it was a mess that day but you all realized had I not focused on being who God wanted me to be instead of being who everyone
else said I was or who my past said I was that little boy wouldn't have known what wouldn't have had this person to want to be like see he wanted to be like the person that was that had his eyes fixed on Jesus not the person that had his eyes fixed on being what everybody else wanted or being what his past said about I just want you to know you are who God says you are Jesus is where our identity is formed there is grace today for yesterday's mistakes and you all have the power within
you to change the world that's the power of the Holy Spirit let's pray Heavenly Father I'm eternally grateful for your goodness and your mercy thank you for each and every person out here tonight God who is just desperate to be more like you desperate to follow in your footsteps desperate to see themselves as you see them as beloved children maybe there are some God who are wrestling with are you their father and God I pray that they would see your arms open waiting to embrace them father God I also pray that everyone running their race
would not see a judge on the other end of the the finish line but they would see a father clapping cheering them all I'm saying come on you can do it you can do it keep pushing keep going I believe in you I've given you all the power you need to make it to the other side God would you work on all of our hearts to remember every day there is joy on the other side of the sacrifice journey on the side of the pain and that you are our hope you are a reason we
give you the honor we give you the glory in Jesus name
