>> DAVID NASSER: Thanks. Wow. Man, what a,
what just a humbling experience just to be here for the first time on staff. This is
about probably the 15th or 20th time that I've had the privilege of being here on the
stage at Convocation, President Falwell, but first time here, obviously, just under your
leadership. And as President Falwell was saying, about two months ago we got the call to begin
to pray about this. My wife, Jennifer, who by the way is sitting right there next to
Caroline — can we just recog — there she is, there's my wife — can we put her on
camera? Can we do that as well? There you go. Huh? That's right, that's right. An Iranian,
an Iranian got himself a white girl, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Anyway
so, that's my wife, she's sitting next to Caroline, she's getting, she's getting advice
from Caroline. Our daughter is going to the One Direction concert the first, in Atlanta,
and we're going to get advice from you, Caroline on how to get backstage and meet the band.
I can't wait for that, that's going to be fun. Obviously, your father called it persistence,
perseverance, the police call it harassment but we're going to, we're going to relabel
that, right? And that's going to be fun. And so, my wife and I, and our, and our two children,
our daughter Grace, who is here at LCA as well, at the high school and our son Rudy,
just made the move here. And it has just been nothing but affirming just the more we get
around incredible men and incredible women of just humility and leadership, people like
Mark Hine. And the more we get around just who God has brought here, and the more we
get to know some of you as students, the more we just continue to nod our heads and say
"wow, God's wind is moving the sails of this thing called Liberty." And we are just thrilled
to be a part of it, we are just excited to roll up our sleeves and just be a part of
it. The big, fancy title is Senior Vice President of Spiritual Development, but I'm just a pastor
y'all, that's what I am, and so you can call me Pastor David, I will give you my cell phone.
I don't know; I don't presume everybody wants it but can we put it up? Can we put my cell
phone up? It's (205) 9 — get your phones out if you want, all right — it’s (205)
999-5716. That's my cell phone, that's my email, there's my Twitter. Hey, text me, let
me know who you want to, you know, have at Convocation. Let me know what's going on.
If it's not my department, you know, I got a text yesterday, a student wanted to know
can I sit down and mediate between he and his girlfriend, she just broke up with him
and he was wondering if I would sit down and I was like man, bro, I'll pray for ya but
she's gone, alright? So you know, she's gone bro, it just sounds like, like that long-winded
text from you, like you're crazy and she's gone, all right? So that said, like text me,
let's get in touch. Our office, by the way, doesn't need a card to get through. Our office
is very easily accessible to you. We want it to be a place where you come up, we want
it to be a place where you use up our Keurig machine, and we want it to be a place where
you come sit down face to face. And it's just really, really hard, honestly, for me to be
able to pour into you and for you to be able to pour into me when just about every time
I'm up at Campus Church or if I'm up at Convocation, you guys are sitting in rows and everybody's
just kinda facing one way. I'd much rather we be sitting in circles, right? And sitting
with, you know, in a — on a couch together, just having a conversation and it would be
my — that’s why I'm here — it would be my privilege just to, again, just create
an environment where we get to know each other, we get to serve one another. And again, I
think a lot of times, I end up being the Timothy, even though I'm supposed to play the role
of Paul and pour into you. So many times, I walk away and just take notes on all the
things that you've done to lead me in, and so I am really, sincerely just inviting you
into our space so that we can kinda co-labor together, grow in Christ together, serve together,
pray for one another, and that is why we're here, alright? Again, I'm just a pastor. Like,
you know, Dr. Falwell was just saying a minute ago, I am a guy who planted a church five
years ago in the inner city of Birmingham and that is just my heart, I'm a shepherd,
I'm a pastor, and I didn't come here to be anything less than that. I didn't come here
to be an executive, I didn't come here to be a speaker, I came here to get to know you
and for us to grow in Christ together, and then to make Him known out of this place,
all right? So, I already love you, I'm grateful for you. You know, just buckle up, it's going
to be a wild ride. I'm either going to get fired or we're going to go places we've never
gone before, and we'll see how that goes. What I won't get fired about though, is like
not being here legally or, I am a guy from Iran. You don't know much about Iranians,
you know my people, right? We're the 7-Eleven people, right? The people that go "you have
to pay for the Slurpee, habbidy, gabbidy." That's my dad, all right? Those are my people
and when I was about 9 years old, we escaped from Iran, we came here, but I do have a green
card, I am legal, all right? And so, there's no sending me out of here, but that's it.
Let me pray for us real quick, and then I want us to open God's Word together. Father,
thank You for this morning, thank You for the time that you have set aside for us called
Convocation. Lord, thank You that after eight Convocations being rearranged and moved and
cancelled, and after all of the labor of these great men and women who got this place ready
for us, we finally get to come in, two, three weeks into the, the new year, and finally
congregate. And in that, God, there's great expectation. Great expectation God for you
to move, for you, God, to speak. God, Convocation is that moment where we come and say, "Lord,
move us. God, speak to us. God, change us. God, mold us to look more like Jesus." And
so that's what we want. We want Jesus to be the main speaker of every Convocation. We
want Jesus to be the worship pastor of every Convocation, we want Jesus to be who we walk
out of here and love, we want Jesus to be who we walk out of here and brag about, and
so every story told, everything that we do about this gathering called Convocation, we
want it to be about the renown of Christ and Christ alone. And so, can that just start
off, even in that sense today. We pray this in Your Name, Amen. Well I just decided to
kind of tell you a little about me, all right, this morning. And honestly, to tell you a
whole lot about Christ in telling you my story. If you had told me, when I was 9 years old,
that I would be on staff at Liberty University, I would have laughed at you. And the reason
that I would have laughed at you is because when I was 9 years old I decided that I hated
religion. I know most 9-year-olds don't think stuff like that, most 9-year-olds don't wake
up and think "I hate religion, I hate God," most 9-year-olds think stuff like, I don't
know, "should I eat this crayon?" Alright, but I was 9 when I decided I hated God because
I was 9 when in Iran, in my country, I saw one-thirty-sixth of my nation massacred and
killed under the name of religion. I remember those days; I remember the Ayatollah Khomeini
and the zealots taking over our country. And when the Iranian revolution happened, my dad
was high-ranked in the military and so, as the government got turned over, my father's
life was in a lot of danger. As a 9-year-old kid, I remember all that playing out right
in front of me, in our army base in Iran. I remember soldiers coming to an assembly,
a little bit smaller than this one, but in our military school in our army base, and
reading my name out in front of the three students and asking me to come and stand in
front of the student body. As an act of worship, in their worship service, this guy took a
gun, pointed it at my head, and quoted from the Quran and told me because of Allah, because
of God, he was gonna end my life. When you're 9 years old and you go through that kind of
trauma, somebody calls you in front of the entire student body and with a gun at your
forehead tells you because of God they're gonna kill you, you begin to define in your
mind what you think God is. That afternoon the soldier didn't kill me and he went home
and, and I had a couple more days they told me. And then I went and told me dad what was
happening, and I've seen my father cry three times my entire life. He's a military guy
from Iran but that was the first time. He told me, he said "son, the government's being
overthrown, they're really coming after people like me and our families, but we're gonna
be OK." And within two days, people were dragging my dad out of our house. I'll never forget
my father being dragged out and my mom hanging on to the leg of one of the soldiers and she
just kept saying out loud, "just kill him quickly, just kill him quickly." And when
you're 9 you're wondering why your mom is asking soldiers to kill your father quickly,
but what I found out was that they were taking my father to a park, the same park where they
had taken some of his friends the day before, and they were tying him to a tree and they
were going to take a pair of pliers and in slow torture, under the name of God, they
were going to pick him apart, piece by piece. And so that's why my mom was saying "God spare
him from a slow, torturous death, let him die quickly." Well that afternoon, my dad
came home and he wasn't killed, and my dad told us, he said, "We've got a few weeks to
get out of here." And in my mind, as a little kid, we were getting out of here, meaning
we were getting away from God. In my mind, I thought religion has destroyed our country,
and so we got to get as fast as we could, as far away as we could, from God and His
representation. We planned our escape, it was a pretty dramatic escape, and after all
this drama and the way that we escaped, we finally, after about two or three weeks of
different attempts, made it over to Switzerland. As soon as we got to Switzerland, we got to
Europe; we applied to come to America to start our new lives. But at that time, nobody was
allowing Iranians into America. Iran was going through a revolution and so 54 Americans were
held hostage in the Iranian embassy in, in Iran — I mean the American embassy in Iran,
and people were watching on TV how the Iranians were burning the American flag and calling
America the great Satan and how they were beating up these hostages and so it was front
page news and we were from the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to make it here.
The doors just would not open up. We tried legally, we tried illegally, every way we
could, and for nine months we were stalled out until one day, my mom got us together
and said "I've got an idea, since we want to go to America, we ought to pray to America's
God to — and ask Him to let us into His country." And she showed us a picture, first
time I ever heard of Jesus' name. She said "this is a, this is a guy named Jesus and
He's American, and we ought to ask Him to let us into His country." It was just a white
guy with a mullet, basically, think Duck Dynasty all right? And so she goes, "this is Jesus."
And by the way, some of y'all are not laughing, some of y'all are like "Jesus is American!"
He's not, by the way, I just want to throw that out to you for free. He's really from
my neck of the woods and not y'alls neck of the woods. More like camel dynasty than duck
dynasty, but that's for free all right. So, my mom said "this is Jesus, He's American,
we ought to ask Him to let us into His country" and I'm not kidding, we got together, we held
hands, my mom said something like "Jesus, please let us into Your country" and the next
thing you know, a week later the doors are wide open and we're moving here. So in my
mind, as a kid, I'm thinking Jesus, thanks for letting us into your country. And I know
that's horrible theology, but I'm just telling you, before we knew Him, God knew us, and
He was working in our lives. So we landed in America, finally we thought things are
going to get better but we got here and we moved to Texas. Now, anybody here from Texas?
Cool, I didn't ask you to yell, all right so. Texans don't ever need that, like they
don't even need permission — Texans love to be from Texas, don't you? They love to
have t-shirts that say "don't mess with Texas," they love to have like their toast is twice
as thick as everybody else's toast, they — Texans forget, by the way, that like 80 percent of
the people in their state aren't even there legally, they just snuck in — they forget
that, alright, but anyway. So, take the hit bro, take the hit. Anyway, so, so we move
to Texas, but not only do we move to Texas, we move to a military town in Texas. We move
to Fort Hood, largest army base in the world so can you say wedgie waiting to happen, all
right? So I walk right in, wrong haircut, wrong clothes, wrong everything, and I'm like
"hello I am David" and they're like "dude, you are so gonna get beat up today, after
school." And I heard every nickname, every 7-Eleven joke, every Turban joke, every what's
the dot on the forehead cable hookup joke, and every day I went to school and I found
out something the hard way. I found out that every day, we had replaced one kind of terrorism
with a whole other kind. For years and years, that was me. And honestly, in the back of
my mind, I just kept blaming God for it all. Until the day my freshman year in high school
was about to start, when one day, I was sitting in my room and I was crying and my dad heard
me and he walked in and he said "what's wrong?" And I told him, I said "dad, I don't like
it here, they don't like me here in America, I'm always the outcasted kid." I said, "let's
just go back to Iran." And my dad said, "You know we can't go back to Iran." But by this
time, we'd been in America long enough to know where to go when you're sad, he goes
"come with me" and he took me in the car and he drove me out to the mall, and my dad that
afternoon gave me basically a makeover. I mean, I got this, you know, thing where like
I got new clothes, new haircut, new shoes, new everything. Same insecure kid on the inside,
I got made over on the outside, and I went from like geek to chic baby overnight. I mean,
I went to school and I went from Abdul to Julio, I'm just telling you right now. I went
from like no direction to One Direction, and — at least — more like Hisp — Juan Direction,
whatever, alright, so that was me. And so basically, I'm telling you, I walk right into
the American culture and instantly I found out what you know already. You don't have
to be from Iran to know this, right? I found out that people care a whole lot more sometimes
about what you wear, what you drive, what your hair looks like, what lunch room table
you end up in the right high school than who you really are in your character. And I just
learned how to conform to the patterns of this world. You know how in the Bible it says,
"do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind" in Romans 1 and 2? I did the very opposite, I just conformed to the patterns of this world
because I was just tired of being alone. And high school became those years for me, my
high school years because the years where I learned how to dump the right girl before
she could dump me, how to be cold to be perceived as cool, and I learned how to play high school
and I was popular but at least when I was a nobody I was David Nasser the nobody. It's
so true, you know where in Philippians it says "what good is it for a man to gain the
whole world but to forfeit his soul?" And I had just completely forfeited my soul. I
graduate popular but I graduate with a 1.9 GPA. That's about as bad as it gets, right?
And so I had nowhere to go, my god leaves me instantly because your god is who you worship,
your god is who you bow down to, and as soon as I graduate I hit this wall of depression
because all my buddies go to this school and this school and I've got nowhere to go. And
so, instantly, within two weeks after graduation, I've hit this wall of darkness again. And
about two months after that, one night I'm in the car with the only buddy I have left
from high school who's not gone off to college. And to be really honest, we're sitting there
and we're just kinda passing a joint back and forth, we're just finishing up some marijuana
really quick and so, while we're finishing it up he looked at me, my buddy looked at
me, and he said "man, you seem so down in the last couple weeks, what's wrong?" And
I told him, I said "bro, like nobody likes us, like all the people that are, you know,
around here, like we're just completely isolated now, all our friends are going to different
colleges and we've got nowhere to be popular and now and you know." And my buddy said "we
could go back to high school and hang out with high school people, they like haven't"
— and I didn't want to be that loser, you know, I didn't want to be that like 28-year-old
guy and, you know, living the old dream, you know, whatever and so, like, you know, so
I told him no and then my buddy looks over at me and he has this like epiphany moment
and he, he, he says to me this, he goes "well, I've got an idea. You ought to come to church
with me tomorrow." And I'm pretty surprised that he's inviting me to church because he's
literally handing me Mexican red bud while he's inviting me to church. And so I'm like,
"you go to church?" and he's like "I love church." And so, I know it says in the Bible
in Genesis that God made the grass and it was good, but that's not what it means so,
you know, I'm a bit surprised, and so I'm like "I can't believe you go to church." And
he said, "Man, I love church" he goes, "in America, everybody goes to church." He goes
"Dave you ought to come to church with us tomorrow." And I told him, I said, "I'm not
going to church." He said, "why not?" And I said, "Because I hate religion." Total buzzkill,
he turns down the Hendricks, alright, that just dates me right there, Mark Hine, alright,
so you know, he turns down the Hendricks, he looks over at me and he goes, "why would
you hate God, why would you hate religion?" I said "I saw religion destroy my country
when I was a kid, I wanna have nothing to do with God, nothing to do with religion."
And instead of giving up, you know what he tries? He tries one last thing; he names the
five prettiest girls from my high school. And when he got to the fifth girl, and he
was like "bro, they all go to my church" I was like "here I am to worship, let's go!"
I was motivated, I was motivated, and I told him, I said, "bro, you have invited me to
go to church, and for the first time, you have motivated me to go to church, but I am
not going to go to church." He said "why not?" I said, "because my father is a big time Muslim
and he'll never let me go to a Christian church." He said, "Go ask him!" I said, "I'm not asking
him." He said "if you don't ask him, I'm gonna go in there and tell your dad right now you
were smoking weed tonight." So I was motivated to ask him. So on a Saturday night, knowing
my dad was going to say no, knowing he was gonna say no, I walk down the hallway, my
buddy came to the door to listen. I knocked on their bedroom door, I said "mom and dad
I'm sorry to wake you up, can I go tomorrow — I know you're gonna say no, just say no
loud enough, to lead my buddy to hear, so he'll kinda back off — can I go tomorrow
with him to church?" But instead of saying no, I go "dad can I go?" And he's quiet for
about a half a second and then he yells from his bed, door closed and everything, he goes
"what is the name of it?" And I have no idea what he means, but he's asking the name of
the church. And my buddy gets it, right, so he yells down the hallway, he goes "Shades!"
And as soon as he said "Shades," — what I found out later was that was the name of
this church, Shades Mountain — as soon as he said Shades, my dad yells right back, he
goes, "I know those people; you can go there but only there." And I had no idea what was
happening, all right? Let's back up, a little back-story here, all right? My dad had opened
up a restaurant, a French restaurant — I know, Iranian family, French restaurant, I
know — alright, anyway, so, my dad had opened up a French restaurant. My dad was a military
guy, think soup Nazi on crack, all right? So, the last thing my dad needed to do was
to open up a restaurant, alright so my dad always fired people and so in the middle of
all of that, my dad — about two weeks before I got invited to church by a buddy of mine
who was a pothead — had these people from this church, Shades Mountain Baptist Church,
who were coming to my dad's restaurant sitting and eating. And while they were eating, they
had seen how he had like fired three waiters during the lunch rush and that got — service
was bad, and so the worship pastor of this church, the pastor, and a few others got up,
rolled up their sleeves, and waited on tables in my dad's restaurant. Then they went back
the next day and waited on tables in my dad's restaurant again. Then after a few more days
of helping him out, the worship guy invited my dad to come to choir practice. I know!
All right, so my dad went to choir practice, I didn't know any of this was going on, right?
My dad showed up at choir practice, this guy puts his arm around my dad and says "this
is my new friend Mr. Nasser, he's Iranian, owns a French restaurant, I know it's confusing
but we want to help him out. He needs waiters and busboys and he needs dishwashers and I've
told him if you're gonna sing about God, you're gonna be a part of God's work in his life"
and so for two weeks, people had been showing up at my dad's restaurant waiting on tables
at his restaurant. And so God in His sovereignty had used that to massage my dad's heart up
for two weeks. They called it worship, they called it missions, my dad called it "stupid
Americans" but God, God was working! Right! God was moving! And so when I asked my dad,
"can I go to church?" Instead of saying no, he says, "what is the name of it?" because
he'd had a good taste in his mouth from one church, and then it happened to be the same
church as the people that had been helping him out. And so my dad said "you can go there
but only there." Well, Sunday morning, I get up, put on my Chinos, go to church. First
time I had ever really gone to church on my own. I walk right into the church, they had
a youth rally. I walk in the gym, as soon as I walk in the gym, I look across the room,
about half the people I see across the room are people I used to party with so I thought
this is great! I walk up to my friends; every other word out of my mouth is a cuss word,
because that's how we were outside the church. Except in the church, they're acting really
different. They're all walking around saying, "bless you," nobody's sneezing. They've got
books with their names on them, you know and ribbons and crazy stuff I had never seen before.
And so within five minutes, I'm completely like fish out of water, out of their culture,
feeling really weird. And the youth pastor gets up and says "we're running late everybody,
have a seat!" So I go all by myself and I sit in the front row. And as soon as I sat
down I looked up and I saw Larry Noe bee lining towards me. Let me tell you about Larry Noe.
Larry Noe, Larry Noe was half Korean, half American, and he was basically this guy who's
a football legend in our town, who played for the largest but biggest, baddest football
team in our town, Hoover high school, and everybody knew him and everybody loved him.
But I knew him as a guy who had shared the Gospel with me about a year before that Sunday
morning when I was sitting in his church. About a year before, he had walked up to me
at a party and he had said "hey guys, I was driving by, I saw some of you guys standing
here at this party, and I felt like God told me to stop and tell you guys something." That
was the first time I had ever met him. He said, "My name is Larry Noe." And I said "hey,
I've read about you in the papers! You're like this football legend in our town." And
he said "no, I don't want to talk to you about that." He said, "I want to tell you that God
so loved you that He gave His one and only Son, that if you believe in Him, you will
not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16. And then he began to kinda tell us the Gospel,
he said, "look, Jesus came as the Way, the Truth, and the Life and no one comes to the
Father but through Him." John 14:6. He started to explain how God existed and we existed
but our sin separated us from a holy, perfect, righteous God, and so we had a major problem.
And so we couldn't be good enough, we couldn't be moral enough, we couldn't be a big enough
tither to remove that sin area on our own, but God sent one way, His Name is Jesus, right?
So, to be the one who removes that separation, and so Jesus came down, he said, and lived
a perfect life, he said, and then after having lived a perfect life, he said, Jesus then
died a sinner's death on our behalf, as our great substitute. And then he said this, and
he said after Jesus died, on your behalf, to remove and to pay the penalty for that
sin, they put his body, he said, in a tomb and three days later they went to check on
the tomb, and he said, and the tomb was empty, it's called the resurrection, and that is
what's afforded to you, resurrection power. And I was just listening with a beer bottle
in my hand, and a girlfriend in the other, and she lets go of my hand at the party and
then my girlfriend said this, she goes "mmm." You know, "mmm?" "Mmm" is like shorthand for
amen. And I looked over at her and she was nodding her head and I thought he's getting
to her. And I didn't want him to get to her, cause I had plans for her. All right? And
so I started intercepting. I start like making fun of him and I start kinda being really
rude to him and so finally, he's frustrated, he shakes his head, he walks away, gets in
his car, drives off, and a year later y'all, I'm sitting at his church and he's beelining
right towards me and I thought, now it's his turn, now I'm on his turf. 400 Christians
against me, I thought. So he walks over and he goes "I remember you." That's exactly what
I was afraid of. He goes "you're David Nasser," and I'm like "you're Larry Noe." He goes,
"I'm not gonna hit you," he goes "I'm so glad you're here!" Go "What do you mean?" He goes,
"man, this is an answer to prayer!" He goes, "Can I sit beside you?" I'm like "just don't
sit on me bro, whatever, you know" and he sits down beside me and the youth pastor said,
"get out your Bible" and I didn't have a Bible! I hadn't been to the hotels yet to get one
from the Gideons or whatever and so I'm completely out of culture and then I look and there was
a Bible opened up on the right page so I wouldn't feel left out, and the whole time the Sunday
school lesson is happening, all I keep thinking about is man, I was so rude to this guy. Why
is he nice to me? And when the Sunday school lesson was over, he stood up and he said,
"David, it is so good that you're here" he goes "you've gotta come back tonight." And
I — I didn't — I hadn't had any plans but I was just full of pride. I said, "I'm
not coming back tonight." He goes "why not?" I go "I got stuff to do." You know what he
said? He goes "OK," he goes " if you won't come back to our church," he goes, "we'll
come see you." Again, they called it perseverance but I should have called it harassment, I'm
just telling you right now. Because the next Monday night, 17 teenagers from that youth
group showed up at my house. 17. We were the Iranians but we were getting terrorized by
John 3:16 for the next eight weeks in a row. We're like hide, the Southern Baptists are
coming, the South — and I'm just telling you, they would come over, and they'd have
a Bible, they'd have a bracelet with the little beads that all stood for something, right?
Predictable, by the way. They'd have a little tract that opened up into a cross, and they
would tell me that He who knew no sin became sin that we might become the righteousness
of God. And for the next eight weeks in a row, I heard the Gospel in my house on Monday
nights and on Sundays and on Wednesdays they would come to my house and they would drag
me to church. And I would go to their church, and their church wasn't cool, all right? Their
church didn't have like a Justin Kintzel like leading worship, and he wasn't — their church
was an old guy with a comb-over singing right out of a King James version of the Bible,
I'm just telling you right now, but they're weren't cool, they weren't hip but they were
missional. And for the next eight weeks in a row, they came to my house, they loved my
family, they shared the Gospel with me, they made it all about Jesus and I'm just telling
you all that to say, I am a product of a local church doing what a local church is always
meant to be, missional. And one night I was sitting at their church and the preacher was
preaching, and during the invitation he said "if you need to give your life to Christ,
I want you to come right here in the front" and I thought this, I thought they're starting
to get to me. And so during the invitation, I thought, I'm not gonna get them to get to
me, and so I hit the aisle and I went home and I thought I'm never coming back again.
And it's so interesting when you try to get away from God, and then you realize later
on, you can't get away. I love what the Psalmist says in Psalm 139 where he says, “where
can I go from Your presence, oh Lord? If I go to the valleys, You are there, if I go
to the mountains, You are there.” And I went home, that night in my own house, and
about 1:00 in the morning, I died. The old me died, I love what Paul says in Galatians
2:20, he says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives
in me. The life that I live in the body,” he says, “I live by faith in the Son of
God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” That's not plagiarism, when I carbon copy
that on me, that is the reality of who I became. The old me died, and a whole new me was born
again. And you know what? I continued to hate religion. But now I love Jesus. My parents
were never devout as Muslims until the night I became a Christian. If you ask my dad, he'll
tell you, he'll tell you that I — he came home really, really, really late at night,
about 2:00 in the morning one day got home — he’ll tell you that, that I told him
what was happening and why — and how Christ has saved me and my dad was like "you cannot
be a Christian, we're Muslims!" And I was like, "we are?" And the night that I went
to get baptized, this church really wanted to baptize me, I don't know if they got extra
credit, President Falwell, for dunking Middle Eastern people, I don't know if like the pastor
had 99 and they needed one more to go triple digits, I don't know what it was, but they
really wanted to baptize me that week. And the night that I went to get baptized at that
church was the night when my dad and my mom looked at me and said, "If you get baptized,
you're dead to us. You're no longer our son." And I was so green in my faith, I didn't understand
just staying home and being a missionary, I was more about exercising my rights, to
be really honest with you. And I went and got dunked that night and I came home and
I got kicked out of the house, for becoming a Christian. And five months after I was a
Christian, five months, my mom one night called me and she said, "Tonight, I became a Christian!"
She — I was like "Why are you yelling?" "Because I want your father to hear cause
he's not kicking me out." That's how she rolled, so my mom got saved. And five months after
that, five months after that, ten months after I became a Christian, my sister became a believer.
And then fifteen months after that, my brother Benjamin, who's Downs Syndrome, God saved
him. And every five months, God was saving somebody in my family. And so I thought, man,
five months later, dad's going to get saved. But five months later, dad was more angry
than ever. It was my mom, she was putting Bible verses in his food, in his Rogaine,
everything, right. And two and a half years went by, and two and a half years, two and
a half years, of my dad making fun of Christianity, my dad always saying "you've drunk the Kool-Aid"
basically, and you've been brainwashed by American Christianity, two and a half years
later, two and a half years later! My father gave his life to Christ, and so one by one
I have seen my family come to Jesus. And people always hear that and they go, "boy it must
have been tough for a Muslim family to come to Christ, a Middle Eastern family to come
to Christ" and I always go, "you know whose got it so much more complicated to navigate
through? Good church kids that go to Liberty." Because some of you believe in everything
that I'm saying, seriously, some of you believe in everything that I'm saying, theologically.
Some of you believe in every song that Justin and his band are going to lead you, like verbally;
you're going to be like yeah, I'll sing that. Chris Tomlin — k — sure, why not? But
at the end of the day, some of you are here and you're gonna make really good grades,
and you're gonna sit under classes, and you're gonna shine, and you're gonna have all this
lingo, but some of you know what I'm talking about. You're really, really good and you're
religious, but at the end of the day, some of you close your eyes and you pray more to
a black void than a Christ that you know intimately. And the weirdest part of it is you're a part
of Liberty but you've never been liberated. And what would it look like, for God to really
set you free? What would it look like for some of you, to come here and realize that
this is not the bubble, as much as it is the very place where God bursts the bubble? My
wife was that way, my wife grew up in the church, my wife was a — woulda been the
scholarship material for Liberty. I woulda been like uh, we don't know. She would've
been scholarship material. My wife was on the pastor's church committee when she was
16 years old, everybody else, everybody else Becki, was like 50 on the pastor's church
committee, they put a 16-year-old on their — she was that — she was Bible drill champion.
My wife was good, she was moral, she had all the right academia, she was — the worst
thing my wife did growing up was read under a dim light or take that tag off the pillow
you're not supposed to. And my wife, my wife, in a very good Christian culture, OK, about
the same age that I was as an 18-year-old, found Christ. And it's interesting, because
I got saved out of a whole lot of unrighteousness; she got saved out of a whole lot of church-righteousness.
We both had to meet at the foot of the cross. And so, I'm not going to presume that everybody
here knows Jesus. And that's where we're going to begin, with the Gospel. Can we pray together,
just wherever you are? So Lord, before we begin to ask You to do a great work through
the school, we begin, that You begin in this school. Before we ask, God, that You be the
one who sends us, we pray that You send Your Spirit here. Before we ask, God, that You
prepare us to go across the world, not just in our states, not just all throughout our
country, but across the world, to make You known, we pray that we would know You. And
so first off to bat, I pray God for those in this room who even now, close their eyes,
bow their heads, have all the right answers, but don't know you. I pray that, God, you
would liberate them. I pray that this would be more than the name of a school; it would
be the heart, the heart of a Savior, that You would set captives free. Thank You Lord
that if the Son has set us free, we could be free indeed. Would You begin there? For
so many in this room, who already know You Lord, who already know You, we pray that even
today as I share my story that they would be reminded of their story. How the common
denominator in every one of our stories is one hero, and His Name is Jesus. Jesus. Do
a great work, Lord. We have great expectation, not because I have the Holy Spirit in a duffle
bag and I get to bring it in and open it up. We have great expectations, not because this
year we've got a bigger budget and we can go in the round. We have great expectations
not because we've got a pretty good roster of people coming to Convo. We have a great
expectation because we have a great God, who wants to begin in us, and then through us,
His great work. Would You just do that, Lord? We're Yours, we belong to You. Holy Spirit,
I pray for unity among this body. That we would be for each other, we wouldn't be so
busy being Champions for Christ that we wouldn't champion one another. Unite us, Lord. And
God's people said, amen, amen. Man, can we stand together? I want to dismiss you, but
man, that's a good sound. Look at me, I want to dismiss you and before we send you out
I just want to say this to you, again, man we are available to you. I'd love to get to
know you. I got the chance of having a microphone on me, right? And then getting to tell you
for 29 minutes what God has done in my life. I'd love to hear what God has done in your
life. And so, let's get to know each other, you've got my cell phone, all right? Let's
begin to build a relationship. And you're going, how do you build a relationship with
13 people? You don't. All right, but you try, you try. And the truth is, many of you don't
want to get to know each other, and that's okay. But I want to get to know you, all right?
I want to serve you. I love you, man, may the Lord be with you, may He send you, may
He shine His light upon you. All right? We'll see you on Friday at Convo, hey come to Campus
Church tonight! It's going to be triple threat, all right? So, come to Campus Church tonight,
all right, God bless you guys, man, you're dismissed.
