>> JON ACUFF: Every time I don't turn my mic
on – Oh, my gosh, that — I had an amazing new opening line that I practiced last night
in the hotel, that was horrible. I was going to say, every time I visit Liberty,
I call my wife and tell her we have to send our kids there. And there's two, there's two reasons, one
is flying into the Lynchburg airport is an adventure. Have you been to that airport? That's probably a silly question, there's
not an international airport you haven't told me about, and I've just gone to the small
one but I love that airport. And I know what you're thinking; I probably
have my own plane. I don't, I don't have my own plane, don't
be fooled by this belt. It's two sided, one side's black and one side's
brown. Yeah, it's like two belts in one. Started at the bottom now the whole belt's
here. Yeah. But I don't have my own plane so I fly to
the Liberty Lynchburg airport and you fly on those prop planes, with the turbo prop. Have you see that? It's like, imagine if you took a ceiling fan
off the ceiling and put it on a plane, that's what it feels like. And when you fly one of those you remember
that flight is a miracle. Like it reminds you that that's a crazy thing
we're doing ‘cause you have to fight your way into the air and then you kinda fight
your way back down. And I love that airport because when you try
to fly out, if something's wrong, it's just kinda closed. There's not another terminal. The first time I visited they were like, “Hey
the plane's broke.” I was like, “Well, that sounds technical:
broke.” And they said, “Well, we could fly you out
of Roanoke.” I said, “OK, how will I get there?” They said “we'll call you a cab” and they
didn't call like a yellow cab like you think of cabs in New York. This lady, she's probably in her 50s or 60s,
showed up in an old Lincoln Town Car, and she called it her “stinkin' Lincoln.” That was a, that was a good nickname. That was appropriate. And the trunk didn't work; the trunk wouldn't
open, which is, you know, part of being a cab is having luggage space so all the bags
are inside and every time she'd stop they're hit everybody in the face. And we told her, “Hey, we've gotta make
our flight, we'll give you a $20 tip if you get there” and she wanted that $20. And she slammed on the gas and she was saying
stuff like “folks don't wanna live” like all these curvy roads, it was like Fast and
the Furious: Liberty. It was terrifying. But we made it and the other reason I love
coming here is that it's always something new. Like when I tour the campus with Johnnie it's
like, “Oh there's our new library, like we're putting a, you know, hospital, medical
school on the mountain. There's a factory, it's our trampoline factory. Every student at Liberty gets their own trampoline,
it's just a thing we do. There's the cotton candy waterslide. Nobody else has one. We just thought, why not? Cotton candy.” And I don't know how many Convos I have to
speak at to get a Jon Acuff kids scholarship but I'm, I'm down. I think it's like 1,000. But I love coming here and I get to speak
around the country and I just spoke at an event recently called The Fight, it was a
men's event and it was me and a bunch of professional athletes and we're pretty similar. It was me, two NFL players, and a wrestler,
I think I brought the poster, can you show that picture? They, they created this poster of it and it's
got the two NFL players, that — there we go. So can you guess who's not the athlete, on
that, on that photo? I mean, look. Can you bring that back up, so I can finish
the joke? All right, that would — that was like four
seconds! That was like the shortest photo ever! It's like quick, quick, quick, look! Woo, got the mic, the video, is there anything
else? Maybe I'll spill the water on my pants. It's great, but look at that. I'm even doing that thing guys do where they
puff up their arms. Come on guys, we do that pose where you try
to look, you know, “suns out, guns out.” Look a little bigger. And you — everybody does that. Have you ever met somebody whose Twitter profile
photo looks nothing like their real head? You've had that — don’t look at 'em right
now if they're with you — you’ve had that experience where you're like what year was
that photo taken? Like from what angle, how many lights were
in that picture? We do that and so it's fun to speak at events
like that. It's fun to talk about Stuff Christians Like. That's my blog I started, that's the book
I wrote, and it's really just about the silly things we do in faith. And sometimes it's hard to write and other
times a woman brings her own tambourine to church and I remember this is like manna from
Heaven You've just given me God. I know exactly what I'm going to write about. And it happened, a few weeks ago I was sitting
in church and I heard some tambourining, I think that's a verb, and I thought that's
not coming from stage and I looked over and there was a lady three people away from me
who was just going to town for Jesus on that tambourine. And I wish I had heard her thought process
that morning when she got it. Like ‘cause she was getting ready for church
and you know she was like, “You know what church needs more of? Tambourine. Like it's — I’m gonna do it. God, is that from you?” God was like, “It's not. It's not. Don't throw me under the bus like that.” And she said “I'm doing it for Jesus,”
and she walked in. It was fine on the fast songs, like she didn't
have the greatest rhythm, but on the slow songs that was where it was awkward cause
we'd be like “we love — you’re like mercy tree” and she'd be like “dang dang
da dang dang dang.” And she started doing this thing where she
would play us out of songs. Like at the end of the song she'd go [chaaaaa]. And again, I thought — I took notes, as
soon as I saw her I started writing notes. And my wife said, “You just wrote a post.” I said, “Yes, that was from Jesus — like
manna. That is great that He gave me that.” So I've been writing this site and writing
funny things. I still live in Nashville, and Nashville's
fun because we have a lot of hipsters and I don't know about here but are people wearing
like crazy jeans that have like designs on them? Like in Nashville the back pocket is like
bejeweled and bedazzled, like it tells a story on that back pocket. And you see it and you're like, “What happened? Did the ring get back to Mordor?” I've got to see the front of that man's jeans. Those aren't jeans that's a denim epic, that's
a dungery adventure he's wearing. And I love Nashville, I love getting to travel,
and it's special to visit today because it, it is Good Friday. And I started to think about, “Well, maybe
I'll do this Good Friday talk,” and then I realized a lot of you are gonna go to Good
Friday service tonight. A lot of you are gonna go celebrate Easter
on Sunday. And there's gonna be a talented pastor that's
gonna do a much better job explaining that than, than I would so I thought, “What would
I want to know if I was a college student? What are some of the things that I wish somebody
had told me about being a college student?” ‘Cause it's this weird time of transition
in your life. So I thought that's what I'd talk about today. And I think the first thing you need to know
as a college student is you don't have the rest — you don't need to have the rest of
your life figured out. You don't have to have it all figured out. There's this pressure, isn't there? I mean the seniors in the room, is it 22 days? Is that the count? Twenty-two days, yeah. They're cheering but also some of them are
like (crying sound). There's a pressure cause when you come to
college as a freshman, if you're a freshman in the room you feel like graduation is like
100 years away, don't you? Ask a senior if graduation goes quickly, it
does. It does. And then as a sophomore you start to sense
it. As a junior you start to scramble, as a senior
you're like, “Can I get a master's somewhere? Like maybe a, like a triple M.B.A. that takes
another nine years? I don't want to go.” There's this pressure and the world puts this
pressure on you that you have to know what you're going to do with your life. That's just not true; you don't. I'm 38 and I don't know what I'm going to
do with my life. And when I was in college, 38 was like, near
dead to me, right? Like, right now, be honest like if you're
18 you're like, “38! Oh, my, how are his bones so brittle, he's
able to stand? I hope he's getting calcium. I think that's important for old people.” Like I can barely make out some of you in
the crowd, ‘cause I'm so tired. But I don't know what I'm going to do, yet
and I remember when I was 18 or 19 or 20 thinking by that time I, I will. But the reality is, nobody who's successful
and honest would tell you that in college, they knew exactly where their life was going
to go. There's a name for people who tell you, “Oh
I knew exactly what I was going to do when I was 21.” That name is “liar.”No, you didn't. I mean the wrestler — I spoke for this event
with the wrestler — and I think I have a picture of he and I posing, if you leave that
up for a couple seconds. So this is the wrestler. Look at the size of his fist! Like his fists are the size — and I don't
look tough doing this, like he looks like he's gonna kill a man. I'm like, “Yay, words! I write.” I think I'm even wearing this coat, I own
one coat, Yay! And I asked him I said, “Did you always
know you were going to be a wrestler?” And he's won more championships than anyone
else in the history of wrestling. He's the commentator for Monday Night Raw
on WWE. Like he's, he's done some amazing things,
and I said, “did you know you were going to be a wrestler?” And he said, “No. I was an artist.” I said, “’Cause that's the first thing
I would have thought, like I saw your fist and I was like, you must love art. Like that's an art fist if I've ever seen
one.” And I said, “Well how'd you get into wrestling?” He said, “Well, I used to draw when I was
younger and I was 15 and I would draw all these wrestlers and I submitted some of my
photos, my illustrations, to a TV show, they put 'em up on TV and they showed 'em and they
said, ‘hey do you want to start coming and kinda illustrating our wrestling matches? You know, we don't have cameras all the time.’ They have court reporters who will draw people. ‘Why don't you be a ringside artist?’” So he did that, he started to draw. And then they said, “Why don't we start
a sign company? You're a really good artist.” And he said “OK,” and so he did this art
and he started hanging out with all these wrestlers and finally he said to them “I'd
love to wrestle, let me do it once.” And the other wrestlers said, “Nah man. You're an artist. you've gotta do art.” Can you imagine a wrestler being like, “Nah,
preserve that poetry inside you! You've gotta chase flowers and be an artist?” But somebody told him that, and he finally
convinced them to wrestle, and he did it and he never looked back and he did it for 40
years. But he would tell you, “No I didn't know
I'd end up here.” Nobody knows where they're going to end up. And part of the challenge too is that you
think you need to know. I mean, my sister's 23, she just graduated,
and she was telling me “you know I don't know what I want to do with my life” and
I said “Molly when I was 23 what I'm doing didn't exist. Social media didn't exist when I was 23, how
could I have predicted that's what I'd do a lot of?” Your major, I hope you've got the major you're
supposed to have, but some of what you're going to do in the workforce doesn't even
exist yet, so why do we put that pressure on college students that, “Hey, you're 19. Just make a decision for the next 60 years.” I mean, your brain's not even done forming
until you're 25. And we put this pressure on ourselves. Then we add the pressure of not feeling qualified
for God. Have you ever felt that pressure like if you
were smarter or prayed more or journaled more or read the Bible more, maybe then you'd be
qualified? And we think everybody else has their life
together, like everybody but us knows what they want to do for the rest of their life,
and we're not qualified for God. But have you ever read the Bible and thought
about what happens in the Bible? I mean, another name for the Bible could be,
“God loves losers.” He's constantly using losers, isn't He? I mean, think about Moses. He sees Moses. Moses murdered somebody with his bare hands,
and then he ran away for 40 years. You've run from God; I've run from God. None of us have run for 40 years. He ran away and became a shepherd, and then
he comes back. He sees the burning bush and what's interesting
is that he didn't have a plan for that moment. God didn't even speak to him until he took
a step closer. We want details, we want details from God
and He so rarely gives us details, He gives us an invitation, which is different. But God sees Moses and goes “That guy, the
murderer? I'm gonna have him lead my people. Yeah he's the one.” That doesn't happen in our world, like they
never catch a serial killer and make him mayor. Have you ever thought about that? Like they're never like “we've caught the
Southside strangler, he's our new vice president. He's just gonna strangle people right to the
top.” But that's what God does. Think about David. David – we love the David and Goliath story,
like we always associate with that. Like, I love when we associate our problems
with Bible problems. Where like we're stuck in traffic and we're
like, “This is just like what Job went through, oh, this is,” you have a difficult final
and you're like “I know how Job felt.” Really? Do you? But we look at David and David made some mistakes,
didn't he? I mean we all know the story, he's up on the
rooftop and he's out there looking for people and I heard a pastor say that was old school
internet surfing. Like he's looking like he's like “who's
bathing, let me Google that up,” he's up on the roof. And he sees Bathsheba, which always bothered
me that her name is Bathsheba and she was taking a bath. Like, could she have been Showersheba or Jacuzzisheba? Like, it'll mess you up, don't think about
things like that. But he sees her; he has to have her. He sleeps with her, gets her pregnant, tries
to trick her husband, and eventually murders her husband. And then later on in life, his son rapes his
daughter and he doesn't handle it, and that situation leads to a civil war where 20,000
people died. So when students tell me “Hey I'm just not
qualified for God” I always think “have you killed more than 20,000 people?” I mean, you've been very busy if you have. That's a lot of (sound). And then what happens in the Bible, what does
God say about David? He says “David was a man after my own heart.” And you wanna kinda go, “Hey, God, this
is awkward, but have you read the whole Bible? Like did you skim some of the — like did
you read David and Goliath and you got to, like, the good stuff in the New Testament? Like what happened?” David wasn't a good guy and so why does God
say that? God says that not out of David's character
but out of God's character. That's why he was a man after own God's heart. That was a sign of God's grace, not David's
qualification. And the reality is, none of us are qualified. We're, we're not. But in Christ we're qualified. And that's something the enemy loves to get
you to run for, is something you already have. You already have everything you need to be
qualified for Christ in Christ, but we run and look for it everywhere else. So the first thing I'd say, is you don't need
to have your life figured out. I think we just need to be present for what
God wants to do. And more importantly, don't ask, “What do
I want to do with my life?” ask “Who do I want to do it with?” Not, “What do I want to do?” but “Who do I want to do it with?” Jesus, the people that matter to you – that’s
a different question. The second thing I'd say is that you will
be afraid. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna wrestle with
fear, and that's OK. I mean, the challenge is bravery in movies
looks so fun. Like, anytime a hero is in trouble in a movie,
like, he wipes his brow, like, saves the day, makes out with the brunette tomboy he always
ignored ‘cause he was dating the blonde cheerleader. Like, I just described every movie. Right? And then the credits roll and we're like,
“Oh, that was amazing.” Aw. But that's not what bravery feels like. If you've ever had to be brave, it feels horrible. Like bravery involves crying a lot, wanting
to throw up, not sleeping well — like, Jenny and I, my wife and I, are in the middle of
a transition right now. I mean, for the first time in 16 years I don't
have a salary or a boss. Like, that's a new event. I wish that I was talking about, like, something
from my past. Like, I hope in the future when I talk about
things I can read from my deep past, right now it's, like, (sound). Like, that's this week, the idea of being
brave. And Jenny and I haven't slept well in like
six months. We keep having these 3 AM conversations where,
like, you roll over and your spouse goes, “Hey are you up?” And you go, “I am, let's talk right now,
let's brainstorm!” Like that's a normal human thing. No, bravery is not easy. And God knew it wasn't going to be easy. He knew you're going to have fears, and I
don't know what your fear is, maybe it's about graduation, maybe it's about you haven't found
your fit — your friend group. Sometimes college is lonely, isn't it? It's like being thirsty in the ocean. You're around 10,000 people and you feel like
you don't have a good friend. That's, that's a lonely feeling, I don't know
what your fear is, but God knew we were going to struggle with them. I mean, do you know what the number one most
repeated command is in the Bible? It's, “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid. And some of them could have been prevented. I love in the Bible when like an angel comes
up on the scene, it's like glory comes in and like huge wings he's like “wahhhh,”
and the first thing he says is “do not be afraid.” I kinda want to be like, “Hey man, no offense,
angel, but if you hadn't come in like that, I wouldn't have been afraid.” Like, if you had been like, “Hey! Angel here; just checking in. Got a message from God.” I would have been like, “Come on in! Have some coffee, I don't know if we had that
then but have some.” But he says, “Do not be afraid” over and
over and over and over and over again. And my favorite response to that is from Christ. Christ in Matthew says something really simple
He says, “Look to the birds. They don't have their lives together. They don't know what's going to happen next. Are you not more valuable than a bird?” Have you ever thought about the gift of Him
using birds as an example? I mean, Christ could have picked any animal
on the planet. Instead, He picks one where there are 200
to 400 billion examples of. And that every day you'll be able to find
one. You saw a bird on your walk today. I mean, what if Christ had said, “Whenever
you're afraid, look to the hairy-nosed wombat.” There's like 2,000 of those. What if He had said, “Whenever you are afraid,
turn to the clouded snow leopard.” There's like 500 of those. Or “Whenever you're afraid look for a Javan
rhino.” There's six of those. And then you get ready, you get ready for
your final and you're scared and you go “I'm gonna do with Christ said. Does anybody know where there's a Javan rhino? Do we have one? Is there a Liberty zoo yet, is there? Johnnie Moore, do we have a — Johnnie, do
we have a Javan rhino?” Noooo? Instead what does He say? He says “look to the birds” and He gives
us an example you're going to see every day of your life. And we miss it cause it's small. It's this tiny bit of punctuation in our day. So I'd say don't, don't worry about fear,
it's gonna show up. Being afraid isn't failure, staying afraid
is. And they're different. The other thing you have to remember is that
fear and regret aren't the same things. They're not. Regret lasts a lot longer than fear. Regret has a longer shelf-life. There are some things that God's kind of inviting
you to do right now in your college career that you're afraid to do and if you don't
do them you will regret not doing them. And so what I had to come to in my own life
is that I'd rather face the fear of today than the regret of forever. And that — and they're different. So you're going to be afraid and that's OK. Look to the birds. And the last thing I'd say is, be patient;
go slow. You know, I know you guys had Bob Goff speak
a couple weeks ago. And he's amazing, isn't he? I mean that guy is like a six foot five walking
hug. Like he is just so, like — and he tells
the craziest stories and people always ask me “Like, are they true?” Like, “They're true.” I mean I've heard him say before that when
world leaders fly to his lodge that he has on the island, he'll have their country's
flag flying over the house as a tribute, he once picked me up from the airport and as
we're driving over I noticed that the state flag of Tennessee was flying over his house. Like, where does he keep the flags. Do you ever think about that? Like how big is Bob Goff's flag warehouse
that he has Tennessee and like Guam? That's a big flag collection. I'd love to see the people, like the people
who own a flag store are like “Sweet! Bob Goff is coming in.” And he does amazing things, doesn't he? He's always going to Uganda or like doing
island things or like these crazy stories and they're true and that's how he really
is and all my friends right now want to be Bob Goff, just without that whole be a successful
lawyer for 30 years first thing. Oh, that takes forever. I want to be Bob Goff without having gone
to law school or grinding or working but let me tell you those two things are connected. Life moves at a smart pace; God moves us at
the right pace. I love that we try to rush the guy that invented
time. Have you ever thought about the absurdity
of that? You're like “God, I got this, I think it
needs to be a little faster.” It needs to be a little faster, and we don't
want to deal with the realities of this. Here's, here's a reality. Your first job out of college will not be
your best job. I hope it's not. I don't want you to peak at 23. And then you hate the next years of your life
and you always look back to the glory days of that first job. No, your first job is to learn how to have
a job. It's weird, like you go from having a ton
of days off to ten. That's a hard lesson. You've got to learn that. We've got to be patient. We're got to see the connection between hustling
and working hard and these things God called us on. But we put this pressure on our 20 year olds,
our 22 year olds and go you can do anything for God and then you're 24 and you work at
a customer call center and you're like, “I'm failing God.” It's not happening fast enough. I mean yesterday, yesterday I got to announce
that I just signed a new book deal with Penguin which is bonkers cause Penguin publishes people
like Mark Twain, like, that's crazy to me. That was really exciting. It was also the 16th year I've been writing
professionally. It took me 12 years to publish my first book. If it takes you ten you beat me by two years,
that's fast. But we want God to hurry. We want Him to rush and He doesn't. And sometimes people ask me “how do you
discern between what is God calling you to do something and what's the enemy calling
you to do something?” I think one of the ways is that I don't think
the enemy says — ever says, “Slow down,” I don't think he ever says “Give it more
time; think about it more; get more counsel.” He says, “Rush, rush, rush, faster, faster,
faster.” And we think that things should be moving
quicker. And we want them to be moving quicker. I mean I'll meet people and they go “I think
it's time to change jobs, I'm just so tired of this job.” I go “how long have you been there?” “Six months.” Six whole months? Oh, the work you've put in. That's half a year, you should write a book
about that experience. But that's the pressure, we think we're always
going to win and like some things in life are going to fail. That's, that's part of life. My wife asked me that the other day, she said,
“Hey what if the next thing you try just fails miserably?” And I was like, “That's a fun conversation
opener. How about a little more Proverbs 31?” Never say that to your wife. Never, never. Men in the room, never reference Proverbs
31, OK? That's a, that's a good lesson, and if you
ever come in and she's mad dish washing, walk out. Like if she's scrubbing that dish and she's
like praying like “Jesus, I just don't,” like, that is not your moment, you need to
moonwalk out of there and be like (sound). I've been married 13 years; I'm wicked wise,
I know a lot of things right now. But she said, “Hey what if the next thing
fails?” And we don't like to talk about that sometimes
in Christianity. We have this idea that like you just go up. Like especially pastors. If you're gonna be a pastor in a room, the
expectation for you right now is you plant a church with like a cool name that sounds
like a clothing store, like I don't know like Generation 18-2 or something and people are
like “do I get jeans there or Jesus,” it's very confusing. So you plant that, you plant it and then like
you do like 10,000 baptisms and then like you write a book and you speak in a big Christian
conference it's like (sound). No, that's not how life works. Like, one day you're the cool church and another
day you're not. And another day you're back to the cool church,
another day you're not. Life is like this. And Jenny asked me that and this is what I
thought — she said “What if the next thing fails” and in my head my first two responses
were “It won't fail. Why would they fail?” And my second was “I'll just work harder.” And then like later, I felt like Jesus was
like, “How come no response was ‘I have Jesus’?” Like how come your effort was both responses? And I think that gets back to that idea of
what do I want to do with my life versus who am I going to do it with? This is a weird season for me. You know I write books about having a dream
job and I don't have a job job. And that's weird, isn't it? I mean, I feel a little like a diet author
who's like deuce, deuce and a half riding a Rascal scooter for the turning radius. Or like maybe a marriage author who wrote
five love languages and just got my fifth divorce in Vegas. Like there's tension, I'm in transition and
so are you guys. And the thing I want to leave you with about
transition is that Easter — everything in the Bible is this invitation. An invitation to be closer to Christ, an invitation
to be part of His story. Don't put that pressure on yourself that He
needs you to do something or it won't happen. Here's the reality: God's gonna do what God's
going to do. I won't complete God. You won't complete God. He doesn't invite us into this story cause
He needs us, He invites us cause He loves us. There's a very different thing, so I don't
want you to put that pressure on yourself. I want you to remember something: God will
never be handcuffed by your failures or unleashed by your successes. He won't be handcuffed by the times you mess
up, He's God and He calls us back into that. And He won't be unleashed by these successes. And if you're a senior in the room, the last
thing I'd say to the seniors, if God feels quiet right now — ‘cause when I went to
college, went to Samford University, there was this pressure of kinda like ring before
spring, like you had, like you had to find a lady fast. ‘Cause there's this idea of like there's
none in the rest of the world, like they're only here. Like and when I get my diploma I go to this
wilderness where there's no single people, like this is my chance, so like you're at
graduation like “I could date her. Hey, you wanna get engaged? You want a like a ring thing, I'll court you
for like an hour during the ceremony. OK.” There's this pressure and sometimes in the
midst of graduation you think “God's not speaking to me right now. God feels quiet. He hasn't told me what's gonna happen next,”
and when God is quiet in our life the first thing we think is He's mad, He's frustrated,
we didn't do college right, He's disappointed. But there's a different side of silence and
it's one I love in the prodigal son story. The story I've talked about every time I've
been here, you know the story, the son comes home from wrecking his life and the father
throws him a party, and the crazy thing about that story is that the father never talks
to him one time. He doesn't say a single word to the son. When he gives him the money he doesn't say
anything, when he comes home he doesn't say anything, he embraces him, and then turns
and talks to the servants. So if you're a senior right now and it feels
like God's quiet, don't rush to that definition that it's cause He's unhappy. Maybe He's got you embraced and He's just
too busy planning your party. Can you imagine a God like that? A God that in silence works that way? Because that's the God we get and that's what
Easter is about. Let's pray. Lord, thanks for the chance to do things like
this in spaces like this. We joke about the growth at Liberty but that's
not an accident, it's a gift. And I pray that Liberty would continue to
steward that gift the way you want them to. And Lord, what an exciting time to be a student. Stepping out and for the first generation
of the internet, nobody's done that before. These are pioneers and I pray that whether
you're a freshman or a senior you'd know you have a God that knows exactly where you're
going and you don't need to, you just need to know who you're going there with. Amen. Thanks guys!
