Special Guest Speaker | Former U.S. Congressman Trey Gowdy

there's something that's been on my mind lately that I want to share with you I first want to say our country is going through an unprecedented time in a number of different ways but I want to offer you a word of hope we have been through difficult times before and we have emerged stronger and more unified we're gonna be fine we're gonna fight and love and reason our way through this so do not lose hope we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness our country is celebrating Independence Day in less than a week and I want to talk about Independence Day but I don't want to talk about our country's Independence Day I want to talk about another Independence Day yours have you had an Independence Day do you want one do you know how to get it life liberty and the pursuit of happiness life have you ever I mean that's one of those words Ben and I were talking this afternoon about these words we use that we never really stop to ask what does that word mean in its entire fulsome self may we use words like life but have you ever stopped and just thought what all does that word encompass what does that word mean surely it's more than just a biological state what does the word life mean and and why was it listed first life liberty and the pursuit of happiness I learned a lot about life and the job that dr. Jung referenced not Congress in a courtroom you can learn a lot about life surrounded by the alternative I was a homicide prosecutor death is very life-affirming there is no appeal from death there is no compromising with death there is no retreat from death whatever the last thing you said to the person you love the most is just gonna have to suffice for all of time whatever you wanted to do but never got around to doing we just simply never be done there is a finality with death and that finality should instruct how we view life the case that I handled that taught me the most about life was a ten year old girl confined to a wheelchair who couldn't talk she couldn't walk she couldn't feed herself she was confined to a wheelchair the entire ten years of her sweet precious beautiful life until it was taken from her by her mother's boyfriend never walked never talked she just sat in her wheelchair and smiled so I would be asked from time to time when I had visitors to my office in Washington I'll see the picture of your family who is the little girl in the wheelchair beside the picture of your family because that is the only other picture that was on my desk for the eight years I was in Washington I wanted a constant vivid reminder of the sanctity the primacy the fundament ality of life and if that child could have a smile on her face that is not in existence we would choose for ourselves it is not in existence we would choose for anyone that we cared about but that's how she was made that was the existence that she was given life but I don't want you to just think about life as some esoteric concept I want you to think about it with more granularity more particularity in other words what have you done with your life this 10 year old girl on my desk was not given a beautiful canvas upon which to write a long life she was not given the most vivid colors in the palette upon which to paint the story of her life what have you done with this gift of life you know life is wonderful to talk about and in philosophers do it and and and authors do it it's mentioned and not only the Declaration of Independence but if you look at our Constitution no person shall be denied life without due process you look in Scripture I am the way the truth and the life you even look at philosophy and a philosopher named Albert Camus who was not known for his optimism he was not known for having a sunny rosy view of life in fact he spent most most most of his career kind of struggling with whether or not life was worth it but even that noted absurdist said in the middle of winter I find within myself an invincible summer Dostoevsky who is my favorite author and the book crime and punishment tells the story of this man confined to a cast-iron chair and there is nothingness to his ride and nothingness to his left and nothingness in front of him and nothingness behind him and he is confined to this cast-iron chair for a thousand years and dusk of yeskey rights it is better to live like that than to not live what have you done with this gift of life what will your legacy be and the challenge for me and I will speak to myself is with whatever time I have left how much room is left on the canvas of my life how much more can I write before the paint dries up and the canvas is full it's your independence today we're talking about I'm not talking about July the 4th 1776 I'm talking about your Independence Day and it begins with you being given the gift of life and what will you do with it Liberty that's another one we can probably define you can go with the synonyms freedom and then if I were to push you you may you may say well it's affirmative the freedom to do certain things the freedom to speak the freedom to assemble the freedom to worship and to be sure there is an affirmative part of liberty or freedom sometimes I like to say well if I'm gonna define something let me figure out what it's not and the first thing that comes to my mind has not freedom is confinement restriction and then I think well that can't be true because as soon as I say that I think of the of the POWs who found liberty and freedom even in that existence I think of people like me a Wigner who were confined to a wheelchair either because of injury or illness and they found freedom and liberation so you can't be physically restrained and physically confined and then my mind immediately met went to the ultimate confinement the ultimate confinement the ultimate anti-freedom anti Liberty prison and scattered throughout the pages of the Bible or person after person after person who even in prison found freedom and liberty whether it's Joseph Sampson who you could argue did more good in prison than he did when he was running the countryside in June and Judah Daniel Peter Paul Jeremiah so it's got to be more than just physical freedom so how do you define Liberty what does it mean to you if this is your Independence Day and you've been gifted life and you've been gifted liberté what will you do with your Liberty I can tell you if anyone ever says to you that prisons are country clubs or not that bad you may rest assured they have never been it is the coldest starkest place I ever visited as a prosecutor it's just cold and stark the prisons aren't just concrete and steel and razor wire you can be free like Martin Luther King jr. or Dietrich Bonhoeffer even while you are in prison or you can be confined and restricted even though you were walking around free as a bird prison is not just a physical structure prison is prison so if you're contemplating your own version of your work Independence Day then here's the very personal question I have for you we've got famous prisons in this country Florence which some people call Supermax Leavenworth Rikers they're famous prisons and literature the Chateau d'If from The Count of Monte Cristo there's Shawshank Prison from Shawshank Redemption my question for you is what is the name of your prisoner if you're going to seriously contemplate having an Independence Day of your own where you can look back and say that is the day that I began to appreciate this gift of life that is the day that I refuse to be confined and restricted then you need to have a conversation as I have had with in the quietness of your own soul what is the name of your prison pride is a prison is the first sin and may well be the last sin and it's probably gonna be the sin committed most in between it's a prison guilt is a prison substance abuse is a prison and it is hard to escape from that prison I know it is hard it is hard to escape but it's a present racism is a prison even as I was reading the words of Thomas Jefferson we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal how incredible will it have been if our country had actually followed that how incredible would it have been if our country had declared we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights how much pain and sorrow in strife could this country have saved if that had been our foundational statement racism as a prison sexism as a prison anger as a prison when I was a teenager I went to see dr. young we had a pastoral counselor it's kind of knew back then that was someone that your family could go to or couples could go to but we had a we had a pastoral counselor but when I was a teenager I went I was probably made to go now - I'll think about it a little more carefully I don't think I volunteered but I remember that conversation with that high school counselor like it was yesterday you know you see these images from movies about folks who go see psychologists or counselors and the first question is how are you feeling today or what can I help you with that was not his first question his first question was why are you so angry and I didn't know and I don't know I have nothing to be angry about a great parents they loved me not as much as my three sisters but they loved me I didn't want for anything but sometimes that's the nature of prison it doesn't make sense Prison doesn't always make sense anger is a prison doubt is a prison which is why I am so happy that dr. Ben Jung wrote a book on doubt because it takes a lot of faith to write a book on doubt doubt can be a prison it doesn't have to be but it can be and that's one that I struggle with cynicism can be a prison skepticism can be a prison what is the name of your prison and are you tired of being there are you ready to be free I would love to tell you in fact I told Ben this afternoon I said your dad's gonna be mad at me my theology is gonna be gonna be wrong tonight your father's gonna be disappointed in me Ben said well yeah that's just a chance you won't have to take go ahead and tell the truth I would love to tell you that God came down and unlocked the door of that prison called anger but he gave the keys to a five foot four inch brunette with the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen in my life and the most radiant smile I have ever seen in my life and he's let me live with her for 31 years sometimes he gives the keys to other people to let you out of the prison what is the name of the prison that has you and are you tired of being confined and restricted the sentence has been served it's been served and I get it there is a certain familiarity there's a scene from from the movie based on the novel Shawshank Redemption where one of the prisoners completes the sentence his death of society has been paid and he just can't adapt he's so used to the confinement he's so used to the restrictions he's so used to having his Liberty curtailed he just can't function Prison can seem familiar you can be reluctant to want to break out and it is true there are people that have done remarkable things while confined and the Bible is full of them but when I think of Sampson and all he accomplished as he pushed those pillars down and killed more Philistines in his death and he ever did in his life I don't celebrate that as much as I love meant what could have been what could have been had he just found the Liberty and the freedom without the prison life liberty and the pursuit happiness happiness is one of those words that we think we know the definition to and I have absolutely despite the amount of gray hair I have I have no idea what Thomas Jefferson was thinking when he wrote pursuit of happiness we missed each other in high school he finished a couple years before I did I don't know what he meant I know what other smart people think he meant but this isn't his Independence Day this is yours the pursuit of happiness I would encourage you to substitute a word for happiness I would encourage you as you construct your own day of Independence to choose life liberty and the pursuit of significance happiness can be joy it can be contentment it can be laughter I would still encourage you to choose significance and you may say well what does that mean and I'll look back on the people that I have known in life who are the most content who are the most full of joy who radiates the teachings of Christ the most and they all have one thing in common they spend more time thinking about others than they do themselves my wife is at the top of that list she is genuinely the happiest person that I know she's just full of joy and contentment and she loves doing things for other people which is great because I love it when she does things for me so we're both happy significant I was leaving DC one Friday couldn't wait to get out sitting at Reagan National looking up at the board all the flights were being delayed this endless stream of thunderstorms was coming through and I'm miserable I mean I don't have anything to be miserable about but remember I told you I was in the prison called anger and from time to time I can still see the grounds of that prison so I was sitting there and just thinking you know I'm gonna be stuck at the airport and I look over there and I see two nuns that are looking up at the board and they're looking up at the board longer than it takes to just see my flights being canceled they're looking at the board long enough to like memorize the board so I'm sitting there thinking we'll Trey don't scare them don't walk off to two nines with your crazy hair you're gonna scare and then I got my wife's voice in my ear saying go see if you could help I'm gonna see if you can help them well okay so I walk up one speaks a little bit of English the other one speaks no English so I'm sitting there thinking well I tried I tried may I get some credit for trying and then out of the corner of my eye I see a colleague named Joey Kennedy from Massachusetts and I remember that Joey did a stint in the Peace Corps in a spanish-speaking country and so I say Joey will you come over here I'm trying to ask these two nuns is there anything I can do to help and he does a beautiful masterful job of communicating with them and the sum and substance of it all is they were trying to get to Houston so they could go to Argentina that's where they were headed Argentina way they're not going anywhere there are no flights taking off so then I think well should I rent a car and drive these two nah to Charlotte and I'm picturing that in my head me for ten hours and a car with two knots my wife listens to contemporary Christian music and I tell her that's great that's the New Testament I'll listen to country and hip hop because that's the Old Testament that's people who made a lot of mistakes and they're trying to do better but something always seems to keep that from happening so we both listen to religious music but I'm not thinking that these two nuns are gonna let me listen to country or hip-hop music for ten hours and dr. Young was good enough yesterday to help me limit my vocabulary which sometimes can be too expansive although all the words I use are in the Bible they're not in the Bible and the way in which I use them so I'm thinking how am I going to survive a 10 hour drive with two nuns and do nothing wrong so thank the Lord there was an announcement the other flights gonna be delayed it's gonna be delayed three hours but we expect this flight to go to Charlotte so I get their flights moved to Charlotte we go to Charlotte together and I'll walk them from the gate over to find a flight to Houston and they're gonna have to spend the night in Houston but ultimately they're gonna get to Argentina and that's that's good that's good and I was struck the entire day by how contented they both were they're in another country no prospects of getting where they want to go we're in the same thing they wore yesterday and they're gonna wear it again tomorrow it didn't look like they had a lot of money I didn't ask them but they certainly weren't eating and they weren't going into the newsstand and they had the most contented looks on their face well I can't leave well enough alone we exchanged emails and now got back to DC several months later I got an invitation to visit them at the convent where they were working in Virginia Wow so I go and I walk in and the first thing I notice is the first thing y'all would have noticed where are the televisions there are no televisions here how did what where do you watch sports so I did I didn't want to say that I said what do you all do for fun and they said we pray okay is that it that's it they go to church every day I'm still mad about my dad making me go on Sunday nights when we were little cuz I missed the Cowboys game they go every single day so then I said do you ever watch movies oh oh yes yes we watched one the other night it's a movie I have never heard of before in my life it's a movie that is so good and so pure and so uninteresting the Hallmark Channel wouldn't even show it and they still have this contentment this joy they literally spend their days praying for other people their pursuit of happiness how are you pursuing that how are you pursuing a life of significance our country has a date it'll be next Saturday we set aside to celebrate where we came from what we aspire to what we want to be as we continually seek to perfect this union I want you to have a great next Saturday but between now and Saturday I want you to ask yourself do you have your own Independence Day is there a day you can point to and say that is the day I acknowledged the gift of my life and the gifts and the talents that I have been given that is the day that I said I am no longer gonna serve in any prison constructed by me or anyone else that is the day that I accepted that I had been pardoned someone else has already served the sentence for me I was thinking last week how would I give you a road map if you want to lead a life of significance of contentment of joy and it's been given but seek you first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you and if you want more detail if you say that's that's high-minded I want something with a little more particularity I'm going to give you that also blessed are the poor in spirit the humble the modest blessed are they who mourn or feel empathy or connection with others blessed are the meek blessed are those who hunger for righteousness blessed are the merciful blessed are the pure in heart if you are looking for someone to help escape whatever confines and bounds you and you are looking for someone that will point you toward a life of contentment and significance and therefore happiness as we should define it then I would encourage you to get to know the person who uttered those blesses are a person who served the sentence already for which you may still be serving the person that can unlock whatever prison you find yourself in

Channel: Second Baptist Church, Houston

Views: 55,962

Rating: 4.9124274 out of 5

Keywords: second baptist church houston, trey gowdy, congressman trey gowdy, woodway, west, north, south, cypress, 1463

Id: pj9AZQ4s_MM

Length: 32min 42sec (1962 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020