Last night, there was a big area wide event here in Spartanburg. BCM along with Cru (Campus Crusade) and FCA had their monthly worship event at USC Upstate. Last night they had a special guest speaker. Because of this, it was promoted on all the local college campuses. The guest speaker was former University of South Carolina Gamecock football player Brandan Davis.
Brandan has written a book "The Faithful Walk-on" that has just recently been released and is going around talking about the book and sharing his testimony and this was the first stop on his tour. When he opened, he talked about how he has a motto to start off the day. It is a way of reminding himself of all that God has done for him and is motivation to start off the day right.
He shared briefly about his background, growing up being a star athlete in high school and caring pretty much only about girls and football. He talked about during a preseason fall camp one year he got really sick, cramping and throwing up. He shared that he nearly died from that experience. It ended up being a catalyst for eventually accepting Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
Because his grades weren't so good, he ended up going to college at Carson Newman and played football there. He shared briefly about his time there and some of the growth that took place in his life. He shared about how when he truly began following Christ, he changed spiritually, mentally and in knowledge of Scripture and wanting a desire to read more. He shared several scriptures including 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Proverbs 3:5-6.
He then talked about sensing God's call to transfer to USC and the story behind initially being rejected (to the business school) and finally getting accepted to school there and being a religious studies major. He walked on to the football team and later earned a scholarship.
He then shared about two models that he lives by. The first is focus because there will be times of stress and it's important to keep focus on what's important. The second is CHANCE which stands for come hard and never come easy.
One big thing that stood out was he shared about smiling. He said that when we smile, we can let the light of Jesus shine through. He talked about a story in the Clemson game in 2010 where a Clemson player was taking some cheap shots and such. So after one play he took his mouthpiece out of his mouth and smiled a great big smile and said a kind word to the Clemson player. Later, the player came up to Brandan and apologized saying that he had gotten caught up in the rivalry. Brandan said "Yeah, we still won though," and the audience here laughed.
It was really cool to hear Brandan's story and I look forward to reading his book. You can buy it from Amazon. Here is the link. It is such a blessing to hear stories like his and how God is continue to use him. He is looking at seminairies and will be looking at starting seminary in the fall. It was a great time last night and I hope that the students there were encouraged by Brandan's story. I know I was.
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