Finding faith

Our country is founded upon a Judeo-Christian rock. Our rights don't come from a government. They're unalienable. They come from a Creator.

What's missing in our public life so often are the values embedded in the Gospel. Attacks on the Christian faith and religious liberty have never been more harsh. We're rewarding teaching sex education to a kindergarten class while we’re firing the coach who prays after a ballgame.

And if we focus our attention back towards the gospel, I think we'd solve a lot of problems in our nation. We must preserve the ability to worship as we see fit and take our values with us wherever we go. If we want a better America, I think it starts with faith in God and faith in each other.

The key ingredients to the next American century start in a place of worship. 

I had a great friend at the movie theater I worked at in high school. I was 15 years old, and I was living in a very small apartment. He was living in a trailer park, and I would come to work every day and I'd ask a similar question. “Why are you so happy? We have no money. We're working 70 hours a week”. 

And he simply said, “Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life.” 

I was like, what else? I knew there had to be more than just that. 

But the truth is that the longer I lived, the more I realized that there was something different about my friend and his witness. He didn't proselytize, so to speak. He didn't preach at me. Saint Francis of Assisi said, “I'd rather see a sermon than hear one.” I believe this to be true. 

What I've tried to do is make sure that I model the behavior I want others to follow because it was modeled before me, and it led me to make a life-altering, eternity-changing personal transformation. Thank God Almighty that his Son rose from the grave. 

I was on a football scholarship, a very small football scholarship, at Presbyterian College. I was at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting when I realized my love for Christ. I had a horrible car accident the year before during my football season where I lost the first six weeks of my senior season because I fell asleep driving at the wheel, went through the windshield, and ultimately ended up, because of that car accident, missing a crucial part of my senior football season.

I thought my life was over because football was my life and Jesus was just a game. But I realized I had it inverted, that actually, Jesus was my life, and football was just a game. 

As a kid raised in poverty, as I've said before, in a single-parent household, I always wanted a father's acceptance. I always wanted to be defined by my family lineage. And what I found in my faith was I was adopted into the Family. If I wanted to know more about my Abba Father, I could read His good book called the Bible, and I could discover all that He said about me. But more importantly, all that He said about himself and all that He is. 

Faith is always a personal journey towards discovery, relationship, and becoming more like Jesus, not success. Faith isn't about comfort or independence - it's about growth and dependence on Him!

I believe America can do for anyone what she has done for me. We have the opportunity to restore hope, create opportunities, and protect the America that we love, but we need to take advantage of it. It is a blessing from God and the American people that, as a kid raised in poverty by a single-parent mama, I now have the opportunity to represent our nation and to restore the clear values that come from the Gospel and just good old-fashioned common sense.

I'm running for president because I have faith in the future of this great nation. 

God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.