I want to share a testimony before the testimony.
So my wife, she's a doula, an amazing wife, an amazing mom.
I had this vision of what this morning was gonna look like.
I was gonna wake up early and be with the Lord and pray, worship, quiet time, then come here and do my thing.
But right around, what was it, nine?
Nine o'clock last night, uh, she was like, oh, my client's water broke, so I'm gonna have to go to a berth.
And I'm just like, oh gosh, what?
So my mind went to she's not even gonna be there, and then it went to what am I gonna do?
What am I gonna do, right?
Which is very selfish, but thank God she's here today.
Woohoo! Yeah.
It was a quick birth, but also my morning didn't look like the way I thought it was.
Um, I thought I was gonna get up early, right?
I had my two daughters sleeping right next to me.
I tried to sneak out of bed, they wouldn't let me.
Um, so I'm just like kind of praying like this, uh looking at the ceiling.
Um did their hair, not as good as my wife does it, but we all made it.
Praise the Lord.
We all made it.
So, yeah.
Um so I shared this testimony back in this back in like March.
Um I definitely refined it.
Um I feel like it's better today than it was then.
I shared it with PB.
Um and here's my Pastor Brad impression.
Uh just throwing it out there.
How about you how how do you think about sharing this to the church?
I'm just like, what?
Are you what?
Um so I did a personality test a couple uh month or maybe last year, um, disc, if you've heard of disc assessment before.
So it was a biblical disc, and it came with your chosen biblical character.
And mine is Moses.
So I identify with Moses so much.
If you remember the story where the burning bush and God called him to save his people out of Egypt, right?
And Moses was like, What, bro?
You got the wrong dude.
That was my first thought.
I was like, bro, you got the wrong dude.
But I remembered who created me.
God told Moses, Who created your mouth?
I remembered in Ephesians 2.10 that I am his handiwork.
I was reminded in Matthew 10.19 when Jesus said, Do not worry about what to say or how to say it.
At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
So I'm resting in that today.
Before I get any further, I want to pray.
If you bow your heads with me, Lord we Father, I just thank you for this opportunity.
I thank you for this opportunity to share uh my testimony and my story.
Um even though it's my testimony, this is a notch in your boat.
This is your story, your glory.
So I pray that you move me aside and just help me make you proud today.
I pray that in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Let's jump right into it and read the scripture.
Um, so if you are able, please stand.
And can you help me read the scripture today?
So we're gonna read in uh Psalm 27, verses 1 through 6.
Okay, one, two, three.
The Lord's my life is subdivision.
Who shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my likes, of a fool shall I eat fray.
When a wake, you be in my ethice and my foes, came upon the sea that by flesh, keep them a little in a thou, though a will stitchy speech my heart shall not fear.
O Horsiver eyes gasky and this our naked pocket what faith I threw a little seep after that of in the house of the board all the days of my lightly folk hear ye of a lord and suppire this bravery design trouble.
He shall hide thee the sick scaper that sh be hide thee.
He sh be my empty spout me.
Therefore I offer sacrifices of joy.
I will sing yeah, I will sing praises, sons of the Lord.
Let's go.
This is the word of the Lord.
I've always wanted to do that.
Always wanted to do that.
Oh, I love the Psalms so much because of the range of emotions that it shows.
From happiness all the way to anger, sadness, and despair.
We see many examples of that throughout the Psalms.
So as a mental health advocate, I'm encouraged to see this.
Also, as a former athlete, I can kind of identify with David a little bit.
So there's always references between warriors and athletes, right?
We prepare for battle, right?
In practice, in the weight room.
Um, David did the same.
If you've been an athlete before, you can you can relate.
Um also, I love how David sets an example on how to feel all these emotions, how to feel them out loud.
It's something that I wish I would have recognized at a younger age.
So I'm not a betting man at all, but I would bet that every single person in this room is having some sort of battle today.
Or maybe you just finished a battle recently and you have some scars or wounds to show for it.
Paul talks about that thorn in his side, in his flesh that won't seem to go away, and he asked the Lord three times to take it away.
Today I want to talk to you about my battle, my thorn, my story, and hopes of pointing you to Jesus and not to me.
I spent 22 years of my life chasing after something that was never going to satisfy me.
And quite frankly, sometimes I still find myself in this battle, but the grace of God brings me right back to him.
By no means am I saying I've arrived or things are perfect now.
I still struggle with it.
But this thing that I'm talking about is validation from other people.
All in all, I'm a I'm a serial people pleaser.
Um I just want people to like me.
I'm learning more and more, the only person I need to please is Jesus.
So I've named this sermon today, What Are You Chasing?
Because even though I'm telling my story, I hope that each of you can look into your hearts today and apply it to your own lives.
Before I do that, I want to kind of share some context about who I am, starting from the beginning.
Um I'm a third child out of four.
So that's my family.
Um on the on the far left there.
Um, so I grew up with two loving parents.
Shout out to my mom and dad that are here today.
That's like two times in the last month that y'all have been here.
Yeah, pretty cool.
Pretty cool.
Um, we moved around a little bit when I was young, so I was born in Dallas, Texas.
Um, I'm unfortunately a Cowboys fan.
But uh we moved in the early 90s to Akron, Ohio.
So shout out to LeBron James, my favorite player.
Um so we lived there for about five years, and then we moved to Michigan in 1997, the summer of 97, uh, where we my parents still reside in Jennyson.
So I was a kid that was polar opposite than I am now, right?
If you're around me, or if you know me, or if you ask people about me, most people would say I'm laid back, chill, patient guy.
Um, but back then, far from that.
Like, if you see harmony running around, I was more like that, just like just like that.
Um, I was pretty emotional as a child.
I wore my heart on my sleeve, um, I cried a lot, got angry quickly, and I was in trouble quite often.
I was repeatedly told that I needed to sit down, hush, you're doing too much, or you got anger problems.
Yeah.
So to appease everyone around me, honestly, I learned how to just suppress those feelings to make everybody just at ease.
Um, so I mentioned that people typically call me patient and chill, but it's partly true.
I would mostly uh rather like just bite my tongue to avoid conflict, which is not a healthy thing, especially in marriage, I'm sure my wife would agree.
Sometimes she's begging me, just talk to me.
I was like, I'm good, I'm good.
Honestly, I've done this for so long to this day, it's hard for me to just like cry.
Especially when I know I need to, I just can't do it.
So, anybody out there that knows how to cry just like that, I envy you.
Because it's just a great way to release some things.
Um, speaking of that, quick story about my program with the chosen ones at the Ford School across the street.
So, some of you might have seen this on Facebook.
So at the end of each year, uh we do like an assessment survey with each kid.
Um, and this kid is a sixth grader.
Um, and we asked him, what does it mean to be a strong man?
And you can see his his uh his answer right here.
He said to hide your emotions and stay tough.
So when I read that, like my heart broke, my heart dropped.
I immediately started blaming myself.
I'm just like, where, like, where did we go wrong with this kid?
This is literally the opposite of what we teach.
Like what I just couldn't fathom it.
Thankfully, he was right there when I read it, so we had a good opportunity to kind of dig deeper about that.
But I also was reminded that this kid is 12 years old.
He's learned, he's learned that like his entire life.
He was told that, he watches that in his own home.
And it's in a matter of nine months, that work will, that belief will not go away.
It's it's it's too much to ask of us.
But we're in it for the long haul with this kid, and we're gonna keep working.
So when I was young though, many times my temper would make things awkward in our family, uh, especially during like family trips or movie night, game night.
Uh, my brother knew how to press my buttons just and I would just lose my mind, and then the night would be shut down.
Uh I wanted to find that I asked you, Mom, I wanted to find that picture.
There's this picture of us in Texas.
We took uh maybe during the holidays, and everybody in the picture is smiling except for me and my dad.
So my dad is like like this.
Me and my face is like, my bad, wet because I'm in tears and I'm just like this.
That was one of those nights I talked about.
But instead, I chose a happy photo.
Um, but yeah, at times, if I'm brutally honest, I felt almost like an outcast in my family because I was often made fun of because of my temper.
So it was hard for me to feel like I fit in, especially because when we visited like St.
Louis and stuff like that to visit my mom's family, I was the only one that didn't really have a cousin to run around with.
Everybody all my siblings had someone around their age.
So oftentimes I just felt like, man, I'm just alone.
So I thought to myself, what can I do for my family to just accept me?
And I had one idea.
So if you're a a male, a boy, a man, think of yourself as a child.
There's nothing more important to a little boy than winning the approval of his father and big brothers.
My pops, he was a Hall of Fame athlete at his high school.
Heard so many urban legends stories, right?
Um football, basketball, baseball, then that's him in college right there.
Um, still has records to this day at wide receiver, pump return, stuff like that.
My brother, that's him on the on the right.
So if you remember, this picture right here was on the rapid for like 10 years.
For real.
And if you know my brother, that just like pumps his chest up a little bit.
But my brother was all world as well.
Um, Hall of Fame athlete football and basketball at Jennyson High School.
He's in the Grand Valley State Hall of Fame as well.
So, as you can imagine, big shoes to fill.
And as a young, bright kid, I'm like, this is the way to get acceptance.
Become all about sports.
So, what did I do?
I practice all the time.
I challenged my brother in one-on-one, tackle football, whatever made me better, whatever made me tougher.
I did that.
After a while, I started getting pretty good at sports.
I'm playing against older kids.
Um, I'm excelling, I'm seeing how proud my dad is of me because I had a good game.
Or I'm swinging the golf club pretty well, right?
And then my brother started asking me to go play with his friends.
Yo, let's go hoop, let's go to the park, play baseball.
I'm like, word, you want me to come?
And guess who his number one pick was every time?
Your boy.
I don't know if it was because of my skill or because he was just a good brother that he just always looked out for me, right?
But as you can imagine, at this point, I was on top of the world because I figured out how to get my brother and my dad to approve of me.
So I decided to use the same recipe to win friends, which is a dangerous decision.
As I reflect on that, I'm reminded of Galatians 1.10.
It says, Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God?
Or am I trying to please people?
If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
So I ask myself, was I trying to win the approval of human beings, my brother, my dad, my family, and then my friends?
Or of God?
I doubled down on the approval of people.
So I'll say a disclaimer real quick.
This is not like an indictment on my family.
Love my family.
Mom and dad did amazing.
I just wanted to say that.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, but as you know, let's fast forward to being a team.
Things can change dramatically when a child becomes a teenager.
That innocent little boy that wanted approval from his little dad, from his big brother and dad was no longer innocent or little.
He was getting shaped by hip-hop culture that told him, You're not cool unless you got a bunch of girls.
You're not cool unless you got a bunch of money, you got the flyers gear.
For a kid that's chasing validation, he's willing to do virtually anything, absolutely anything to get it.
Even if it goes against everything that he stands for.
This is where things started to get dangerous for me.
I was getting extra attention because of whose brother I was.
I mentioned he was all world, right?
Every classroom I walked into, hey, are you Pete's brother?
You gonna be better than him?
Older girls were talking to me as a 13, 14-year-old.
Hey, I'm cool with that.
But so many people wanted to be next to me, friends, because I was Pete's little brother.
Lil Pete, little Pete, what's up, bro?
And I was pretty good at sports too.
I rolled that wave, and I thought to myself, finally, this is the validation that I've been looking for my entire life.
Everybody thinks I'm cool.
I made it.
But you know what?
I loved it a little too much.
I'm thinking about the young cats over here.
I wanted to do everything in my power to keep that, to keep that love from everybody.
To keep telling me, yo, Wes, you the man.
That motivated me.
What do you think I did?
I got in the gym.
Every morning I was in the gym, getting shots up, lifting weights.
Why?
Not because I wanted to win, not because I wanted to uh, you know, excel and go to college and maybe go pro one day.
I did it because I wanted what success on the court brought to me off of it.
And that's validation and love and praise from people around me.
That's a dangerous, dangerous thing to do.
But can you imagine what this can do internally to a teen, to anybody?
When a sport or activity goes from pure and innocent to feeling like the only way to be seen by others.
Have y'all been there?
To a place where you felt like the thing you did best was the only thing that you had to offer.
When this is the case, the pressure to perform cannot be any higher.
We then become our performance, and anxiety will continue to rise.
This is exactly where I was without a safe space to share.
And you know what I wish?
I wish.
At the time, I wish I knew that I was fearfully and wonderfully made.
I wish that I knew Jesus didn't care about how many points I scored, if I won or if I lost.
I wish I knew that I didn't have to be perfect or great because someone already fulfilled that role.
So for those that are like me and that are like people pleasers, that find value in your performance, it doesn't have to be sports, it could be work.
It could be performance as a father, as a mother, or your yard or pops.
I want to share this quote by Henri Nowen.
I think I'm saying his name right, um, in his book, In the Name of Jesus.
This hit me.
This was I I was randomly reading this book, and I'm like, I gotta insert this.
The question is not how many people take you seriously?
Or how much are you going to accomplish?
Can you show some results?
No, but the question is, are you in love with Jesus?
Perhaps another way of putting the question would be, do you know the incarnate God?
In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, cares, reaches out, and wants to heal.
So, my young guys.
The question isn't what can I accomplish?
How many points can I score?
How many girls can I get?
How many friends can I have?
The real question is, do you love Jesus?
Do you love Jesus?
So, like my brother, wanted to be like him.
Grand Valley was the place for me to go.
I played there as well.
I was where athletes aspired to be.
I was playing college sports.
I made it right on scholarship, competing at a high level.
My high school friends looked up to me and were like, Wes is doing big things.
But truthfully, by the time I got there, I was running on fumes.
Because my anxiety finally caught up to me, I only lasted three years.
I decided to give up the game for good right before my senior year.
I used to be ashamed of that story.
Um, I used to believe that I was a quitter.
This is all part of my testimony, though.
Um, I'm not ashamed of it.
I'm proud to share this story now.
Um, but when I decided to give the game up, I felt a sense of relief, to be honest.
Um I did not know, though, that this was going to be a three-year process of me walking in the wilderness because my identity was gone.
So I want to share an analogy.
My daughters aren't in here, but my daughters love butterflies.
As a girl that I never thought I'd know so many like princesses, uh butterflies, um, yeah, all that stuff, but wouldn't have it any other way.
Um so we talk a lot about like the beauty of the beauty of a butterfly, right?
When we see it, beautiful colors, they fly gracefully, right?
Um, but we never talk about the middle stage when a caterpillar goes into the chrysalis.
When a caterpillar pillar goes into the chrysalis, it doesn't just sprout wings.
Forget about the step before that.
I never knew this, but I read that it literally dissolves into like liquid, like liquid goo.
It's kind of ugly.
It completely loses its identity as a caterpillar.
So it's no longer a caterpillar, right?
It can no longer crawl, eat, or protect itself.
If you opened it up halfway through, it would just look like a lost, shapeless just mess.
Maybe this is where you are right now: a shapeless mess.
The thing that you identify with is gone.
But guess what?
This is where God does his best work.
Sometimes feeling completely lost and losing your old identity is actually a sign of transformation, not destruction.
The meltdown is necessary for the masterpiece to form.
So let God work.
But I learned that this is a process.
A lot of hurt, a lot of tears, but it's worth it.
Without basketball, I felt like I was nothing and I had nothing.
The one thing that I felt I was good at, I was no longer doing.
What did I cling to?
Well, Jesus saved me in November 2011, but I was still battling with my flesh in a mighty way.
Instead of clinging to Jesus, I was clinging to things that I thought would fill me.
But it kept me empty.
I chased after a relationship with a high school sweetheart that was doomed from the very beginning.
Looking for validation out of that.
Or I had trouble letting go of the party life.
I didn't party because I wanted to.
I partied because I wanted to feel accepted by my teammates from people around me.
That's the only reason why I did it.
If I let go of that, I literally thought I'm not gonna have friends anymore.
Right?
And like a lot of men, I had a battle with pornography.
All of these things I was chasing after because I dedicated the life for so long to winning approval of men.
I was searching for that next thing, but I was tired.
I was tired.
I was tired of acting, I was tired of chasing, and I needed rest.
I needed this verse right here, one of my favorite verses.
Matthew 11, 28 through 30.
Jesus said, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
This love that I was looking for was the love, Jesus' love.
I'm gonna refer back to Henri Nowen.
He wrote about this in his book.
Everybody say that first love.
That first love.
Say that first love.
That first love.
He wrote that unconditional and unlimited love is what the evangelist John calls God's first love.
Let us love, he says, because God loved us first.
This is 1 John 4, 19.
The love that often leaves us doubtful, frustrated, angry, and resentful is the second love.
That is to say, the affirmation that I was desperately looking for.
Sympathy, encouragement that we receive from our parents, teachers, spouses, friends, anybody in our life, any human.
So you and I, you and I can love our family and friends to the best of our abilities.
To think like, oh, we're just, I'm killing it.
I'm supplying the needs of my my kids, I'm supplying the needs of my spouse.
But guess what?
We're still gonna hurt them.
No matter how hard we try.
That is why we need, say that first love.
We need that first love of Jesus because he hasn't failed us yet and he never will.
So maybe you're in a season where you are experiencing some kind of loss.
Maybe it's a person close to you, a career that consumes you a little too much, an injury, a sickness, whatever that may be.
Jesus is standing right here.
That a math that Matthew 11, 28 through 30, he's saying it to you.
Come to me.
So to close, I want to share a sermon that saved my life.
Honestly, changed my life forever.
Um, Mom and Dad, I don't know if you remember this.
This was at New Hope, probably like 10, 11 years ago.
12, 13, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Long time ago.
Um, it was a sermon, so speaking of Moses, my chosen biblical character, my guy.
Uh yeah, it was a sermon about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt into Canaan.
The Israelites wandered through the wilderness for years, right?
They didn't know where their next meal would be.
They were full of uncertainty.
They griped and grumbled that they, I might as well just go back to Egypt.
Like, at least I knew I was gonna what I was gonna eat, three meals where I was gonna lay my head.
They didn't care about being slaves or being treated poorly.
But their eyes weren't fixed on what God had for them.
The promised land.
The promised land made of milk and honey.
They just had to go through a little bit of adversity to get there.
So, how do we apply this?
Egypt is familiar, it's comfortable, but it's not good for our souls.
Canaan is what God has for us in our lives.
And the wilderness is the adversity that we need to get through to get there.
It's ironic because I said that before, that it was hard for me to show emotion.
I don't know if y'all remember, but when when Pastor Earl was preaching that, it was like I was the only person in the room.
And I started crying.
I mentioned it before, like I can't, it's hard for me to cry.
It wasn't one of those, just like it was like one of those.
Right?
But that's when I knew like my life has to change.
It has to change.
So I want to share with you uh my Egypt.
We talked about this, my idols of basketball and longing to be accepted by others, not named Jesus.
In my wilderness, giving those things up and feeling alone and feeling like a failure.
Notice I said feeling, because the truth is I wasn't alone, and I wasn't a failure.
But that's what the enemy wants you to believe, and that's why the wilderness is so scary.
It's a scary place to be, but it's a necessary place to be.
So I chose to leave Egypt for Canaan.
It was not easy, but I arrived.
Still damaged, still scarred, but I'm here.
And I want to share my Canaan with you all today.
First of all, my beautiful wife, Brianna Kristen Trammell.
Actually, today, about 10 years ago, I asked you to be my girlfriend.
Yeah, look at God.
I'm crazy.
Um from the first our first date, I texted my boy Josh right after, and I said she's the one.
It was just that you like you you were layup, right?
It was an easy, easy choice.
But when I met you, Ernest knows this.
We met at Ernest's house.
Uh I ignored you for like two or three months.
After we hit it off, you were flirting with me.
But anyway.
No, but the reason why, because I thought you were too good, you were too good for me.
I didn't think I deserved you.
So I kind of fled and ignored you.
But I felt that stirring in my spirit.
Anxiety.
Until I asked you out, that anxiety was gone.
And I haven't had that since.
And I love you.
You're my canon.
Um, my girls, Harmony and Harper, they're not in here, but they wouldn't exist.
They would not exist if I didn't leave Egypt for Canaan.
The chosen ones, I briefly mentioned that.
So we exist, like the chosen ones exist because of God in my testimony.
Everything I told you about me today is why the chosen ones is here.
We help young athletes develop a healthy identity outside of sports, we show them who God created them to be.
That they're special individuals.
In the full circle moment, we we do our program at Ford, right across the street.
Nothing but God.
And obviously, a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
I used to find validation by whose brother I was.
But my true validation is found in whose son I am.
My heavenly father gives me all the validation that I will ever need.
Your heavenly father will give you all the validation that you will ever need.
No one else.
If it weren't for God, I would still be in Egypt.
I would not be standing here in front of you today.
Only God knows where I would be.
And I'm glad he saved me.
So my question for you.
What is your Egypt right now?
What is it?
If you submit that to God today, what will your canyon look like?
Just imagine.
And I promise you, there's no wilderness that God can't handle.
So that's my encouragement to you guys today.
And I want to pray.
If we can just stand and maybe lift our hands a little bit.
However, you want to be, it doesn't matter.
I just want everybody to lift their hands.
Lord, we thank you.
We thank you.
We thank you for sending your son as an example to show us how to live.
We thank you for your validation, the only validation that truly matters.
Everybody in this room, Lord God, I pray that you help us all to search ourselves, search our hearts.
And anything that we're not giving to you, Lord, I pray that we surrender and give it to you today.
And start that journey from Egypt into Canaan.
We will not fear the wilderness because you are with us.
Thank you, Lord.
We love you.
I pray these things in the name of Jesus.
Amen.