When I was younger, everybody kind of wanted me on their team.
I remember all the parents saying how good I was going to be, telling me
that I was going to be in the NFL one day.
By world standards, I was a successful person, as a high school student, as a
college student.
I had all the friends, all the girls.
Everyone liked me, everybody loved me.
I had nothing I needed.
I had everything.
And so, I didn't think I needed God.
I grew up in a Christian home.
I knew all the stories, everything about Jesus, but it seemed little bit
more like a fairy tale to me than actual real life.
When I was younger, I was the athletic kid, you know?
Sports came easy to me.
All the praise used to just drive me.
Look at Landry.
Made me want to be the best at everything.
He's so good at basketball.
He's so good at football.
And you want to just keep getting more and more and more of it.
It's kind of like a drug.
After winning a football game, you're on this high.
I actually had the world at my fingertips, and I was just reaching
out and grabbing it.
Everything that I could, I'm just kind of stuffing it into my pockets.
Just filling my life with earthly things and not heavenly things.
About my junior year of high school, I got my first offer.
I decided to go to Oklahoma.
I was going to go in there, and I was going to start, and I was going to
play immediately.
So, I get to Oklahoma thinking that this was going to be
exactly like high school.
I was pretty naive thinking that I was going to come in and take Sam's spot,
but obviously that was't going to happen.
So, when I stepped on campus the first day, my identity was
stripped away from me.
Everything that I put my faith, my hopes and dreams in, was
stripped from me.
I started believing the lies that Satan had spoken
into me in high school.
That without football, without sports, I was worthless.
Everyone hated me.
Why am I even here on this Earth if I can't play football?
I believed those lies so much, I became sad and lonely, and I went
through a state of depression for that first year of college.
When I walked into practice, I just had a bad attitude.
No one wanted to hang out me or anything like that.
When everybody would be having a good day, I'd try to drag them down so, I'd
feel better about myself.
I was just drowning.
And it was like Satan just pushing me deeper and deeper and
deeper under the water.
So I kept feeding my sinful nature.
Kept feeding it all this trash.
Started really getting into drinking, trying to get all the girls.
I was sick all the time.
My stomach was in knots.
So, I get done with that first year of college not knowing if I want to
continue at OU.
I didn't know if I wanted to quit.
I just wanted to crawl in a hole and just be left there
alone, all by myself.
I didn't know if I wanted to keep living.
How can I go through another miserable year like that?
I just wanted to die.
This is when God comes in and just drastically changes my life.
It was literally God showing up in the room, saying here I am, Landry.
You've been going through all these things.
You've been chasing after worldly dreams.
And He freed me from all the depression that I had, all the
sadness, all the loneliness that I've ever been through.
It was probably one of the greatest moments of my life.
I just remember feeling just so much love just pouring into me, and saying
that He didn't care where I was.
He didn't care what I had done.
All He wanted was me.
Instead of I was Landry Jones, the athlete, I was Landry
Jones, the Son of God.
And that's what my identity was right now.
My life just has been drastically different.
I've never felt happier in my entire life.
It's the internal joy that God speaks into you.
In the end of times, it's not really going to matter if I'm a Hall of Fame
quarterback, or a great college quarterback, or anything like that.
It's going to matter what I did on this Earth and how I used
my gifts for God.
My name is Landry Jones, and I am second.