These 5 Viral Speeches Did NOT Go the Way People Expected

Let's take a look at five incredible stories that will give you chills. You won't want to miss the last one.

At number five, we have Lydia Owens, whose high school valedictorian graduation speech is going viral for an amazing reason.

Good morning, and welcome graduates, families, friends, and the Wilmer High School faculty and staff. My name is

Lydia Owens, and I am honored to be your valedictorian and senior class president. Today, I want to share with you a lesson that I've learned about success.

Ever since I can remember, I have always wrestled with perfectionism. I would spend numerous days and nights putting my schoolwork over everything else in my life, and I placed my value in my academic achievements.

I believed I was only good enough if I made an A on every assignment, because to me, success meant being perfect.

As we begin this next chapter of our lives, I want you to consider what success means to you.

Is success attending your dream college or getting your dream job? Is success having a lot of money or a lot of friends?

When you decide what success means to you, understand that the things you will accomplish in your lifetime do have value.

However, your successes are not what make you valuable, because you are so much more than how well you perform.

If you place your identity in what you accomplish, and you believe that you are only good enough if you succeed, what happens when you fail?

What happens when you don't get into your dream college, or you don't get your dream job? What happens when you don't have a lot of money, or you don't have a lot of friends?

Placing your identity in the things of this world will disappoint you, because they are only temporary. I had that reality check almost two years ago when my mom passed away.

When tragedy struck my life, it was not my grades nor my accomplishments that helped me navigate through that loss.

When everything else in my life felt uncertain, the only person that I could depend on to stay the same was

Jesus. My perspective of success drastically changed, because I realized that the many years

I spent placing my worth in my academics meant absolutely nothing in light of eternity.

Speaking from my experience, constantly striving to be perfect has never satisfied me. But what does satisfy me is knowing that my worth is not found in my successes or my failures.

My worth and your worth is found in Jesus, because He is the only one who will ever satisfy us.

No matter what your future holds, please remember that life is so much more than how successful you are. Even if you accomplish all of your dreams or none of them at all, you are still valuable and you are still good enough because you are made in the image of God.

You don't have to worry about whether or not you'll be successful because God promises that His grace is sufficient for us and that His power is made perfect in our weaknesses.

Now, I want to give you an opportunity to take a deep breath, forget about the future for a second, and realize that you've made it to this moment.

Look at your classmates, your teachers, your friends, and your families. They are here to support you because you've reached a huge milestone in your life.

Today, you are graduating, and I know we all have different definitions of success, but we've made it through 13 years of education.

And to me, I think that makes us pretty successful. Thank you. I don't think the high school

Lydia attended was a Christian school, so I am encouraged that a young woman like Lydia would have the courage to boldly proclaim both her faith in Jesus as well as people's need for Jesus in such a public setting.

Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the power of God unto salvation for all those who believe, the

Jew first and also the Greek. What's the power of God unto salvation? And that is the ultimate question.

At number four, we have NBA player named Giannis Antetokounmpo. This amazing answer that Giannis gave to a reporter may not be explicitly

Christian, but it is certainly a perspective that Christians can be encouraged by and should also have.

Do you view this season as a failure? Oh, my God. Okay, because I'm not...

You asked me the same question last year, Eric. Okay. Do you get a promotion every year on your job?

No, right? So every year you work is a failure. Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work towards something, towards a goal.

Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships. The other nine years was a failure? That's what you're telling me.

You know, there's good days, bad days. Some days you are able to be successful, some days you're not. Some days it's your turn, some days it's not your turn.

And that's what sport is about. You don't always win. It's so important for Christians to recognize that life is not always about winning, but rather it's about trusting

God through all of life's circumstances, including the trials and difficulties. But if, through my suffering and my sickness and my pain and my nausea, you in the end will get greater reverence, your kingdom will more greatly advance, and your will will be more devoutly carried out, then leave me here with this thing you have given me.

Yea, Lord, even let me die. But let your name be hallowed.

Let your kingdom come. Let your will be done.

You see, that's what life is about. How do I know that? Because that's what Christ's life was about.

At number three, we have the astonishing testimony of Rosaria Butterfield, a former lesbian

LGBTQ activist who is now a devout Christian. How do I tell you about my conversion to Christ without making it sound like an alien abduction or a train wreck?

The truth be told, it felt a little of both. It actually took me almost a decade of this for me to realize that I actually kept falling in love with women.

This repetitious sensibility rooted and grew. I simply preferred the company of women.

And then finally in my late 20s, enhanced in part by feminist philosophy and LGBT political advocacy, my homosocial preference morphed into homosexuality.

That shift was subtle, not startling. My lesbian identity and my love for my

LGBT community developed in sync with my lesbian sexual practice. And life finally came together for me and made sense.

Once I met my first lesbian lover, I was hooked. My life as a lesbian seemed normal.

I considered it an enlightened, chosen path. Lesbian sexuality seemed like a cleaner and a more moral sexual practice.

Always preferring symmetry to asymmetry, I was sure I had found my real self.

After my tenure book was written, I began writing another book, because I'm compulsive in that way.

And this one was on the religious right and their politics of hatred against people like me.

To do this, I began reading the Bible, while looking out for some Bible scholar to help me wade through this complex book.

I took note that the Bible was an engaging literary display of almost every genre and trope and type.

It had edgy poetry, deep and complex philosophy, and compelling narrative stories.

It also embodied a worldview that I hated. Hatred? Sin? Repentance?

Sodom and Gomorrah? I thought that was absurd. And so I wrote an article. I published it in a local newspaper.

It was 1997. The article generated many rejoinders, so many that I kept a

Xerox box, remember those days, on each side of my desk, one for hate mail and one for fan mail.

I could still do that today, only it all comes on email. One letter that I received simply defiled my filing system.

It was from Ken Smith, the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. It was a kind and inquiring letter.

I didn't know what to do with his article, so I threw it away. I mean, in the recycling bin, of course.

Don't think I'm a bad person! What do you think of me?

And later that night, I found myself on my hands and knees fishing it out of the department's recycling bin and putting it back on my desk where it stared at me for a week, confronting me with the worldview divide that demanded a response, especially if I was going to write a book on this subject.

And so when he invited me to dinner at his house to discuss these matters more fully, I accepted.

My motives at the time were perfectly clear. Surely this would be good for my research.

But something else actually happened. Ken and his wife Floy and I became friends.

They entered my world. They met my friends. We did book exchanges. We talked openly about sexuality and politics, and they did not act as if such conversations were polluting them.

They did not treat me like a blank slate. And when we ate together, Ken prayed in a way that I had never heard before.

His prayers were intimate and vulnerable. He repented of his sin in front of me.

He thanked God for all things. Ken's God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy.

But the next thing that happened was more impactful for me because it was a dear friend. Next at a dinner gathering that my partner and I were hosting, my transgendered friend,

I'll call her Jill, cornered me in the kitchen. She put her large hand over mine, and she said,

Rosaria, this Bible reading is changing you. I felt exposed.

She was right, and she always was. She was one of my wisest and dearest friends. But what if it's true,

I asked. What if Jesus is a real and risen

Lord? What if we are all in trouble? And after years and years of this, having read the

Bible through about seven times at this point, something happened.

The Bible got to be bigger inside me than I. It overflowed into my world.

I fought against it with all my might. And then one Sunday morning, two years after I first met

Ken and Floyd, and two years after I thought I was reading the Bible for my research, I left the bed that I shared with my lesbian lover, and an hour later

I sat in a pew at the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. I say this not to be lurid, but to remind us that we simply never know the treacherous path that some people take to arrive in the pew that we share,

Lord's Day after Lord's Day. I prayed that night that God would give me the willingness to obey before I understood.

Starting with my sexuality was too scary, it was too impossible. So I started with Jesus.

I prayed that God would be pleased to reveal his Son in me. I prayed that I would be a vessel of Jesus.

And then I moved to gender. And I don't know why, but I had a driving, somewhat oxymoronic desire to make biblical sense of my place in this world as a woman defined and covered by God.

And so I prayed that night that God would make me a godly woman, and then I laughed out loud in my unbelief at the insanity of this prayer.

Because it was really insane. I prayed that God would give me the faith to repent of my sin at its root.

Rosaria Butterfield's story is an incredible reminder that contrary to what many say, our sexuality does not define us.

Rosaria put her identity in Christ above her sexual identity, and was even able to turn away from the sexuality that she had defined herself with for many years.

1 Corinthians 6, 9 -11 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. That's 2 ,000 -year -old evidence that people stopped being homosexual.

2 ,000 -year -old evidence. At number two, we have the testimony of Christopher Yuan, who has a story that is pretty similar to Rosaria Butterfield's story.

I was viewed and ridiculed from a little kid as being effeminate. The first time

I remember having same -sex attractions was when I was nine years old, after I came across pornography at a friend's house.

And at such a young age, I was confused and afraid of those feelings. Without any parental guidance on sexuality, those magazines gave me a distorted view of sex, and they soon became my master.

So with pornography fueling my same -sex attractions, I had my first encounter when

I was 16. Then when I was in my early 20s,

I started secretly going out to the gay bars in Chicago. Then when

I moved to Louisville to go to dental school, I no longer kept it a secret, and I lived openly as a homosexual in the gay community.

So then I decided to go home and break the news to my parents, and I told them, I am gay.

My mother, who wasn't a Christian, thought that an ultimatum would bring me to my senses, and she said, you must either choose the family or choose the lifestyle.

But I had already bonded to the lie that homosexuality was an inseparable aspect of who

I was as a person. And so to me, there was no choice. I couldn't choose one way or the other.

And so I left home, and I went back to Louisville. This crushed my mother, and to her, news of my death would have been better than this.

My parents' marriage was a disaster, and they had already begun the paperwork for divorce.

So my mother was literally at the end of her rope, and she found no more reason to live.

And on the very next day, she had resolved to do the unthinkable.

She was going to end her life. So she bought a one -way

Amtrak ticket to Louisville, where she planned to say goodbye to me for the very last time before ending it all.

But for some reason, even though she wasn't a Christian, she felt the need to go see a minister, and this minister gave her a little pamphlet on homosexuality.

And with only that pamphlet and her purse, she boarded on the train, thinking that death was the only answer to her problems.

Never being much of a reader, she began to read this small little pamphlet, which shared with her the plan of salvation, that all of us are sinners, and yet, in spite of our sin, the

God of the universe still loves us. And God opened up the eyes of her heart to see that just as God can love her, in spite of her sin, in spite of her weaknesses and her past, she could love me, her son, in spite of living as a homosexual.

And it was on this train that my mother met God and surrendered her life to Christ.

And within a few months, my father also gave his life to Christ, so I began experimenting with drugs.

But without much money as a student, I know you guys can relate to that, without much money as a dental student,

I had to support my habits somehow, and I began selling drugs, and I sold to friends, classmates, and even a professor.

I thought I could live this double life of being a graduate student by day and a promiscuous drug dealer by night.

My parents had no idea that I was doing drugs or even selling drugs, but they knew my biggest need was to know

Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And so they tried to reach out to me with the love of Christ, and every other day, my mother would send me these

Christian cards. So my parents realized if they were going to see me, they would have to come down to Atlanta.

So one time they flew down to Atlanta, but on the second day, you know, and they weren't preaching at me or pointing their finger in my face and telling me what to do and what not to do.

They weren't bashing me over the head with the Bible. But just the fact that their life was so transformed that it radiated

Christ, that in itself was offensive to me. And I kicked them out.

And I didn't even give them an opportunity to call their friends to pick them up. But my father, before he left, he wanted to give me something.

And it was his very first Bible. And it had all the notes in the margins, highlights, it was all dog -eared.

And I told my dad, I don't want your Bible. I don't even want you to think that I might read it.

But my father, he's a stubborn man, quite persistent. And he left it on my kitchen counter anyway.

And as soon as they were gone, I took his Bible and I threw it in the trash can.

In her desperation, she fasted every

Monday for seven years. And once fasted 39 days on my behalf.

She literally would spend hours on her knees in her prayer closet, reading her

Bible and interceding on my behalf. She knew that it would take nothing short of a miracle to bring this prodigal son to the

Father. As many of you know, not only does God hear our prayers, but He also answers them in His own timing.

And this answer to prayer came one day with a bang on my door.

I opened up my front door and on my front doorstep were 12 federal drug enforcement agents,

Atlanta police, and two big German shepherd dogs. I just received a large shipment of drugs and not my largest, but they confiscated all my money and my drugs and I was charged with the street value equivalent of 9 .1

tons of marijuana. With that amount, I was facing 12 years to life in federal prison.

But my mother's first words were, Are you?

No condemnation. No berating words. Just words of unconditional love and grace.

One night as I was laying in my bunk, I noticed in the metal bed above me someone had scribbled something and it read,

If you're bored, read Jeremiah 29 11.

For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.

Plans to give you hope and a future. You see, at the most hopeless point in my life,

God was using the words penned by a prophet thousands of years ago to a rebellious nation to tell me that regardless of who

I was and what I had done in the past, He still had a plan for me.

I had no idea where this plan was going to take me, but God gave me enough faith, enough strength to take that one step to get through that one day and then the next and then the next.

My transformation was gradual. I wish I could say, you know, I got down on my knees, said the sinner's prayer, and everything was perfect after that.

That's far from the truth. You see, God was convicting me of my dependencies. The most obvious was drugs, but within a few months,

He completely delivered me from that. But the last thing that I was holding on to was my sexuality.

As I was reading Scripture, I couldn't get around the fact that God loved me with an unconditional love.

But I also came across some passages which seemed to condemn homosexuality.

I went through every verse, every chapter, every page of Scripture looking for justification for homosexuality.

I never found any. So I was at a turning point and a decision had to be made.

Either abandon God and His Word to live as a homosexual by allowing my feelings to dictate who

I was or abandon the homosexual lifestyle by liberating myself from my feelings and my passions and live as a follower of Jesus Christ.

My decision was clear and obvious. I chose

God. Again, like with Rosaria Butterfield, what an incredible conversion story.

I was particularly encouraged by the sacrificial love that Chris' parents had for him after they converted to Christianity, especially his mother's fervency in praying for Chris' soul.

There is no spiritual blessing withheld from you.

There is no measure of His presence that He will deny you, but you have not because you ask not.

And at number one, here is the incredible testimony of Joni Eareckson Tata, who became a quadriplegic at the young age of 17.

I swam out to this raft, athlete that I was, I didn't even touch bottom, hoisted myself up onto it and then took this really stupid dive into what ended up being extremely shallow water.

I snapped my head back when I hit bottom and it crunched my fourth cervical vertebrae, severing my spinal cord.

She came swimming quickly, pulled me up out of the water and I never, I never was so grateful for fresh air.

She saved me, but for what purpose, for what reason? Because now, lying there in a hospital, doctors told me

I was going to have to sit down for the rest of my life as a quadriplegic without use of my legs or even my hands.

My hands don't work. I sank into deep depression. I remember there were wonderful Christian friends who came to the hospital and they encouraged me and one

Bible verse they shared was from Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11, where God says,

I know the plans I have for you, plans not to harm you, but to help you, plans to prosper you and to give you a hopeful future.

God, you mean you plan not to harm me? Well, what do you call quadriplegia, huh?

What's that all about? And I began to see that God's plans for a hopeful future for me was not necessarily jumping up, dancing, kicking, doing aerobics, running, walking, getting back use of my arms and my legs, no.

God's plans for me go far deeper, a deeper healing, a precious healing of the soul.

Because as I was pushed into the arms of God every morning, and that's the truth, even to this day, don't be thinking

I'm an expert at quadriplegia, but as it was then in the hospital and as it is today, every morning

I wake up saying, Jesus, I can't do this thing called life. Please help me.

Please show up. Give me your smile. Give me your strength because I can't make it through the day. To find

Jesus in your hell is ecstasy beyond compare. And I wouldn't trade it for any amount of walking in this world.

What an amazing mindset. Joni says, to find Jesus in your hell is ecstasy beyond compare.

And I wouldn't trade it for any amount of walking in this world. Would we as Christians all have this mindset of finding our utmost joy in the salvation that we have through Jesus Christ?

And would our primary goal in life be to help other lost sinners to see the ecstasy that comes only from knowing

Jesus Christ? I'm not who I ought to be, but hallelujah, I'm not who

I was. Thank you so much for watching.

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