I want you, for a moment, to look at your life as a movie.
As a young child -
when I thought about the movie of my life -
I'm the middle child of three boys
and one of the few African-American executives in Hollywood.
Well, when I go back and look at my life, when I was young growing up in the church,
they said, "DeVon, you can't go into Hollywood.
That's the devil's playground; that's Sodom and Gomorrah."
But I said, "I believe God is calling me in the movie of my life into Hollywood
to tell stories that can change the world."
"But DeVon, if you go to Hollywood, you're going to lose your faith.
Don't you understand
that that is a town that does not respect who you are
or the God you serve?"
But as a young child, I would say, "Wait a minute.
You're teaching me in the Bible that faith allows me to do all things
and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
But all of a sudden,
I get to the gates of Hollywood and the power of God stops?
Tell me, What am I supposed to believe?
Does faith work or does fear work?
Because you're telling me intellectually that faith is supposed to guide me,
but then you're teaching me to practice fear
the moment I get outside the doors of the church."
So you can only imagine as a young boy, when you get smart with your elders,
they say, "Boy, don't you get smart with me."
And I said, "I'm not trying to get smart.
I'm just trying to understand what is the path in life
that is going to lead to success."
And so as a young child, I said,
"Listen, I've watched these movies like 'Rocky' and 'Back to the Future.'
What I loved about 'Rocky' is that he thought he was a bum.
And when he got the chance to fight Apollo Creed,
what was his number one goal?
He said, 'I don't even care if I win.
I just want to go the distance.'"
When I would see movies like that as a kid, I said, "That's me."
You know, as a middle child -
Any middle children in the house?
Okay, we'll have a support group after this.
Alright, you know we need a little extra care and counseling
because the older one, my older brother, he was the oldest,
and my youngest was the baby,
and here I am, the middle child, kind of put off to the side.
But when I would see films, I would get inspired.
And I said,
"I want to be able to make movies that can absolutely touch people
in the way that 'Rocky' and 'The Color Purple'
and 'Back to the Future' did for me."
But I had to make a choice.
I said, "Am I going to go against what I'm being taught
and follow where God's voice is leading me?
Or am I going to follow those who may be ill-equipped
to develop my movie
and become what they think my story should be?"
Well, at a young age,
I said, "I have to believe that God is the director of my story,
and I'm going to follow Him to the industry."
And so here I am, an 18-year-old young man,
got into the University of Southern California.
I go in for my first internship interview
at the management company that manages Will Smith.
I'm literally about to get my foot in the door.
At the end of the interview, the lady says,
"DeVon, is there anything else you want us to know?"
And right there, God is speaking in my ear.
He said, "Tell her about the Sabbath."
Now you must understand something.
As a Christian, I grew up observing Sabbath:
Friday night sundown through Saturday night sundown, I don't work.
It's the day that I take off for observance, rest, and restoration.
I'm there in the internship interview about to get my foot in the door,
Hollywood,
and God says, "Tell her about the Sabbath."
I said, "Lord, after I get the internship, I'll tell her all about the Sabbath."
(Laughter)
You know how we are: we love to get what we want,
and then we'll start moving the pieces around
about what we can and cannot do.
But after a moment of silence, I said,
"Well, I can not take this internship
if it requires me to work on the Sabbath."
And it was quiet, just like it is now.
And after a moment of silence,
she said, "DeVon, don't worry. We can work around that."
What that taught me in that moment
is that it's not about just the door of opportunity opening in your scene;
it's about how you walk through the door.
Because every door that opens
that does not allow you to fit your faith and who you are,
I argue it is not a door to go through.
You have to understand
that when you are walking in your path
and you are walking in the movie of your life,
the scenes in your life will conform around you
if you have enough faith to be exactly who God created you to be.
I don't buy into this idea that you have to compromise who you are,
compromise what you believe.
As a matter of fact, be even more bold than who you are,
more bold than who you believe,
because you are the hero of your own story,
and if you don't believe your story - guess what? - ain't nobody else going to.
C'mon, yeah. You give yourself a round of applause on that one.
(Applause)
But here's the challenge:
We get into scenes of our life where we want to give up hope.
As a studio executive,
one of the things I do is develop scripts into movies.
But there are some scripts we develop for a very long time
and it never looks like it's going to get made,
and we call this creative time "development hell."
Some of you have been in development hell,
because you had an idea for your life.
You've been trying,
you've been pushing to allow that idea to get into production,
but you seem so far away from it
that you don't know what you're going to do.
And in this moment, in development hell,
it is so tempting
to give up on the very idea that brought you this far.
You must realize that in development hell,
when you're going through a time where you're about to give up on yourself,
give up on your God,
give up on your friends, your dreams and your beliefs,
this is when you have to go back to the original idea
that motivated your life, and hold on to it, and don't give up.
Because you know why?
Because it is just like a scene of a movie.
There are some good scenes, there are some bad scenes,
but if you keep walking forward,
guess what?
The hero always wins.
And you know what makes the story good?
The conflict the hero faces.
So when you go through bad scenes,
that must mean you are getting ready to be prepared to be victorious.
You must know
that a bad scene with conflict is not meant to take you down,
but it's meant to actually bring out the hero in you and build you up.
If I could allow us to label this scene that we're in right now,
I would call it:
"Locked up, but not locked down."
You must get this,
anyone who is in Ironwood Prison right now:
You might be locked up,
but they don't have enough iron in the universe to lock down your spirit.
You have to keep your spirit up.
You have to keep believing.
You have to know that what you see is possible.
(Applause)
Do you know why?
Because in the movie of your life, you will succeed.
Don't let your current circumstance dictate your destiny,
because your destiny
will be set up in the moment that you're in right now.
Yes, conflict will come,
but if you have faith,
if you like who looks back at you in the mirror,
everybody that comes against you going to have to step back and say,
"Wait a minute.
We didn't know they had that much power.
We might as well go ahead and let them out
because there are other people out there who need the hero that's within."
When you're getting ready to give up on your movie, step back and say,
"No, no, no, no, no. This movie is still good."
It just might take a little longer than you thought.
Don't be impatient.
Don't be getting so much anxiety.
Relax.
Because you are going to win in the end.
Thus saith the Lord.