Loving through Your Testimony

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Steve: It's a privilege to have as our speaker this morning, Mr. David Boudia. David won six NCAA national titles in diving while at Purdue University. He's won multiple world championships in diving, was a Gold medalist at the London Olympics in 2012. As you know, David has qualified now to represent the United States at this summer's Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro. He and his family will be leaving in just a few days. It's an amazing list of accomplishments when you think about it.

However, if you know David, you realize that there are many things that are more important to him than diving. Chiefly, there's his wife Sonnie and their daughter Dakoda. Most importantly, there’s his relationship with Jesus Christ. David continues to use his sports platform that the Lord has given him to speak openly about his family and to speak openly about his faith. We're so thankful for that. I hope you'll be praying for David as he heads off to the games.

We asked him, even in the midst of these final days of preparation, if he would come and talk with us in this series we've been having on loving the world, about how you love the world with your testimony. Please join me in welcoming our brother, David Boudia.

(Applause)

David: Thanks, Steve.

Good morning, all. This is a little different setting than I'm used to. I'm used to being on a ten-meter platform, not on this stage, so it's a little different. I thank you for letting me be here today. Initially when Faith approached me to speak, I was a little bit intimidated for the reason that there's something about speaking in front of your church family that's a little bit more nerve-wracking. Nonetheless, I'm excited to be here today. I think just everything that's going on this past week, I'm excited to be able to speak a message of hope that's a world that's just broken. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to get started.

In 2008, as I stood on the platform at the Beijing Olympic games preparing for my final dive in the water cube, I wanted to savor that moment. Hundreds of athletes like myself had trained, sweated, pushed, lifted, sacrificed and willed their way to the Olympic games. For me, that Olympic experience amounted to a whopping total of 8.5 seconds in a final that consists of six dives, and one dive takes 1.4 seconds, so that means I'm training four hours a day, five to six days a week, 300-ish days a year for 8.5 seconds. On top of that, millions of people are watching you across the world, so talk about pressure.

My Olympic journey had been an all-consuming passion and obsession since I was seven years old. That was the start of my pursuit of the American dream, my belief that I could achieve riches, fame and success. For me, the Olympics were the vehicle of choice that I could get those goods. The desire accelerated over time, and once I made my Olympics that wasn't enough. I wanted to win an Olympic medal. Again, that wasn't enough. I wanted to win gold ... Here we go here.

With a single focus that never wavered I pursued the dream of Olympic gold, not for some noble purpose but because of what I thought it could deliver. My only desire at that time in 2008 was to please myself and do everything that I could to make my life better. I believed the gold medal would achieve that. A gold medal would mean fame and adoration. It would mean success. It would mean acceptance. It would mean happiness and joy. Relentlessly, that is what I chased. The harder I pressed and the closer I got to that goal, the more miserable my life became. Every time I thought I'd achieved a goal, suddenly a new one took its place, and no matter how much I accomplished and how happy I should have been, fulfillment always seemed just beyond my grasp.

Does that sound familiar this morning, Faith Church?

Maybe everyone in your life thinks that you have it all together, but you know better. You look in the mirror and see emptiness staring back at you that eludes everybody else. Sometimes is feels, though, your life is a disaster, and you wonder if you ever will find joy, satisfaction and peace. Maybe think that losing that ten pounds, everything will get that much better, or maybe you're enslaved to your job and you think the next promotion will solve so many problems.

Maybe you're looking for fulfillment in the next puff, the next drink, the next hit, the next conquest. I know exactly what that is like, that unrelenting mirage of a promise that happiness is just beyond the corner, and once you get there, you get a mouthful of sand instead. "If only I could get that scholarship." "If only I could get married." "If only my kids would obey." "If only my spouse were different." "If only that job would work." "If only the chemo would work," as well. "If only ..."

My "If only" had partially come true when I made my first Olympic team in 2008 and I achieved a goal that I set out as a boy. It was the American dream fulfilled. Now here I was standing in front of thousands of Chinese fans at their first Olympic games that they had ever hosted. My final dive at the Olympic games was absolutely meaningless, because the previous two dives before that had left me far out of medal contention.

Regardless, I wanted to go out in memorable fashion. I wanted to absorb the atmosphere and adulation. Normally when I'm in those kind of settings, I try to tune out all external distractions, but this time it was different. I wanted to absorb what the crowd was yelling. I wanted that excitement and pleasure for my final attempts, so I enjoyed it. I took my deep breath, launched myself off of the platform, and turned in the worst dive that I had ever done at that Olympic game.

The Olympics that began with such promise and potential ended in absolute embarrassment. The days that followed my first Olympic experience marked a downward spiral of hopelessness and despair. My failed pursuit of Olympic glory had left me feeling abandoned and alone. I felt betrayed, rejected and defeated by the God that I created and sacrificed everything to appease.

I had utterly scoffed at the Olympic decree that reads, "The most important thing is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well." What nonsense that seemed to me in the aftermath of the greatest or biggest disappointment in my Olympic journey. My whole purpose had proven hollow, and the destruction that followed my life left it in pieces. I didn't know it at the time but my purpose needed to be redirected and redeemed. I needed to be redirected and redeemed.

With that in mind, Faith Church, I would invite you to turn into your Bibles to 1 John 4. That's on page 186 in the back section of the Bible in the chair in front of you. If you know anything about 1 John 4, you know what we're going to be talking about. Love, baby.

First John 4: 7-16, starting in Verse 7, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this, the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent His only begotten Son into this world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins ... or to be that atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another.

"No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit. We have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God." Finally, Verse 16: "We have come to know and believe the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."

This morning, Faith Church, we are talking about loving our world, and I'm going to do that through loving our world with our testimony. With 1 John 4 in mind, let's look at four practical ways that we can do that, the first being, to love the world with your testimony, you first need a testimony to love them with.

1. To love the world with your testimony you first need a testimony to love them with

First John 4: 15: "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God." If you're asking yourself this morning, "I don't even know what a testimony is, David," then I would invite you right now to listen extremely closely.

Immediately following the 2008 games, it was clear that I was hopeless and believed the lie that if only I could have X, Y, Z, then I would be satisfied, and I did everything that I could to suppress that. The things that were supposed to bring me happiness, the worldly success, the fleshly indulgences, were having the opposite effect on me, driving me to despair rather than delight. I was obsessed with myself, but no matter how hard I would try, I would never be satisfied in this creation because that was not what we were meant to be satisfied in.

Romans 125 says, "They worshiped and served the creatures rather than the creator." When we don't know Christ as our personal savior, that's all we can do. We can only worship the creation and not the creator.

Jeremiah 2:13 I think puts it perfectly. It says, "For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." The picture that Jeremiah is illustrating here is that people sought to get their water from cisterns that had a tendency to be polluted and to lose that disgusting polluted water because it was broken, as opposed to going to the Lord for that pure refreshing life-giving water, not the life-taking water, like these people did, like I do. All of our worship that's polluted water that is life-taking instead of life-giving. We need hope. We need to be redirected.

Fortunately, for us we do have a remedy to quench our thirst instead of those broken cisterns. We have a solution that brings out of the hopelessness of worshiping the creation, to bring us out of the worshiping ourselves, when we acknowledge that we are broken and rebel against a perfect God and accept Christ into our lives to pay the penalty that you deserve, to pay the penalty that I deserve.

This truth wasn't revealed to me until the fall of 2009 when my pursuit of self was coming to an end fast. One Saturday in September I hit a brick wall, and just severely depressed and suicidal thoughts were coming into my mind. I reached out to one of my teammates, Ashley Karshen, because I had noticed a considerable change in her life. She suggested that I reach out to my coach, Adam Soldati, and the next night he invited me over.

Initially, I was pretty excited, because I thought I was going to get this quick fix, I would get this go-getter ambitious David back on his feet that only cared about himself and was self-driven. That's exactly the opposite of what they did. They gave me Jesus instead. They gave me the gospel. I remember sitting in that rocking chair in the living room with him and his wife, Kimiko, and it was like ear plugs were coming out of my ears and I could hear the sweet song of forgiveness. In the weeks that followed I investigated this truth for myself. Sometime during that I recognized that I was rebellious, that I could not live this life the way I was doing it, and accepted Christ into my life.

Now, you would think once you accept Christ in your life everything is going to be dandy and perfect. I think if you're a believer you know that's the exact opposite. During the month of February through August my walk was like this, a huge mountain piece. Very high highs, very low lows. It wasn't a coincidence that during those months my God of diving started pushing in. It wasn't until I sought to bow that area of my life that I saw victory and I saw my walk get a little bit more stagnant, instead of those high highs and low lows.

Once I came to know Christ, he gave me a different satisfying purpose to grow in knowing him and his love through Christ and to share that with others. When we have the gospel in our lives, then we are free to love this world because of our relationship with him.

It doesn't stop there, Faith Church. It's not this one-time event and then go on as you choose. This should change your life. If you're anything like me, then this is the part of the sermon where you sit there and tune out that, "This is for all them simple people that don't know Jesus yet." Wrong. This is for everybody. The gospel is as much needed for salvation that is daily in the life of a believer. This is the only way we are going to love this world, with our testimony, if we ourselves have been affected by his grace. We have to strive to do what 1 John says in this passage, "The one who abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him."

May I ask you here today, Faith, do you have a testimony? All of us have attempted to search for something that doesn't satisfy. What is your pursuit of other than God? You were meant to have a relationship with the one that created you, God, but you can't because of our sin, which is demonstrated in pursuing everything else but him.

Today I would ask you to consider, like I had to, what are you living for? If your answer is not your creator God, then I would invite you to enter into a relationship with him today. If you don't know what that looks like, there are plenty of people in this church that would love to talk to you about that. We have a service pastor, Pastor Trey up front, that would love to talk to you and help walk that through in a judgment-free and understanding way.

Now, with this grace God chose to give me a huge responsibility that affected my life just after my salvation in 2009 to proclaim him on a platform that, quite frankly, I was nowhere near ready to proclaim him on, but he chose to allow it to happen regardless to further his purpose. I had to learn that even the Gold medal was not about me. I was constantly tempted to be puffed up with myself instead of being filled with God and honoring him with the skills and talents that he has given me.

In just a few seconds we're going to watch just a short video highlight of the 2012 games. Right before this competition I was absolutely nervous out of my mind, and so I texted Pastor Nick Lees over on the west side, and he said the absolute perfect text back. He said, "David, what is there to be nervous about? God has already walked through this event. He already knows what's going to happen. What you get to do is be a vehicle for his glory. Now go out there and do whatever you can to glorify him." With that text, it allowed that perspective to get off of myself and back onto the one that mattered. It simply just calmed my soul.

Isaiah 26: 3-6 states, "The steadfastness of mind you will keep in perfect peace because he trusts in you."

Video: Male: "Entering the London games, the dozen years since Team USA had won a medal in Olympic diving had seen them eclipsed by China as the dominant force in the sport. This year's American team, a mix of returning veterans and first-time Olympians, looked to take the first steps toward reversing that trend."

Female: "Yeah, it's a good dive."

Male: Nick McCrory and David Boudia, bronze. Given recent history, three US medals in the synchronized competitions was more than a great start. It was a great Olympics, but entering the final event of Olympic diving, the men's 10-meter platform, the American team still remained without an individual medal of any color and without a men's individual gold since 1992, a streak that seemed destined to continue as Boudia struggled on the first day of qualifying."

Female: "Ooh, that's a pretty big splash."

Male: "He may be on the bubbles."

Female: "I still think it's good enough to get him into the semi-finals."

David: "I have nowhere to go than up from here."

Male: "The 23-year-old rebounded with a solid performance in Saturday's semi-finals, teeing up a battle for the ages going into the finals, a field that featured current world champion Qiu Bo of China and 2009 world champion and the focal point of his nation, Tom Daley."

Male: "We'll go to the final round with three divers separated by 15/100's of a point, and Tom Daley in the lead."

Male: "This is the dream. One dive for gold."

Male: "Ninety points. The gauntlet is down."

Female: "He needs eight and a half to go ahead of Daley."

Female: "He's done it. He's done it and Daley knows it."

Male: "David Boudia has gone ahead."

Male: "Whew."

Male: "This is the man that set the bar higher than it's ever been set in this discipline."

Male: "David Boudia has won gold."

David: "I dreamed about this. I'm in disbelief right now."

Male: "I don't know that there's anyone who in their wildest dreams thought you would say, 'Gold medal United States.'"

David: Now, I would have no idea what would follow winning that gold. This was the first gold in my event of 24 years. As you can imagine, it stirred up quite the media flurry. Coach Soldati wisely recommended that for my stability and to keep the focus on the right things, and frankly, to avoid temptation, that I have someone join me during this media frenzy. Immediately after this took place, I headed straight to New York to start my media tour. I appeared on just about every media outlet possible, radio interviews, satellite radio interviews, morning talk shows, cable TV. It went on all day long. Get in the car, go to an interview, get back into the car, go to the next. I don't think I got back to my room until 9 pm that night after leaving at 4 am that morning.

The biggest trap for me was believing the lie that I had accomplished all this myself, that I was the king of this triumph. That's the major danger for anyone who wins. It's easy to assume that it's all about you and that you have accomplished this on your own merit. That's why I'm thankful that Pastor Brent was there to help push me to use this victory for his glory.

The second point, to love our world with your testimony, we have to love the people around us by engaging in intentional conversations about them.

2. Love the people around you by engaging in intentional conversation about them

Those last two words are key, "about them." Not about me. Not about you. About them.

First John 4: 12 says, "No one has seen God at any time. If you love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."

When I arrived into New York I was met by Brent. Together we would strive to love this world through the media tour. Immediately I got a first-hand look of what that looked like, to love with our testimony. When we got into the car, immediately when we sat down, Brent started a conversation with our driver, asked him his name, asked about his family, et cetera. Then eventually Brent would share that he was a pastor. By the end of this 40-minute car ride, he was praying with this driver. Talk about loving the world with your testimony.

What I learned from Brent in New York changed my outlook of how to use my testimony to impact the kingdom. Before every interview, Brent would help coach me spiritually to get my mind right. He wanted me to look every interviewer into the face, ask his or her name, and be intentional with my interactions, treat them like human beings. It's easy to get into the routine where you do this interview, forget to ask what the person, what their name is, and just answer their questions like there's no one there. He reminded me to be that visible representation of God by looking for ways that I could serve those people in the media outlets instead of being served myself.

These aren't difficult disciplines by any means, but they go far in showing how we can love God and love others. If we call ourselves believers in Christ, then we should want to build relationships with people around us. It starts with a simple question, "What is your name?" It's the first question that we learn when we try to learn a foreign language, isn't it? "What is your name?" Far too much, we go on as we please and neglect to do the simple things. I'm speaking to myself here as well.

Can I challenge you for a second? How are you doing at loving those around you by getting to know who they are? It's easy to ask your way to what his or her name is, at lunch. It's easy to ask the clerk at the supermarket what their name is. We should be in the business of getting to know the people in our communities, to love them with the same love that God has loved us with. Our goal here is to be what Brent was coaching me on, to be the visible representation of an invisible God.

The next three photos are just pictures of what our media tour looked like. This gives you a good behind-the-scenes look of ... It's all glamour when it's on television, but there's hundreds of people trying to make this work. This is on set at the Today Show.

Finally, this is a picture of a boy. Her mom interviewed me on CNN. This was just another way for me to love and to put this gold medal around their neck and, honestly, to loosen the grips on, "This is just a medal." I put it around their neck and make them feel special.

I know you're probably thinking, "David, it's probably easier sometimes to glorify God when the spotlight is on you." Is that what you were thinking? Probably? Maybe? What happens when the glitter fades? What happens when it's those mundane everyday moments? You live life with those people around you. For me, that means getting to know the Purdue divers that I train with on a daily basis. That means leading and loving my family, my girl as well, my wife Sonnie, and my daughter, Dakoda. It means taking action to be faithful in little so that we can be faithful in much.

Let me tell you, it is not pretty at times. You can ask my wife what that looks like. She's humble and she won't tell you, but she'll give you a little wink, like this, like, "It's pretty bad." I'm constantly failing, people. It's a continued effort not to get puffed up with pride. Winning gold is just something that I accomplished. It's not who I am. I'm thankful that I can be in the fight daily with such an amazing supportive and attractive wife like Sonnie. Together we get to honor God in those small, everyday moments.

Not only do we get to engage people in conversation, but you have to do it with the approach of humility. This isn't anything new that I'm saying, but hopefully just a good reminder. Have an approach of humility towards the world that needs a testimony to God.

3. Have an approach of humility toward the world that needs a testimony to God

Ephesians 4: 1-2 says, "Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience showing tolerance for another in love." With this humility, know that there's going to be a time when loving God isn't going to be the most popular thing to do, that there's going to be a time where the dark does not like the light, and they're going to do whatever they can to stop you from talking about that.

A little over two weeks ago I had an opportunity to qualify for my third Olympic games in Indianapolis, and with that means a lot of radio, a lot of television, a lot of print interviews. For my coach, Adam, my training partner Steele and I, this is an opportunity for us, where we can proclaim what we are thankful for and why we do the things that we do. With that, we should expect this to happen. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

After a couple competitions and interviews under our belt, we went into our synchronized diving finals on that Thursday, and I received an email the Wednesday evening before then. It said, "Hi David. This is a very sensitive issue for me to discuss since I have not seen the broadcast interviews with you that the people are writing about. However, I wanted to make you aware and share, the broadcast and organized committees both received calls and emails today commenting negatively about your interviews on air last evening. The one email below was shared and I have asked them to send others."

The email below was just extremely offensive and negative commenting towards our interviews. They went on to write, "The PR person with the organizing committee having worked with the governor as well as the NCAA and very respected, said that they received a couple of emails from people who watched the telecast and had the feedback that the talk of God was a little much and over the edge." Essentially what they were requesting for all three of us to do was to not talk about God so much, to suppress that. That is religious discrimination at its finest. By this, this was evidence for me that God was working in our interviews. After I calmed down a little bit from this email, because I am sinful and I was raging, I could do nothing else but praise God for this interview.

The next morning after this interview was sent, before I sent anything else, I consulted with a trusted leader on the best way to handle this, and undoubted consensus was to respectfully decline our God talk suppression. With his help we approached it boldly and also tried to do it with much humility.

We wrote back, "Thank you for your concern. I know you have the best interests in mine. I'm also thankful for the privilege of representing the USA in the Olympic games for many reasons, chief of which is the great freedom we have to enjoy in speech, religion and the press. Men and women have sacrificed greatly over the last 240 years, and some have even died to secure these liberties for our great country. You probably saw this article in CNN today about North Korea's backfired attempt to sanitize a documentary about their country by staging the event insisting that their citizens only speak state-approved lines.

"I'm glad to be diving in a country that would never seek to suppress a resident's free speech. As we discussed many times, while I love diving, it's not my highest priority, and as a Christian the two guiding principles in my life is to love God and to love others. That includes the way I handle interviews with the media. Please respectfully communicate to the broadcast or anyone else that I'm not planning on changing my viewpoints because of a few negative emails. I dive for the US, not for North Korea, and I thank God for that every day."

(laughter and applause)

That's what I wanted to do, but I didn't do it obviously. The days that followed this email, we would approach our interviews with the same song that we had been singing to God, he is the glory. You see, if I'm going to love the world with my testimony, I'm to approach it with the foundation of loving God and loving others. Sometimes that's not going to be the most popular thing to do. Sometimes that could cost me my image of the American hero. Sometimes it could cost me a potential sponsorship, but we are called to live a life that is worthy of the gospel, because we have all been bought at a price.

We have a war going on out there between life and between sin and death and life and peace, and we have to figure out what side of that war we are going to be on. We have to figure out, before we even step outside of these church doors, whether we're going to further the kingdom of God or further the kingdom of self. He didn't sacrifice his life so we could be held down by our chains. He died so that we could walk freely and live a life fully devoted to him. That's why I'm extremely thankful that I get to see that example with someone in my life that displays that every day to me at practice.

This is a picture of Adam Soldati, my coach, Steele Johnson, my training partner, and I praying before one of the events. This is just one of the ways that we get our perspective right going into competition.

This next picture is a picture of his crazy, awesome and loving family. That explains it right there. Six kids, him and his wife Kimiko have, but I'm able to love this world with my testimony in large part because of his family. The way that these two sacrificed for the good of the gospel is how we should all strive to live out our lives.

To wrap things up, finally, to land the plane a little bit, fourth, use your testimony for God to talk about the things that he cares about.

4. Use your testimony for God to talk about things He cares about (i.e. your spouse, your family, your church)

Colossians 4:6 says, "Let your speech always be with grace, as if seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person."

Sometimes the media can be your foe, but other times it can be your friend. I'm thankful that NBC would choose to come into my home and show what my life looks like outside of diving. We're actually going to play this video right now.

Video: Female: "He's done it. He's done it and Daley knows it."

Male: "David Boudia has won gold."

Female: "He won. He won."

(National Anthem plays)

David: "Mr. Brown can moo. Can you? Oh, the wonderful sounds Mr. Brown can do. He can sound like a cow. He can go, 'Moo. Moo.' He can sound like a rooster, cockadoodle-doodle doo.'"

Male: David Boudia is an Olympic gold medalist, known around the world as one of the best in his sport, but at home he's known by another title."

Dakoda: "Dada."

David: "I think what's the most fun about being a dad is just the joy and meaning on her face when you walk into the door. At the same time when she is having a rough day, whining nonstop and has snot all over her face and you've had it a little bit, you put her down, and then five seconds later you miss the fire out of her. There's no other relationship like that. I love my little girl."

David: "In your mouth. Bite. Good job."

David: "It's extremely hard to be able to train at a world-class elite level and also manage to be a father and a husband."

David: "Walk to mama. Yeah. There you go. Ah."

David: "This is my job. More than diving, my job is to make sure that my family is well taken care of."

David: "It's going to be a big day today."

Male: "Boudia's wife and daughter are not the only ones counting on him as he trains for Rio. He has a new synchronized diving partner, who it turns out isn't so new."

Steele: "I met David at practice when I was ten years old. We were on the same team. He would actually drive me to and from practice when he was 17 years old."

Male: "Initially, Boudia may not have been the ideal role model."

Steele: "He had a black Pontiac G6 with black rims, blacked-out windows, subs in his trunk and the loudest rap music I had ever heard in my life. He would drive down the highway at 100 miles an hour, just the car's vibrating from the music. It was so loud."

David: "I let him listen to things that no ten-year-old should ever listen to."

Rapper: "I really think that I'm the flyest thing under the ground."

David: "He was just this little kid in the back of my seat playing his Game Boy like he still does today, with this long straw looking hair zapped from the chlorine and constantly giggling."

Steele: "When I was ten, I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I would just sit there and giggle in the back of the car, just laughing. I thought it was really funny and cool."

Male: "That's a very good, strong finish led by the Olympic individual champion."

Male: "Boudia has since steered him on a road to success."

David: "Steele and I are old friends. I think that's what I think makes us a good synchro partner in the pool now is we do have that brotherly love, that tough love."

Male: "Johnson attends Boudia's alma mater, Purdue University, where he gets to train alongside his mentor."

Steele: "We built up this connection like older brother, younger brother type thing. As we train more and more, I feel like it's not so much just older brother, younger brother. It's like friend and someone I can look up to as a mentor. Those car rides definitely helped build this relationship."

Steele: "I go to David and I ask questions about diving. I ask questions about life because we share the same faith, the same foundation, so he continues to teach me outside the pool as well as inside the pool. Having someone to look up to that's right next to you is something that not many people get to experience."

David: "One, two three, go."

Steele: "It's something that I've learned to just not take for granted."

Female: "People don't think I know you."

David: "What?"

Female: "People don't think I know you.

David: "Hey, Steele, love you, buddy."

David: "I'm like that role model, older diver, compared to Steele and the other guys on the team, but I would not change the role that I'm in for the world. I love the responsibility and the accountability that comes along with it."

Male: "Playing the role model both at home and on the pool deck can be a big responsibility, but for Boudia it's fueling his journey to Rio."

David: "My diving career has changed dramatically since becoming a father and becoming a husband solely because of responsibility and the selflessness that has to come in a marriage and becoming a dad. Certainly my wife and my little precious daughter is my number one right now. I think it really helps put in perspective why I'm doing this sport. I'm not going into the pool serving myself. I'm going into it wanting to help my teammates, and I think Sonnie and Dakoda really help me see that going into Rio."

David: "Ready?"

Sonnie: "Whee."

[inaudible 00:37:27]

David: To wrap things up this morning, I want people to look into my life and have a certain image in their mind, to see what I'm devoted to. They would say that he loves Jesus and his family well. Please know that I don't stand up here before you saying that I have it all together. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to knowing how to love my wife and to teaching my child. I'm constantly tempted to be consumed with myself, but I can say with confidence that God will continue to work in our lives and to make us into the ultimate image of Christ.

As he does that, he wants us to love his world with him being at the center. That is our testimony. As we approach the next five weeks, Adam, Steele and I would just covet your prayers as we go into battle, trying to love this world at the Olympic games, that we can serve the people around us, and, more importantly, that we would sing the song to God, be the glory.