The morning after the meeting at Duck Commander, he got up and felt the need to pray. But he did not know how; he didn’t have any idea what words to say. He told my dad that he got down on his knees and no words came out of his mouth, and then he just started crying. We are talking about a big powerful man—on his knees crying and then telling my dad about it. It’s amazing what God can do with just a little thing like praying before a meal!
The man then asked my dad to help him learn more about God, and now my dad is e-mailing him Bible verses to study so he can learn about God for himself. His life will be changed because of this. Remember this story next time you think there is nothing you can do to change the world. A simple prayer at the beginning of a meal is changing this man’s world and the world of those around him. Who knows how far-reaching this simple act will be?
LET’S MAKE THE WORLD HAPPIER
The world needs to change for lots of reasons. Just to name two of them—too many people are hungry and too many children are orphaned. Another reason the world needs to change is that it’s just so negative! That might not sound like as big of a crisis as world hunger or some of the other things that are happening, but it is still a problem. When I say “negative,” I mean the world has become discouraging, not encouraging; it’s often full of anger, not peace; there are tons of hate and not nearly enough love.
One reason the world has become so negative is social media. When my mom and dad were my age, social media had not even been invented. Even now, my papaw Phil acts like it doesn’t exist! He knows about it, but he does not get involved in it. I am pretty sure our lives would be much easier if we didn’t have so many ways to post anything and everything for the whole world to see.
Parents and other adults talk a lot about how bad social media is, how hurtful it can be to people, and how they sometimes wish we did not have access to it. I have to agree with them. From my perspective, there are some horrible things on it, and some people use it to be really mean and offensive to others. Sometimes people let a tweet or a post on some site ruin their entire day, and I want to ask, “Why are you reading that stuff? Why don’t you choose to read something good?”
If I could say anything to grown-ups who are so upset about the things that happen on social media, I would say this: Everyone gets to choose who they follow, who they interact with, what they post, and what they read. A lot of the things you do not like can be blocked. If you are unhappy about social media’s influence on the young people around you, you can change your world and theirs by setting some standards for what they can and cannot look at.
Even though I can see the problems with social media, I also see a lot of good in it. In fact, I think we can use it to make a huge difference in the world if we make just a little effort. I have about one million followers on Twitter, and I do my best to use Twitter for good. I try to post encouraging messages, and I only follow people who also want to use social media in positive ways.
I get a lot of messages from fans, and I do not reply to or follow most of those people. But one day, I had an unusual opportunity with someone who tweeted me from Florida. This girl tweeted Cole first, then me. We did not respond. Then she tweeted me again with this: “I was wondering if you could help me change and be a better person.”
Most teenagers would not put something like that on social media because they would be embarrassed, so I could tell this girl really wanted answers, and I decided to direct-message with her. Our conversation went something like this:
ME: “What do you want to know?”
GIRL IN FLORIDA: “Whoa, you noticed me.”
I then told her what I would do if I wanted to become a better person. I would start with the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) and use that list as my instructions. It says that when the Holy Spirit of God lives in us, we will become people of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Pretty good list.
I WENT ON TO ASK HER: “Are you involved in a church?”
GIRL IN FLORIDA: “No. And I don’t have any friends who go to church.”
ME: “Do you know what the gospel is?”
GIRL IN FLORIDA: “No.”
In a series of messages, I wrote to her: “God sent His Son, Jesus, to this earth through a virgin named Mary. That’s the hope we have. We don’t fear death because we know God has a perfect place He is preparing for us right now. To repent is to give all your sins to God and all your life to God. It’s like becoming a brand-new you.”
For me, sharing the gospel is the best possible way to use social media. If I can do it, you can do it too. I hope you will join me in refusing to look at negative, discouraging, disrespectful things on social media. I also hope you will commit to only posting words and pictures that make people happy, not angry or hurt. If enough of us come together and do this, we can change the world.
NOW HERE’S A MAN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD
In chapter 3 I talked about my great-grandfather, Two-Papa’s father, whom I called Papaw Howard. But I want to share more about him here. He was one of the most amazing world changers I have ever heard of, and I am glad I had a chance to know him before he passed away. He truly believed he could change the world, and he did.
First of all, and most important, he was a man who loved God more than anything or anybody else. In 1967, he founded a Christian camp, called Camp Ch-Yo-Ca (a name that comes from the first two letters of the three words “Christian Youth Camp”). This camp is an amazing place where lots of teenagers have come to know Christ or grown in their relationship with Him, and I wrote about it in chapter 3. I am sure our family may never know how many lives have been changed or how many great ways people have made a difference in the world as a result of something that happened to them at that camp.
Papaw Howard was also a very smart entrepreneur. One of his first businesses was a jewelry store he started with his brother. He and his brother also went on to start a chain of discount stores—this was before “discount stores” were popular in almost every city and town in America, so he was definitely ahead of his time. He later started a warehouse club chain with my grandfather, which they sold to Walmart and is now called Sam’s Club. He also started a publishing company. He wrote a lot of songs that are still sung today, and he put together several hymnals. The most popular hymnal was called Songs of Faith and Praise; that hymnal has sold more than three million copies. I am amazed when I hear about people who know about that hymnal. It’s everywhere, even in the most random places.
In addition to those things, he was a real estate developer; he also owned several restaurants and clothing stores. He was involved in the oil and gas industry, and on top of that he started a traveling singing group and had a music company.
Papaw Howard wanted people everywhere to know about Jesus, so he started a ministry with others in our church and called it World Radio. His dream was to put on radio programs all over the world, so people could hear the gospel preached even if there were no preachers in their area. The ministry still exists, spreading the love of God in native languages in over one hundred countries around the world.
My great-grandfather really cared about people. He did a lot to help people in our community, and in fact, Mamaw Kay got a job at Howard Brothers Discount Stores when things were so hard for her and Papaw Phil. I do not know whether or not he knew what a hard time she was having, but she has always appreciated the opportunity to work for him.
Papaw Howard’s love for people went beyond our hometown. He also founded a relief ministry to help people during natural disasters. As part of the work of this organization, Two-Papa drove a truck across Europe twice to deliver food to people in Poland when that country was under martial law in 1981–82. This organization provided relief on 9/11, when the World Trade Center was attacked, and after Hurricane Katrina, which hit our home state of Louisiana hard, as well as in many, many other places.
Every year at Christmastime, the kids in our family love to sin
g a funny old song with him. It’s called “Ticklish Reuben” and it tells the story of a guy who thinks everything tickles him. The chorus has lots of “ha-ha-ha”s in it, and when Papaw Howard got to that part of the song, he always ended up laughing so hard, and all of us laughed with him.
Talk about someone who made a difference! And people tell me he got a lot of ideas while he was fishing. Maybe more people need to spend time fishing if they want to think of ways to change the world.
SMILES THAT SPREAD HOPE
In 2013, our family and friends had a great experience when we got to meet the Daraja Children’s Choir of Africa. They are an amazing group of twenty-four young people who love God and spread hope and joy everywhere they go. They came to visit us in early July and stayed at Camp Ch-Yo-Ca for a few days and sang for our church. Then we had a big Fourth of July celebration in our backyard with these precious kids. We ate and played together, and they sang for us. Their smiles and awesome hugs were contagious; they seem to be the happiest people on earth.
While they were here, we were able to talk to the adults who were taking care of them while they traveled America singing and spreading God’s light, and they told us some of these children’s stories. Many of the children had lost either one or both of their parents. Two of the children’s parents died of AIDS while the choir was visiting America. And every single one of them lived on less in a year than we receive in a week here in America. Yet they were smiling!
Seeing their faith and love as they sang songs to God, such as “How Great Is Our God” and “We Worship You,” and thinking about the true meaning behind the words was life changing. These kids had faith that God is greater than all their problems, and you could see that faith in their smiles. Even though I had never met them before, their smiles changed my world!
A SMILE THAT CHANGED MY WORLD
After the success of Duck Dynasty, our family started hosting groups from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This organization tries to make wishes come true for sick children and teenagers, and a lot of them wish for a trip to Duck Commander and a chance to meet our family. I love that we do this, and I always look forward to days when people from Make-A-Wish come to visit. We always do our best to make their time with us special, and we pray with them before they leave. Our time with them is very emotional; there’s usually not a dry eye in the room! We pray for them because we care about them, and we are really honored that they want to spend time with us.
Seeing people who have cancer yet are happy in the midst of it has really changed me. It makes me want to be happy too and not get upset over the problems I have. The world would say healthy people are definitely better off than sick people, but I have been amazed to see how much joy these patients have because of what they have learned about God in what they have been through.
A lot of the people from Make-A-Wish stand out in my mind, but I want to write about one specific boy, who was about fourteen years old. He came to Duck Commander with his parents and sister. He did not say much, but he had a big smile on his face, and I could tell he was happy. He seemed so excited to be in our company headquarters, to watch us film part of a Duck Dynasty episode, and to take pictures with us. I talked with his mom for a long time, and she told me how hard his journey has been for their family but how much closer they have become because of it. She also shared that everyone in their family had become better people as they watched him overcome the obstacles of his illness.
People with a worldly point of view might think what happened to this boy would be the worst thing they could imagine. But he and his family chose to put God right in the very middle of it, and they knew the only way to get through this hard time was with Him. That one boy’s smile changed my world. When I realized what faith and courage were behind his smile, it made me want to be a better person. When our visit with him and his family was over, all I could think was, If he can be joyful, I can too. And so can you.
Live Original Challenge
1. How can you change the world in some little way, starting today?
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2. Will you commit to reading and posting only positive, encouraging messages on social media? What changes will you need to make to keep this commitment?
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3. Who inspires you to change the world, like my papaw Howard inspires me? How can you take the lessons you have learned from that person and make a difference?
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4. If you could change the world in one big way, what would you do? When can you start?
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DON’T FORGET
You and your smile can change the world!
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
—Mark 10:45
CHAPTER SEVEN
ARK: Acts of Random Kindness
If you saw the movie Evan Almighty, maybe you remember this conversation between God and Evan.
GOD ASKS: “How do you change the world?”
EVAN ANSWERS: “One single act of random kindness at a time,” while he writes on the ground with a stick. He writes the letters A-R-K, to stand for “Acts of Random Kindness.”
One reason I like this part of the movie is that it does not just talk about being kind; it talks about being kind in random ways. The way my friends and I use the word “random” is to describe something that is not planned or thought out, maybe something totally unpredictable or something that feels like it came out of the blue. When I think of acts of random kindness, I know I don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking about them; I can just do them on the spur of the moment, when I see an opportunity.
This is important because it shows people that others do think of them and care about them—and it reminds them that there are still good people in the world. In fact, acts of random kindness surprise people in really nice ways. And most people really enjoy happy surprises. Some even go on to do something nice for someone else because acts of random kindness are contagious. One leads to another, and that leads to another, and pretty soon a whole cycle of kindness is happening.
I also like the scene where Evan writes “A-R-K” in the dirt because it teaches me that people do not have to do huge things that attract a lot of attention in order to change the world. Something like sending someone a text with a scripture or a little reminder such as “God loves you!” can make a person’s day. Or randomly paying for the order of the car behind you at drive-through restaurants or coffee shops can spread joy. As I wrote in the previous chapter, sometimes just a smile can change the world. And sometimes simply being kind can do it. Just ask Evan!
OH, YEAH—THE JEEP
My boyfriend is really great at doing acts of random kindness. He is the type of person who picks up people on the side of road and will do whatever he can do to help, even if it is not wise. He has the kind of heart that is always eager to be good to others—even if he has to go out of his way or sacrifice his time or money—and that’s something I really like about him.
One time when he was driving me to the airport in his Jeep, we saw some people who appeared to be out of gas on the side of the road. They looked very worried. We stopped to ask them what was wrong.
They had a child in their car and told us they were trying to take him to the hospital. They did not ask us for money; they simply asked if we would use the Jeep to push their car to the nearest gas station, which was pretty far away. Without stopping to think about the damage this could do to the front of the Jeep, my boyfriend said yes.
We had no way of knowing whether the people were telling us the truth or not. Maybe they were; maybe they weren’t. But either way, we did what we could to help them. When we arrived at the gas station, the father thanked us and basically said, “There need to be more people like you in the world.” Mayb
e he will remember what we did for him and start looking for ways to do something similar for someone else.
Something important to know about acts of kindness: while they are definitely about the person you do them for, they are also about you. What I mean is that even though you can’t control how other people respond to them, you can decide whether or not you do them. I hope you will do them, because being kind makes you feel happy. Most of the time, it makes others happy too. But if it does not, at least you have done something you can feel good about.
If you set a goal to make someone’s day every day, I think you will be surprised at how much better your days—and your life—will be. By choosing to help others and make them smile, you will end up being the one with the biggest smile. Giving really is better than getting.
We need to be willing to look past ourselves and see what we can do for others. This is part of being a kind person. Even when it is not convenient—and even if it might mess up the car!
KINDNESS IS A FRUIT
When I wrote the story of the girl who wanted advice on being a better person, I mentioned the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). When you receive Jesus and His love in your heart, then you receive the fruit of the Spirit. Kindness is one of those fruits; it’s on the list right after love, joy, peace, and patience. This tells me that being kind is really important, and it’s something God enables us to do when He lives in us.
If we know God, the fruit of the Spirit will show up in our thoughts and actions all the time, but we have to cooperate with the Spirit. The same chapter in the Bible that talks about the fruit of the Spirit tells us to “walk by the Spirit” (verse 16, NIV 2011). Kindness is one of the easiest and best ways to walk by the Spirit and to let other people know we are Christians. A little act of kindness doesn’t take a lot of effort, but it will mean so much to someone.
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