Collective Night: All the Feels | Young Adults

Oh no, is this going to work? Am I live? Yeah, we're live. Hey, everybody. My name is Jordan. Okay, we live. We live. I'm the director for young adults here at Crossroads. And who's with me on this like, bro, it's not that hard. I can catch that balloon. Anybody out there? Just like one or two. Okay. I was expecting more people. Okay. Okay. I don't know. I mean, we got one. We got one. Maybe I'll have to test it afterwards. I feel like I can catch that balloon. But as I said, my name is Jordan. I'm excited to be here tonight. I'm excited to be here with you. I'm excited to be here with me. Miko, how you doing, bro? Yes, sir, man. I'm glad to be here as well. Man, I'm super laid back, but I love this energy, bro. This is amazing.

I love this energy, man. Yeah. It is. It is. Tonight, we're just going to have a conversation. If you haven't figured it out by now, we're talking about joy. Yes. I'm very excited to get into it. Before we get into the nitty gritty of it, the details, your life, and all of that, could you just give us a quick rundown for people that don't know who you are? Absolutely. Who is Miko? Who is Miko? What you do at Crossroads? Just give us a quick rundown. Yeah. I will. Before I do that, man, shout out my boy, Max, man, with the Travis Scott OneZone, man. What's happening, twin? Yeah. Real quick. Yeah. Miko, like you said, born and raised right here in Cincinnati, man. Born on the west side, grew up on the east side, and grew up going to church. Not necessarily grew up in the church, but I grew up going to church. What that would mean is my community wasn't in church, right? The people that I went to church with, I saw them on Sundays, but other than that, we kind of did our own thing. What my mom did, she was very intentional about instilling in us, me and my younger brothers, just the relationship with Jesus at a very young age.

That's where a lot of my faith today, that's where that's rooted from. Fast forward, been married to my wife, sitting in the front row. Come on. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We could definitely clap for that, man. That's my good thing, man. It'll be five years in December. I'm looking at you like, you know. Yeah, come on. I don't know. Yeah. Five years. Great. Sounds good. Yeah. Five years in December. So, you know, five down, forever to go. Yeah. New to Crossroads, brother. New to Crossroads. Just stepped into this role as prison director at the beginning of January. Prison director. Yes. Okay. So, tell us one, two lines. What in the world does a prison director at Crossroads Church do? Exactly, man. I feel like every time I say it, I have to explain it, brother. Yeah.

It's a very vague title, but ultimately, I don't know if you know, but at Crossroads, we have a prison ministry, or we've been involved in prison ministry for some years now. And as of recent now, Crossroads is, we've been partnering with the 47, but now we're, I guess we're kind of like gaining ground, and we want to have a unique identity in that space. And I'm just called to kind of lead the vision for that, man. We're currently, like our Crossroads content is made available to people in prison via an app on their tablets. People in prison, they get tablets. So, it's made available to them in about 36 different states across the country. People are tuning in weekly and watching Crossroads content. That's amazing. Yeah. Absolutely, man. So. That's incredible. So, yeah. Lee and Ned, brother, and we also are physically in about six prisons here in Ohio, and looking to grow. That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, we're going to hear more of your story. Yes, yes. And as we get into this conversation around joy, when I hear the word joy, I immediately associate it with other words. Yeah. So, when I hear the word joy, it's always attached to other things. What I mean by that is it's attached to happiness. Joy is attached to success.

It's attached to things are going my way right now. It's attached to I woke up, my back's not hurting, it's a good day, right? Like things are going my way. It's attached to- She texted me back. It's attached to a nice day of just hanging with my friends. Joy is attached to life is good. That's what it's attached to. Yeah. And I think a lot of us view joy as this thing out there that is maybe attainable, like we could maybe chase after it, maybe just maybe we'd be able to get it. And when we finally get whatever it is that we believe will make us satisfied and content, then I will experience joy. That's how a lot of us think. Yeah. And I wonder if a lot of us in this room right now are asking a question like this. What do I need to have, get, achieve, or become before I can feel joy? Like what do I have to get in order to feel at peace? What do I need to achieve so that I can be happy or content with where I'm at in life? So take us to young adult Miko, like 18 years old, 20, 25, whatever. And what would you have said joy was attached to or associated with for you personally during that time? Yeah, man. Yee! Young adult me, man. Honestly, I think I would just definitely be very in agreement with what you're saying. For me, early 20s, joy was definitely, or joy for me was attached to success. I would say that I would start by saying that joy for me it was like a byproduct of success and for me success was In a I mean very shallow was 20-something man. So success was like a lifestyle, right? It was about attaining things. It was about accomplishments. It was about

Just being set apart. Honestly, I Wanted to be someone who was intriguing. I wanted to be someone who was important someone who was respected I'd even go and not debated I've shared this with you in private and I debated whether or not I would say it in public but in all of that right for me success looked like me being a man that other men wanted to be like And wanted to be around and that women wanted to be with that's real man Like that was that was my but with a bag though Not like broke like that but like with a bag right like and um I think looking at it man back then success was a lot of that was um Validation for me and it was identity and if I'm honest that aspect at least anyway That still rears its ugly head in my life where I can find myself now wrestling with this idea of validation and identity coming along with success and I can say back then I did you know achieve a at least on a scale Relatively a level of success. Yeah, I did I did achieve this right up my lifestyle looked like a future video back then Straight up man. So, um, so I did achieve that but the thing that I'm that stood out to me is that in that Joy didn't come with it. Right good I mean, I you know I could say that I had like fun times and things like that or whatever But there was still like an emptiness in me that was still it was very surface joy If that's what we want to call it. It was fleeting. It was it was temporal. It was surface deep and It really left like the inner parts of me Discontent I can say I achieved enough of that success to know that even having more of it Yeah wouldn't actually fix what was going on inside of me the discontent that I felt inside of me, man Yeah, that's real. That's real man I'm thinking personally about my own life and there have been moments and seasons where I was chasing a thing

Yeah, and I got the thing and then realized I wasn't as cool as I thought it was gonna be You're not as fulfilling not as fulfilling as I thought it was gonna be and I think you're poking at something that a lot of us are maybe even scared to admit and that is the fear and the what-if of What if I get what I thought I wanted and turns out it doesn't actually fix what's going on inside of me Yeah how many even stories do we need to hear of celebrities or people with influence that all go like Dude I had the money the cars the girls the clothes that like list all of it and I was miserable, right? It's like I've heard that story one too many times and a lot of us tonight find ourselves I believe in like a Transitional stage of life either entering one in one or maybe going to be in one in the near future. Yeah things like college to career Single to dating or engaged maybe even married. Maybe it's even realer than that Maybe it's entering school after taking some time off. Maybe it's moving into the workforce a job Transition the temptation for me has always been The next thing is gonna be the thing that really satisfies. Okay. I did that thing. No No, I think the next one is gonna be the one that satisfies So it's like if I can just lock in this summer and get the internship Then I'm gonna be good right if I can just get this number as the dollar amount for the salary Yeah, I'll be good. Yeah, once I get married. He's gonna fix all my problems. They'll be good. Well, that's what happened for my wife That's what she told me earlier as we walked in yeah, I guess it works sometimes man Once I get enough money to move out of my parents house and get my own place. Yeah, then I'll be good Yeah And we believe that success and contentment is attached to this Circumstance or this thing that is either happening or it's not happening. Yeah And it sounds like from your story. You at least got to taste a little bit of that success enough So that you realized I think that path leads to a place that ultimately doesn't bring me joy and contentment that lasts so take us to your mid 20s Mid 20s me go life takes an unexpected turn and

changes forever Tell us about that. Yeah, mid 20s me man. I was in hot pursuit of success me at 20s and By any means necessary, I would say my uncle he he had a very successful business and illegal pharmaceutical sales, you know what I'm saying? Y'all with me? No? Come on, man. Okay, I think some of us are tracking, I think. Yeah, okay, okay, well, you know, we'll leave it at that, man, but yeah, so, and he was just a very influential man in my life, man. He was one with a lot of respect. A lot of people revered him. He was like a modern-day Robin Hood here in the city, man, and just had a lot of influence in my life, and I wouldn't attribute him to my reason for delving into that world, you know, the streets and all of that stuff, but while I was in it, he was definitely like an inspiration for me, right, and a model for me, and so in my early teens, I just kind of dove head first into that world, you know, and over the years, I just grew deeper and deeper in it, right, more successful, I guess, in that regard, in it, and ultimately, up into my early, mid-20s, I would say it just all came crashing down, inevitably, and I found myself downtown

in the Hamilton County Justice Center facing 30 years. 30 years? 30, bro. Yeah! Yeah, man. These people have not been alive for 30 years. Yeah, I was only 26, 27 at that time. I wasn't alive for 30 years at that time, man. Okay. Yeah, man. That was, see, I'm downtown. I'm facing 30 years, and I would say that it's one of those things where whenever the world applies pressure to you, whatever's at the core of you, like, that's what comes out, and for me, those seeds that my mom had planted when I was young, like, that's what I leaned on. That's what I began to, you know, cry out to God, and it was very humbling coming back to God, where I'm like, God, clearly my lifestyle for these last over a decade has not been, you know, in one with you at all whatsoever, man, but, like, but I'm coming to you for mercy, for grace, and all of these decisions that I've been making over the years are catching up to me at this point. I got a four-year-old son, you know what I mean? And I'm like, man, what does this mean for his life, you know, and yeah, obviously I didn't get 30 years. So the way that the system kind of works, man, federal cases, they want it to be very, like, clear-cut before they pick up the case,

and my case just wasn't a clear-cut case. There was just some haziness from a prosecutor's perspective in my case, so it didn't go federal, which left it in state jurisdiction, which worked out in my favor, because then the guidelines for the amount of time I was facing was a lot less, and I remember my lawyer coming into, or I met him out in the hall, and he was like, yeah, man, great news, man, I got him down to 10 years. I'm like, bro, I ain't doing no 10 years. Might as well be 30, yeah. Yeah, I'm like, that still sound like 30 to me, man. I'm gonna hit him with this milk carton, man. Like, nah, boy, I ain't doing that, man, but yeah. So we ended up, I ended up copping out to six years. Six years. And ended up getting six years, and you would think, like, going from 30 to six, like, there was maybe a sense of relief in that, and I guess there was, but it was still, like, I'm envisioning, like, so what is life like six years from now? Like, what am I dealing with, you know, over the next six years? Like, who am I? Like, I don't, just all of these thoughts, man, all of this uncertainty, and it was just very, it was just a very distraught, just stressful time, and I was just growing closer and closer to God

during this time, man. I was really embarking on a relationship with him as an adult, right, like, in this season, and I mean, I'm praying, I'm in a county holding Bible studies, and I'm praying and fasting, and, like, water fast. Like, I remember one time, I locked myself in my cell for, like, four days, and I'm just drinking water, and my guys around me, like, they have zero context. They're like, dude, what are you doing? Like, bro, you gonna die in there, like. My guy, he would come by my door, and he would, like, throw Jolly Ranchers under, like, hurry up and eat it, man, I won't tell God, man, come on, like, it was just, like, it was just, like, they had zero context. With me, I'm, like, as an adult figuring out, like, okay, God, I've seen my mom fast, and I know, so it's, like, I'm stepping into this in my own, and, yeah, bro, like, it was just, like, dealing with the stress, and dealing with the discontentment in this, man, and the anxiousness, I'm, like, God, okay, I get it, I'm here, I've copped out to these six years, this is what it's gonna be, but I don't wanna have to spend the rest of these six years feeling like this. Like, I don't want this discontentment, I don't want this anxiousness in me, man, I don't want, I don't wanna have to feel, like,

stressed throughout this entire thing, like, I want joy, even in this, right, even in my circumstance, I want contentment, I want peace, and I remember, I was reading a story. the lady who, with the issue of blood, right? And I was familiar with this story as a child, right? But it was, as I was reading it this time as an adult, like I could so relate to her desperation, right? As she was seeking Jesus for healing and like trying all these things and just in need of like, okay, you're the only one that can fix me. And as she reaches out and she touches the hem of his garment, Jesus replies to her. And he says, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed. Yeah. And I believe, I may not have realized it in that moment, but looking back on it, I believe that that really kind of like connected something in my mind with faith and healing or faith and like whatever, like whatever your healing is or whatever that may look like for you. But it's so much connected to faith. It wasn't anything so, you know, specifically about the garment. It was just the faith aspect of it. And sometime after that, I was just having just, I don't know, I was just bogged down, you know,

in my cell, anxious, discontent, just very like unsettled. And I just kind of took a shift, bro, where I just took my eyes off the uncertainty of my future. And I guess I just fixed my eyes on God. And I'm like, God, you know what, bro? I just choose you. And all of this right now. And it's like, the best way I could describe it is like, I just kind of let go. And in letting go, like I felt so much peace wash over me. I felt like joy. I felt an ease. I felt this contentment. I could feel like the physical tension from my body just left, you know? And I'm just in this space where I'm like, okay, nothing at all has changed about my circumstance. Right. Nothing. But yet I'm still locked up. I'm still about to go do these six years. But in this moment, I think something, it was just very pivotal for me. It really made me to realize like how available joy, contentment and peace is in any given moment. Like we have access to that in any given moment. I would say in this time it, and I didn't have the words for it then, but it redefined joy for me in my eyes, bro.

It's in my mind, like joy was no longer about achieving. It was no longer about things going your way. It was no longer about circumstances fitting exactly the way you need it. That was no longer joy for me. It was this delight. It was this peace. It was this strength. It was this confidence in trusting in God, independent of circumstances. Right. Right. That's great. That's great. Yeah. So it's that easy. You just have this moment of surrender and then you become the joy guru. Is that how it went? Just like the next six years is like, Miko's the joy guy and he's handing it out for free in the prison and it just got easy from there. Is that how the story goes? Not at all, brother. I wish, but I think for me, I won't say that I handled that perfectly, like choosing joy, and I still don't. Like, let's be clear, like I'm 49 and I still don't, right? But I think what that did for me is that in that moment, like it, over time, like my pivot from my stress

or my anxiety to joy and choosing grace and choosing contentment and peace, like that became swifter and swifter over time. I think that that initial moment, what it really, it kind of settled in my mind that I didn't want anything outside of me to give me joy. And what I would see over time while I'm locked up, like I got friends and people just that I know, like I would see them just getting draped off into prison culture, man, whether it's getting a bunch of tattoos or, you know, pooping or working out or joining gangs or doing drugs, or some of them just dipped off into, you know, homosexuality or, you know, delving deeper into relationships that they have back home or whatever. Not all of these things are bad things, but it's like, it was all like, what I could see kind of like being set apart from it is everyone is seeking the same thing. Everyone around me is seeking a sense of joy and contentment. Some of these things clearly aren't going to give you that, but some things, you know, I guess these people, you know, the people around me, like that's where they began to like look for joy and peace and contentment. And it just was a constant reminder for me that I want nothing outside of me. me to give me joy, to be the source of my joy. Yeah, when we first started talking and I was getting to know you a little bit more

and hearing your story, one of the things that just rocked me was how you had nothing change about your circumstance externally. Same cell, serving the same sentence, the same level of uncertainty, but somehow you were so confident that you accessed something that a lot of people in this room, myself included at times, have not been able to access even with freedom and money and relationships and opportunity and insert whatever you want to insert into that line there. You experienced and latched on to the joy of the Lord and it wasn't attached to anything out there. It was really attached to surrender is what I hear from your story. What I see in it is that joy is not just a feeling that I either wake up with one day or I don't. It's not a thing that just comes and goes fleeting, it's a choice. It's really an act of faith that I'm going to trust God and that he's good even when my life doesn't feel good. That's what it is. The world really is telling us joy comes from what you want and scripture actually really flips that upside down and says no, joy comes from trusting God even when life's not going the way that you want. If you could condense some of those experiences, some of the wisdom you took from that and also the wisdom that you're still learning and growing in now and you could munch it and condense it all down into a chunk that would be really helpful for us in the room to take to understand joy in a better way and how it relates to a growing relationship with Jesus, how could you encourage us and help us do that? First, I would have to start by reiterating what you just said, joy being an act of faith. I hope that sinks in. That is so good, bro, because it's not this emotional state, it's this spiritual posture. For me, one of the verses that best really paints this picture for me in my mind of joy as this spiritual posture is Psalms 23, verse 1 and 2. It says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Thinking of joy, like I said, for me it was so much attached to success, but success in

God's eyes, desires, ambitions, things like that, they're not bad in and of themselves, but recognize or come into an understanding of joy in relation to these things, these desires. I think Psalm 23 really does this well when it says, when it describes the Lord is our shepherd and I shall not want, first I want to be clear, that's not talking about desire. He's not saying, the Lord is my shepherd, I'm good with God, so I don't have a desire for marriage or financial security or the job or the relationship. That's not what that says. There's another translation that I think really paints that picture better when it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. I think that is very key in understanding our relationship with joy as it pertains to our desires, because God wants us to have desires, but the moment that our desires go unmet and they begin to feel like lack, then we've shifted from allowing the Lord as our shepherd. We've shifted from that contentment into now placing way too much value on the desire that maybe he's even given us, right? That's another teaching in and of itself, qualifying the desires, is this of God? We can shift to placing too much value on that desire, and then that becomes a slippery slope into that desire becoming an idol. At that point, it's like now God can't partner with you in that, right? If now, and if you have this sense of whatever your desire is, it's becoming an idol in your heart for God to get on board with you and partner with you in that, it's like him bowing to your idol, you know what I mean? You're going to sense that opposition there. Just I guess to wrap up, sum that up, man, it's recognizing that we have our desires, have your desires, have your dreams, have your ambitions, but you don't pursue that to get joy, but rather you pursue that from a posture of joy, and that joy is simply in the Lord, man. That's so great and very relatable, because I think that, yeah, sure, you should clap for that. That's very good.

I think that the direct application is so true. Right in front of me, it's like it feels like lack if I wanted a thing and I didn't get it, and it's crazy how fast we shift to, God, are you holding out on me? Yeah. Do you not want me to win? Yeah. Yeah. Are you against me? Have you left me? Like I thought I wanted this thing. I didn't get this thing. And we start almost like pointing the finger a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Or we get exposed for like I was holding this thing up and it was occupying mental space in my heart and my energy and my attitude and all these things were like consumed in this thing. Yeah. And I didn't get it. And it feels not just like a desire wasn't met. It feels like almost God has turned his back on me. Like rejection. And you're helping us understand that is not the case. Right. Yeah. And that's the thing about God, bro. Like he actually allows us to just be like to sit in that posture of waiting and because if we go automatically from desire to desire being met, we miss out on what is revealed in our hearts throughout that waiting process. God often does that with me where he'll begin to reveal these things hidden in the crevices

of my heart that maybe I didn't even realize was there. Like wow. Now that this is taking longer than expected. Like I'm questioning identity. I'm questioning validation. You know, all of these other things begin to rise to the surface. And I think he—I know for me anyway—he uses that space specifically to reveal these things, man. Absolutely. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I think—quick shift—I think something else that I would love to leave in this space as well. Nehemiah 8, what is it, verse 10, says the joy in the Lord is a source of our strength. And for me, that verse reveals two things to us, Jordan. One, it talks about the power and the purpose of joy, but then also reveals to us the source of our strength. And to recognize it as this, I think it then paints this picture where when we see now the enemy is attacking our joy, it's not simply to put us in a bad mood. It's to weaken us. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's not simply to mess up our day. He's not just attacking your intentionality. He's attacking, you know, the source of your strength. I'm reminded of—I don't know if you're familiar with the story of Samson in the book of Judges where Samson, the strongest man in the world, right? He's anointed.

God's anointed him with strength, and the source of his strength was in his hair, right? This was—he was—and he would fight the Philistines all the time. Philistines? Philistines? I don't—right. Whatever. But he would get into it with them, and he would just beat them up. Like, nobody could beat him, man. And they were like—to the point where they're like, okay, we need to find out, you know, what is the secret to his strength? So they reached out to a girl, Delilah, that he was messing with and told her, like, hey, we want you to find the secret of his strength, which was his hair. So she found out it was his hair, and she removed his hair. And then after she removed his hair, they attacked him again, and this time they could overpower him. And in that same way, when we see Satan attacking us, attacking our joy, that is him attacking the source of our strength, right? Satan attacking your joy is him attacking your strength at the root. And one of the ways that I know, for me, that I've struggled with in seeing how Satan attacks my strength at the root by attacking my joy is by convincing me to take my joy and place it in something else other than God, the source of my joy. Because it doesn't say that joy is your strength, it says joy in the Lord. So if he can convince you that the source of your joy is in something else other than the Lord, then now you've been bamboozled, man, and now you're weaker for the next attack. And that could be lust, that could be pride, envy, whatever, you know, whatever it is. But that's something also that I'm still—like, I don't know, like, God is still kind of like revealing to me that I'm seeing it show up in a number of different ways, man. That's incredible. That's a strong word. And I think that, yeah, I can almost beat myself up sometimes when I get exposed for

caring about a thing too much or not getting what I wanted or a desire goes unmet or something. And I think sometimes, even as followers of Jesus, we can kind of like be a little too hard on ourselves sometimes or like get in our own heads of like, man, that was dumb, that was stupid, why did I care about that so much? I made a mistake and I'm harsh and I'm hard on myself. And what you're allowing me to see is it's not just like, oh, I put my joy in the wrong place, that's so stupid of me. It's like, no, there's an enemy who's actively working against me, he hates me, he's trying to attack me and destroy me, and he is very crafty in his ability to try to convince me that something else is going to provide me joy other than the goodness of Jesus. So I appreciate you shining the spotlight on us tonight. YA, can we show some honor to Miko for hanging out with us? Thank you, man. Seriously, thank you. Thank you.