I'm in this prison, I'm scared for real, and I'm looking for some sort of guardrail. See what I did with the guards? That don't make sense, I just said it because it was there.
Today, I'm going to show you how to face your fears. To illustrate this, I'm going to tell you the story about the situation I got into when I was in prison. Let me explain. I decided that I needed to take comedy to people who also need to laugh, as opposed to just those who want to laugh. So, we decided to go to this prison and do a comedy show.
I get to the prison. I don't know what to expect when I go in here, and I'm scared for real. I meet the warden and he says to me, "Hey, you can't have a belt, somebody might try to hang you." Can't they just boo me or something? Why they got to hang a brother? I mean prison, now my pants loose, this is a bad idea, bro. And when you walk into prison they have bars in front of you, right. You take a few steps and the bars close behind you. Take a couple more steps, they open, they close, you know what I'm talking about. Some of you have been there. Welcome home.
I'm walking in, I need a joke immediately and I got nothing. Only joke popped in my head was, "You know what? You guys are a captive audience?" I just want to start with that. Got to be real. I didn't feel peace in my spirit about starting with that joke. So, I'm walking in this prison and I'm scared. Then I noticed that some of the guards who are with me, slowly start disappearing. Then we get to a certain point in the prison where I only got two guards left with me, and they explain to me, that, that's as far as they go. They gave me this black box with a pin in it and they said if anyone tries to attack you, just pull the pin out, we'll come in and help. I'm sorry what? That's the plan? This might be a group of dudes in there who ready to do something, and one of them, his job is to keep the pin in.
And I notice that when I walk in, right, all the prisoners got on pink jumpsuits. So what? I ain't saying nothing about them jumpsuits. All the prisoners are in like this big circle and then there's an opening and that's where I'm supposed to walk to do comedy. There's no stage, there's no glass. We not doing comedy on the phone. Cats are right there expecting funny and I don't have anything. And, by the way, I look cool on the outside. I look like I got this whole thing completely figured out, but I'm scared! And I'm walking, I'm stepping, and I figure I got two steps left before these cats know I've got nothing. I got one more step and I settle this foot and for real, sitting right up front, is a white dude with a white beard named Moses. Thank you, Lord!
When I said these words to Moses, the place exploded in laughter. I said, "Moses, here's what I want you to do. When you see the prison warden, I want you to look him in his eye. You look him right in his eye and I want you to say, ‘Let my people go.’" Boom! Place exploded in laughter and we had an amazing time.
Here's what I want you to catch. A lot of times when we have to face a fear, there's not going to be some protection like there normally is. It's going to probably look a lot different than it normally does. I didn't know what I was going to say, or what I was going to do, until I got my feet where they needed to be. Stop doing the math on what step number two, step number three, and step number four should look like. Because when you take step number one, the next step becomes step number one. Your job is just to take the next step. So just do that.
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