Lydia Owens’ valedictorian speech went viral after the contents of the speech revolved around her faith.
The student from Piedmont, South Carolina, shared with Fox News Digitial that she “was a little worried about how people would respond to me talking about my faith, but I told my friends that I really wanted to talk more about Jesus in my speech.”
Her friends responded, “Well, why wouldn’t you? You know, aren’t we supposed to be bold in our faith? And when are you going to have another opportunity to speak in front of thousands of people?”
“I don’t think those were my words — I didn’t come up with that,” Owens said.
“Jesus told me to write that and I just followed what he told me to do.”
In her speech, Owens told her peers, “No matter what your future holds, please remember that life is so much more than how successful you are. Even if you accomplish all of your dreams or none of them at all, you are still valuable and still good enough, because you are made in the image of God.”
She added that her classmates “don’t have to worry about whether or not you’ll be successful because God promises that his grace is sufficient for us and his power is made perfect in our weakness.”
Reporting from Fox News:
Noting that she sometimes struggles with "confidence and my ability to do things," she said her classmates’ rousing applause and positive reactions were "incredible." "People around me were crying," she said, "and then my friends are like, ‘They don't know who you are, but I get to know who you are.’" ... "The second time I mentioned Jesus again, they rushed to their phones [to record the speech], and I was thinking, ‘This is not what I was expecting in the middle of my graduation speech — because of Jesus — in a public place, a public school, in front of thousands of people."
