He had embarrassed Ryan with a strong finish in , and he would not get a chance to do it again. Cancel your April 28 appearance at this church and immediately tell its hateful pastor you have a previous engagement. Although three-quarters of American adults call themselves Christians, and the bulk of those Christians are Protestants, and Southern Baptists are the largest group of American Protestants, with some 16 million members, the Southern Baptist worldview has less in common every year with the prevailing American worldview.
Preaching has gone out of style in America. And being unfashionable is OK with some Southern Baptists. Certainly it is with the Rev.
One week after The Huffington Post story appeared, Tebow made a four-part announcement on his verified Twitter feed. I will continue to use the platform God has blessed me with to bring Faith, Hope and Love to all those needing a brighter day.
Thank you for all of your love and support. God Bless! The Rev. Jeffress took the stage that Sunday to a second standing ovation. He wiped away a tear. He thanked a dozen Christian leaders by name for their public support.
A shiver of applause ran through the congregation. God has called me to go out and preach about the love of God. But they are sincerely wrong. The fact is, you cannot talk about the love of God—the love of God has no meaning whatsoever unless you understand the judgment of God that all of us deserve. So help me, God. Tebow had appeased some critics in the media, but now the pastor of a major church in his native denomination had publicly called him a coward.
Others chimed in. He is squandering that enormous reservoir of goodwill and admiration as we speak, by taking a knee rather than stepping up in the pocket. Tebow made no public response, but six months later he sat on a golf cart in a tunnel beneath Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. And love it, and love that church. But for me, the church is not about the name on the building. Church is about the people inside the building. Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is having a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And, you know, I—one of my bigger goals is to. Break some of those barriers, and bring people together. Say, you know what? That is not judging. We all have our faults. We all fail. We all mess up. We all make mistakes. I wanna be someone that loves them. You know? But every now and then we use words. Meaning, we share what we believe every day in how we act. How we treat people. How we love people. The interview was supervised by Stacey James, vice president of media relations for the Patriots.
A flood of requests for Tebow had put James in an awkward position. He had spent some political capital arranging it, and had said it would last no more than 15 minutes. Now it was pushing You make money while you eat. How can you help a lot of people? Well, I can go and I can talk and I can share and I can go to hospitals and orphanages and prisons and, you know. But I can only do—I only have so many hours. I can only do so many things. Well, how can we impact a lot of people? And so, like, you wanna look at a big picture of what my heart is about?
It helps Americans adopt foreign children with special needs. Along with CURE International, the Tebow Foundation is building a hospital in the Philippines where children will get affordable surgery to correct bow legs, club feet and cleft palates.
More than 18, people have joined Team Tebow, a loose collective of volunteers doing good in their own communities. And the foundation has granted wishes for more than 40 children with life-threatening illnesses. Early in , Alexis suffered a stroke. It turned out she had a rare genetic disease called neurofibromatosis Type 2, which meant tumors were growing in her nervous system.
She needed brain surgery, weeks in a rehab hospital, steroids that weakened her bones and made her face swell like a balloon. Alexis and her family liked the Giants, but they also liked Tebow, even though he played for the Jets. And so, when the Lato family flew to New York to meet Tebow in December, every detail was just right. On Sunday the Latos watched the Jets beat the Cardinals from a luxury suite while eating nachos and chicken tenders and frosted brownies.
Alexis had her own injury, a broken vertebra that kept her in a wheelchair, and Tebow wheeled her around the field for half an hour, talking about life. He recorded the voicemail greeting on her phone. On the first day of summer, four months after the Jeffress incident, Tebow spoke at the National Peanut Festival fairgrounds in Dothan, Ala. If he had lost any evangelical street cred for cancelling on Jeffress, he still had plenty left over.
His fans came from Florida, Tennessee, northwestern Iowa. Outside the air was hot, alive with gnats, and people huddled in the shadow of the outdoor stage. They were patient and orderly. Mark Schultz, the opening act, sang about Heaven and glory and mercy and soldiers writing home.
The sun set behind the stage. The moon rose behind the crowd. They just thought I was a tumor. And, obviously the name, Timmy the Tumor. And I was a little malnourished, but I made up for it pretty quickly.
He told many stories about love and grace. Did Tebow kneel at the altar of political correctness? You finished strong. After the disaster, everyone knew he was finished as a Jet. But Tebow prepared as if the starting job were his.
Fighting through his dyslexia, which makes reading comprehension more difficult, he made a stack of flash cards from the playbook, play name on one side, diagram on the other, and studied them for hundreds of hours. When voluntary offseason training began on April 15, Tebow arrived first.
He won the Heisman at Florida in his second season. He won those games for the Broncos in his second season. He came in well prepared for his second season with the Jets, and two weeks later they cut him loose. That only led to more optimism. He did get another shot.
The Patriots signed him six weeks later. It made perfect sense and no sense. Perfect sense because there could be no quarterback controversy in Foxborough, not with Tom Brady starting and Ryan Mallett waiting precociously in the wings.
Perfect sense because Bill Belichick was a genius at shifting his personnel, using a tight end at running back and a receiver at cornerback and anyone anywhere if he could help the team win. Perfect sense because the tight end who had played running back was about to be charged with murder, and the Patriots needed some goodness in their locker room.
To win a place with the Patriots, Tebow would have to do something much harder for him than leading a fourth-quarter comeback: He would have to outplay Ryan Mallett in practice and preseason. On July 26, the first day of training camp, Tebow put on a red number 5 jersey and took the field.
Light rain fell. When the three quarterbacks stood together, Tebow looked shorter and thicker than the other two. They were right-handed; he was left-handed. They threw bullets, tight and predictable. Tebow threw some bullets, some butterflies.
The fans wore plastic coats to keep off the rain. They cheered loudly when Tebow completed a short pass. The Patriots ran conditioning drills. In their red jerseys, the three quarterbacks stood out in a sea of navy and white. Tebow ran third, pacing himself, regulating his effort. Tebow did none of these things. He was not in Gainesville anymore.
In 7-on-7 passing drills, Brady took the first turn and Mallett took the second. Tebow was third. He dropped back, waited, waited. Nervous yells came from the sideline. The three quarterbacks threw deep to the end zone with no defense. He could always throw the deep ball.
The rain kept falling. Mallett was shaky in 7-on-7, and Tebow had a couple of nice completions. Then he threw a long pass that should have been intercepted and a swing pass that was intercepted. At the end of practice, the fans still chanted his name.
The next day he hit a defender in the numbers with the ball. He made a few good throws, had a couple knocked down at the line. Then he waited too long and hurled a short pass into the ground.
The fans were silent. The next play was even worse. He dropped back, danced, danced, danced, danced, looked, looked, looked. Tebow rolled to the left sideline and threw the ball to the turf. The fans changed their tune. He was not discouraged. In the second game Tebow had more interceptions 1 than passing yards In the fourth he played the second half. The Patriots punted, punted and punted. In the fourth quarter Tebow hit Quentin Sims over the middle and Sims ran for a yard touchdown.
Next possession: interception. Then two more three-and-outs. The defense held, giving Tebow one more play, and on that last play he threw a nine-yard touchdown pass that brought his preseason rating up to Finishing strong was not enough. Two days later he was cut. Warren Moon was 27 when he started his first NFL game. Kurt Warner was Tebow is only But his career has come to a strange and intractable place.
Just give him a chance , they keep saying. If only you gave him a chance. He will not get that chance unless he becomes a different player—a consistent practice player—or finds a coach willing to risk his own job by throwing him out there and seeing what happens.
Just give him a chance. You could argue that the Jets did, and the Patriots did, and Tebow did not take it. Say what you want. It will probably be true. Maybe you did, and you forgot. That was good, but Saints quarterback Drew Brees threw for yards. Yes, that Cam Newton.
In his second game he threw for yards. That broke the record for most passing yards by a quarterback in the first two games of any season. The new record stood until late that afternoon, when it was shattered by Tom Brady. Rodgers was so good in that his excellence became almost monotonous.
He was not among the league leaders in comebacks or game-winning drives, because those require you to have been losing. Rodgers threw 45 touchdown passes and only six interceptions that year, for an unprecedented rating of He had the best season of all time in the most popular sport in America, and the fans barely noticed.
They were too busy watching Tim Tebow. Tebow had played well enough at the end of his rookie season to contend for the starting job. The Broncos even tried to ship off their incumbent starter to Miami. But the deal fell through, and Kyle Orton stayed. Which meant Tebow had to outplay Orton in practice if he wanted to play in games.
Orton was smooth, predictable, reliable. Tebow was still in his second year, and the lockout had deprived him of important off-season work with his teammates. On Aug. Orton had won the starting job, so he sat and waited. Quinn started the game with a firm grip on the job of primary backup. But he went 4 of 12 for 26 yards and an interception, thus giving Tebow one last chance.
Denver drafted Tebow 25th overall in ; he started only three games that season but started both playoff games in the postseason. He connected with Demaryius Thomas on an yard catch-and-run touchdown in overtime to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in a wild-card playoff game but completed only 9 of 26 passes for yards the next week in a loss to New England.
Tebow went as a starter with 12 touchdowns and six interceptions with the Broncos in , but Denver signed Peyton Manning in the offseason. The Jets used Tebow mainly on special teams. He was cut the following April and signed with New England. He was released during the final cuts after training camp.
He signed with Philadelphia in April and played in all four preseason games before being released in the final cuts. Tebow announced in August that he was going to attempt to play professional baseball, even though he hadn't played since his senior year of high school in The New York Mets signed him to a minor league deal, and he spent the next four seasons moving up from the instructional league to Triple-A.
He announced his retirement from professional baseball in February and finished his career with a. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Jaguars release Tebow, ending TE comeback bid. Jacksonville Jaguars. Tua helps Dolphins to win after Brissett injured. Miami Dolphins. Rams add Beckham Jr. Think about it. What changed? Was it the heart of the person, the zealous desire to serve God?
Or was it the situation and our willingness to listen? I proof-texted, Bible-bashed and fire-and-brimstoned until everyone on the team simply hated me and my religious agenda.
They rose to the top, and once there, the resistance to their message was gone. They were, after all, on top. Who would dare tell them the way they got there, be it God or growth hormone, was wrong? For starters, it means that those Christians who are not superstars are somehow less impactful for the kingdom of God.
It means that though we say we are not of this world, we obviously care about the same things the world does enough to dictate our faith-based values. Then, there is the fickleness of fame and fans. Tim is winning now. What happens when he does not? And then, sadly, the window of opportunity -to do something great- closes.
I'm going to do something else, and I'm not going to work quite as hard. I can control my attitude and work ethic and determination and that's what I'm focused on now. We will always been on a journey of growing closer to God. With his family still smelling like smoke from containing the fire, he conducted a lesson from verses where James compares danger of speech to an out-of-control spark.
And you begin to live out this wonderful poem He has written for your life. This is the truth when life is smooth sailing, and this is the truth when storms come.
Sure, God loves the world, but he also loves each one of us individually. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
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