Triumph!: Powerful Stories of Athletes of Faith

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INTRODUCTION

The late sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote, ‘It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game,’ was first said by someone who lost.

I have been involved (more correctly, deeply immersed) in sports for the majority of my seventy-four years. I have spent fifty-two of those years in professional sports (baseball and basketball) as a player, general manager, and senior vice president. As a noncasual observer, I emphatically submit that in the sports world, winning really, really matters.

What matters most to you and me, however, is how we as individuals play and win in life. It is tempting to say "in the game of life," but life is not a game. It is a serious business.

The book you are about to read, Triumph! Powerful Stories of Athletes of Faith, contains dozens of stories submitted by athletes, coaches, and sports observers who have experienced ultimate victory as a result of their faith in God. With a winning theme in mind, my coeditor, Ken Hussar, and I have organized these inspiring submissions using the acronym TRIUMPH: Trusting, Rejoicing, Inspiring, Understanding, Meditating, Praising, Honoring.

May these stories bless your soul, bolster your faith, and motivate you to boldly and victoriously serve our omnipotent God.

PAT WILLIAMS

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ORLANDO MAGIC

MARCH 2014

TRUSTING

1. Winning Ways

Uzziah sought God during the days of Zechariah, who taught him to fear God. And as long as the king sought guidance from the LORD, God gave him success.

2 CHRONICLES 26:5 NLT

Ever since I’ve been in a leadership position, my focus has been the model of Christ as the Servant-Leader. There are different ways to lead, but I’ve always felt it is better if people follow me because they want to follow, not because they have to. To lead like that, you have to earn people’s trust and respect. The way to do that is to show them you are there to help them.

As a coach it was my job not necessarily just to win championships, but to help all players, everyone in the organization, to do their jobs as well as they could. I really tried to, number one, be a role model and, number two, serve my team spiritually. I wanted to teach the players as much as I could about football and how to be better players, but I also wanted to help them be better people, to do well in the community, and to do well after football. I wanted them to know that they are, first and always, servants of others.

I hope my players saw consistency in my life no matter what happened…good or bad, up or down. I hope they saw someone who tried to live his Christianity every day.

With anything that comes across my desk, if I pray about it and ask the Lord’s direction, He’s going to work those situations for His glory. It will be for the best and it will succeed—maybe not the success the world will see, but success in His eyes.

Remember, you don’t have to do everything the way the world says. You don’t have to buy into the belief structure that is popular right now. You need to be your own person. Young people are so tempted to follow the crowd, but standing firm in what you believe gives you significance. I believe the true path to significance is helping people and doing things that benefit others and not just yourself. Sure, I’m happy that I had the honor of winning the Super Bowl as a coach, but I’m happier that I helped fifty-three guys win the championship.

Sometimes along the way, we encounter roadblocks. During our Super Bowl season, we lost to Jacksonville 44–17—one of our worst losses since I became coach at Indianapolis. Fans were saying, The Colts are falling apart, but we dug in as a team and figured out what happened and learned from it. The end of the story is that we went on to win the Super Bowl that year. You usually learn as much or more from a loss than you do from a win. In life, you have the chance to learn from any negative situation, be it an illness, the loss of a job, or whatever comes your way.

You’re never going to get anywhere in sports or in life until you become convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Oh sure, you may become a professional athlete and have nice cars, houses, and a lot of money, but what you will find is that all that stuff goes away pretty quickly. You have to understand that Christ died for your sins, and that He died not just to be your Savior, but so that He could be the center of your life. And if you understand that, then you have to be committed to it. You have to be sold out to it—regardless of the role God wants you to play.

Being sold out to Jesus means you must be steadfast…and a little stubborn. First Corinthians 15:58 says, Stand firm. Let nothing move you, and that’s even when it’s not popular.

I know I’ve lost some jobs because the owners who interviewed me asked me, Is getting to the Super Bowl the most important thing in your life? Can I count on you to be there twenty-four hours a day and be available around the clock to do whatever it takes to win a Super Bowl? And my response was, No, you can’t. Because if that’s what it takes to have this job, then I don’t want it.

The stands God calls you to take may not be popular. They may not always get you ahead. But you have to stand firm in your convictions, because being steadfast and handling adversity well is what a winner does.

It all starts with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It starts with asking Jesus to be your Savior and then living for Him no matter what.

TONY DUNGY

2. Heaven Is Already Mine

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

JOHN 1:12

As far back as I can remember, I had one dream in life: to become a pro athlete. I grew up in the old steel mill town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I competed in basketball, baseball, football, and track at Liberty High School. I attended Temple University in Philadelphia, where my dream of being a professional athlete was narrowed to football.

In 1981 I signed my first pro football contract. I could bench press more than five hundred pounds, drove a nice car, and had attended a university. However, there was still something missing in my life. I was from a wonderful home and had been brought up going to church, but if someone were to ask me if I was going to go to heaven when I died, I would reply, I don’t know. I hope so. When I thought about eternity, I was very insecure. I honestly had no idea where I would end up when I took my last breath.

Most people hope they have done enough good things to outweigh the bad things they have done. This is how I thought and lived my life for twenty-five years. But I never knew if the good things I did would take care of all the bad things I had done the night before.

That all changed on April 30, 1983, just before a game in Tampa, Florida. I was in my third year of professional football, and I took part in what had become somewhat of a pregame ritual for me. I went to church—also known as pregame chapel. That day I sat in a hotel room with twenty other players and coaches.

I had done this plenty of times before. But it was different this time. A man called Doc came to speak to us, and his message was one I had never heard before. He called it The Difference between Religion and Biblical Christianity. He said that religion was man’s greatest effort to reach God and that it was all about doing. Biblical Christianity, on the other hand, was done.

He said that biblical Christianity was not about attending a certain church or about how many good things you had done in a lifetime. Biblical Christianity is about a real person named Jesus Christ—about who He is and what He did. Jesus, God’s Son, had left heaven and come down to earth, where He lived a sinless life for thirty-three years. He never so much as disobeyed His parents or had a bad thought. At the end of His life on earth, Jesus said, No one takes my life. I lay it down. Jesus Christ paid the price for all humanity by dying on the cross of Calvary, and three days later He showed Himself to be God by rising from the dead. Jesus’ last words on the cross were, It is finished. He had done something that humanity could not do for itself. He paid for our sins with His precious blood.

I knew the Good Friday and Easter story. However, that day Doc shared a Bible verse I had never heard before: John 1:12, which says, Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. He said that means that a person has to individually and by faith receive what Jesus did for him/her on the cross two thousand years ago.

Receive means to appropriate, to take to one’s self and call one’s own at a specific time. That day, by the grace of God, was my day, and by faith I put my trust in what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross of Calvary. Now I know that I am going to heaven when I die, not because of what I have done or what I haven’t done, but because of what Jesus did for me.

My faith in Jesus motivates me to live for Him and to tell others about Him—not because I am trying to work my way to heaven but because heaven is already mine.

RICH GARZA

3. It Was His Doin’

The LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

PSALM 118:23

When I was a boy growing up in a two-sawmill central Alabama town, the ladies would say, Wayne, you are going to be a preacher like your daddy.

Daddy was a street preacher, tent revivalist, radio preacher, and bivocational pastor-evangelist. At seven I would ride with him on Saturdays in our 1945 Chevrolet with two loud speakers atop to six small towns. He would play a gospel song, preach for fifteen minutes, and give those who came to town the opportunity to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. Then we would move on to the next town.

I was proud of my daddy and loved going with him. I was raised on evangelism. Playing football, baseball, and basketball captivated my interests also. Evangelism and sports were my two loves.

It was beyond comprehension that my journey in life would lead to four highly privileged careers across America, and that it would take my family and me to Kansas City, Indianapolis, Richmond, Tuscaloosa, Colorado Springs, and Charlotte.

Being small in stature, my dream of playing football for the University of Alabama never came true. Instead, I decided to attend Samford University, a Baptist college in Birmingham, confident that God would reveal to me His plan for me to be a minister. As a student sports information director, my writing and public relations skills were my ticket through college. Our football coach was thirty-five-year-old Bobby Bowden, who would go on to become one of the nation’s finest.

Although I was passionately committed to walk with God, I never felt God’s call to preach.

After graduation my path led me to the University of Alabama, where I worked as a graduate assistant in sports information. The football coach, Paul Bear Bryant, was already legendary, as was the quarterback, Joe Namath. The Crimson Tide won the national championship both of my years (1964 and 1965) there. As a boy who had just left the sawmill town, I was awestruck. But this was the Lord’s doin’.