"ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?"

College football season kicked off this week-end with the Nebraska Cornhuskers playing Illinois in the first game of the season. Nebraska also returns to Oklahoma on September 18th to play the Sooners and evoking memories of their once famous Big Eight rivalry. Nowadays, people ask what does the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Billy Graham have in common? Both can make a stadium of 80,000 yell “Jesus Christ.”

Browsing through the upcoming season's hype, hoopla and promotions, I read about a woman named Pam, who faced the pain of considering abortion.

More than 24 years ago, she and her husband Bob were serving as missionaries in the Philippines and praying for a fifth child. Pam contracted amoebic dysentery, an infection of the intestine caused by a parasite found in contaminated food or drink. She went into a coma and was treated with strong antibiotics before they discovered she was pregnant.

Doctors urged her to abort the baby for her own safety and told her that the medicines used to save her life had caused irreversible damage to her baby. She refused the abortion and cited her Christian faith as the reason for her hope that her son would be born without the devastating disabilities physicians predicted. In weighing her decision, it dawned on Pam the doctors didn't think of it as a life, they thought of it as a mass of fetal tissue and their first priority was to her, the immediate patient.

While pregnant, Pam nearly lost the baby four times but refused to consider abortion. She recalled making a pledge to God with her husband: "If you will give us a son, we'll name him Timothy and we'll do everything in our power to make him a preacher.

Pam ultimately spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed and eventually gave birth to a healthy baby boy August 14, 1987.

Pam's youngest son is indeed a preacher. He preaches in prisons, makes hospital visits, and serves with his father's ministry in the Philippines. He also plays football.

Pam's son is Tim Tebow, the former University of Florida's star quarterback became the first sophomore in history to win college football's highest award, the Heisman Trophy. In 2011, Tim played professional football for the Denver Broncos which provided an incredible platform to be a Christian witness. As a result, Tim earned the nickname "The Mile-High Messiah" during his time playing with Denver Broncos.

Despite having world class athletic abilities, Tim's quarterback style was more run than pass oriented which is not conducive to pro football. Realizing this, Tim pursued a professional baseball career and just this year announced his retirement from the New York Mets organization. Retired from baseball for only a few months, Tebow signed a one year NFL contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars for the league minimum of $920,000 for the upcoming season.

In 2018, I had the good fortune to meet Pam Tebow while waiting to catch a plane at DFW airport. I asked her if it was true what I had read about her parents refusing to let her return to the church where she was saved and she yes and elaborated; She 12 years old and she decided she would walk to church one Sunday morning. She can’t recall after all these years why she would make such a decision except something was pulling her to church. She remembers getting her 8-year-old sister out of bed and the two of them walking down the street together to the church near their home in Charleston, South Carolina. Their dad, a U.S. Army colonel, was playing golf, and their mom was sleeping in. At the end of the church service, the pastor asked anyone who wanted to receive Christ as Savior to come to the front of the sanctuary to pray

She didn’t know anyone in that church except her sister and still can’t believe she had the courage to go up to the front all by herself, but she did. After praying with the pastor, she accepted Jesus as her Savior.

She calls it one of those “God deals” where something that’s impossible apart from the power of God. She didn’t grow up in church. She’d never even heard a Bible story before walking to church that day. Although her parents didn’t allow her to go back to the church where she received Christ, she knew what she had experienced. The ripple effects of that decision have stretched over the decades of her life.

God is in the promise business. He makes 5,467 promises in the Good Book and He makes good on every single one of them. Without doubt or question, we can take God's promises to the First Bank of the Pearly Gates.

Promising God on the other hand is a risky endeavor and should be analyzed, scrutinized and soliloquized before making any vows or promises to the Almighty. God gives us a heads up in Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 teaching us we best make good on any promises made to Him or it is better not to promise at all because God views our broken promises as actions of fools and jerks. Pam Tebow made good on her promise and God blessed her with a fifth child who indeed as preached God’s Word.

On the other hand, the story of Jephthah serves as a reminder to avoid making rash promises to God. Jephthah, the son of a prostitute was viewed as an outcast which made him want, to the point of obsession, for a victory over the Ammonites. (Judges 11) So engulfed in his own need to win, Jephthah made a promise to God if He'd serve the Ammonites head on a platter for a routing victory, Jephthah would sacrifice the first person who came to greet him.

God gave Jephthah the victory and the first person to meet Jephthah was his beloved daughter and only child. A deal is a deal despite the rash promises and consequences. Making Jephthah eat a second spoonful of sorrow was his daughter telling him he had to keep his word to the Lord. (Judges 11:36)

Regrettably, the vast majority of us have broken promises to God. Whether we think we are getting ready to trade our guitar for a harp or sweating like a sinner in the front pew, we resort to the half prayer-half hail Mary pleas to God. Yes, we have all been down the same road promising God if He will do this or that we will promise to be good or start going to church or millions of other plea bargains.

Yet we have to be mindful our broken promises to God have more consequences than breaking our New Year's Resolutions which is why we should do everything in our power to keep our promise to God just as the Tebows did. However, if we do our earthly two-step and welch on our promise, God will see if we are repentant and if we want to seek reconciliation with Him. If so, God has promised to forgive us.(Acts 3:19) Given God's perfect record in keeping all of his thousands of promises, it is a dead lock cinch we will be forgiven.

Merciful and Forgiving Father, thank You for understanding our weak “Human Condition” and not holding our foolish ways and cheap tricks against us. Thank You for keeping all of Your thousands of promises without fail which gives us a guarantee we will be forgiven and never die. Thank You for loving us so much You created each of us as one of Your hand signed limited editions. Thank You for loving us so much You will never keep a record of our wrongs if we trust Jesus. (1 Corinthians 13:5)