Tim Tebow speaks about the benefits of being on ‘God’s team’

Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow told around 2,000 people who filled Northside Christian Church in northeast Fresno on Saturday evening that they should want to be on “God’s team” because God can use everyone’s life equally for good.

To make his point, Tebow quoted a passage from the Bible (John 6:5-14) about a boy who gave Jesus five small loaves of bread and two small fish that were used to feed a large crowd.

“You think God can’t use you because you don’t feel qualified to be used?” Tebow asked. “Now you are just underestimating God. It didn’t matter if he had one loaf and a half a fish, God could have still done the same with it.”

Tebow was very open about his Christian faith during his football career, which included two college football national championships and the 2007 Heisman Trophy as quarterback at the University of Florida and an NFL career with the Denver Broncos, New York Jets and New England Patriots.

Tebow gave two more free talks at Northside, located at 2709 E. Nees Ave., at 9:15 and 11 a.m. Sunday. No tickets were needed, but people were encouraged to arrive early. On Saturday night, several hundred people who arrived 20 minutes before the program’s start were directed to overflow areas where they watched Tebow’s talk streamed live on large projector screens.

Throughout Tebow’s 40-minute talk, he shared several stories about how he believes God used his life to help other people, including when he wrote Bible verses (Philippians 4:13 and John 3:16) in the eye black on his face during football games.

After one game when playing for the University of Florida, Tebow’s coach got a call from his school’s public relations team.

“He said, ‘During that game, did you realize that 94 million people googled John 3:16?’ ” Tebow recalled, to lots of applause. “And honestly my first thought was, ‘How in the heck do 94 million people not know John 3:16? … What a big God that we serve. I’m out playing a silly game, and I put these things under my eyes and it’s amazing what God can do.”

Tebow also is famous for his public displays of prayer on the football field – head bowed with an elbow resting on a bent knee, often with his fist pressed against his forehead. It became a sensation known as “tebowing” that is still re-created by scores of fans.

Today, he is a broadcast personality and motivational speaker. He works as a college football analyst for the SEC Network.

The son of missionaries is also very involved with charity work that is inspired by his Christian faith. He created the Tim Tebow Foundation in 2010 to help children with life-threatening illnesses. His foundation builds playrooms in children’s hospitals, provides surgeries in the Philippines through the Tebow CURE Hospital, cares for orphans, provides adoption grants for families adopting a child overseas with a special need, and sponsors Night to Shine, a nationwide prom for people with special needs.

“You might think, ‘I’m not a role model. There aren’t these people that are looking up to me,’ ” Tebow said Saturday. “And my response to that is: There is probably someone who is looking up to you. … There is someone that their life is going to be changed because of you. The question is, ‘Is it going to be changed for the better or the worse?’ ”

This story was originally published April 2, 2016 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Tim Tebow speaks about the benefits of being on ‘God’s team’."