{"id":493,"date":"2010-08-10T04:00:35","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T10:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=493"},"modified":"2010-08-10T04:00:35","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T10:00:35","slug":"are-you-ready-for-some-football-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=493","title":{"rendered":"Are You Ready For Some Football & Jesus!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Thank you to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ for blessing me to play the sport I so dearly love for almost three decades<\/em>.\u00a0 Emmitt Smith<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you. Thank you. I am still standing. And I give all the glory to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Floyd Little<\/strong><\/p>\n

My last couple words I want to say is me getting back home, I lost my mother, I went back home, spent a lot of time with her. Found me a good church. I got into the church. It steered me in the right direction. Man, I can say to all y’all in here, find you a church home and make sure you get Christ in your life. You hear what I’m saying? I see TD Jake’s out there. I get up every morning with him on my TV station. My bishop, Robert Banks. I got two guys in my life that keep me going the right way.\u00a0\u00a0 A lot of this stuff these young boys doing, the trouble they’re getting in, you need to point them towards Christ, point them towards Jesus, and their lives will get straight, the way mine going.\u00a0 Rickey Jackson<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the Enshrinement Ceremony for the Class of 2010 into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, not only was everyone ready for some football, but three of the Inductees were ready to talk some Jesus!\u00a0 Emmitt Smith, the former Cowboy and Gator and,\u00a0arguably the best running back\u00a0who has every played the game, began the last speech of\u00a0the evening\u00a0with a shout-out to Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0Just before Smith,\u00a0former Denver Bronco running back Floyd Little opened his speech by giving glory to Jesus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, perhaps in the most explicitly evangelistic speech of the night, Rickey Jackson, the kid from Pahokee, Florida, who went on to play\u00a0linebacker for the New Orleans Saints (during their ‘Aints years), gave as direct an invitation as you’re likely to hear at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.\u00a0 On this night, Mel Tillis, the country singer and fellow Pahokee native,\u00a0didn’t have anything on Rickey Jackson!<\/p>\n

Flipping through the channels on Saturday night, I decided to check out what was happening in the world of football.\u00a0 Turning to the NFL Network, I caught the Hall of Fame Ceremony already in progress.\u00a0 Jackson had already given his speech, but as I watched Floyd Little begin his speech with Jesus, my heart (and my fist) began to pump.\u00a0 That’s right, I said to myself.\u00a0 And, when Emmitt Smith, who had memorized his speech, first\u00a0thanked “my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ<\/span><\/em>,” I was busting!<\/p>\n

Wow!\u00a0 What a wonderful testimony.\u00a0 At the culmination of great careers, these three men remembered to thank the One who made it all possible.\u00a0 They\u00a0could have easily left out any overt mention of Jesus’ name\u00a0and simply gone with a more general and less offensive thanking of “God.”\u00a0 However, they chose to use their platform to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 When too many people, including Christians, shrink back from saying the name of Jesus\u00a0in public for\u00a0fear of offending someone, Smith, Little, and Jackson\u00a0made the most of the opportunity that had been given to them.<\/p>\n

However, some who watched the Hall of Fame Ceremony on Saturday night and some reading this post were not excited like I was that Jesus’ name was even mentioned.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps you were offended that these former players used the spotlight to thank Jesus for blessing them.\u00a0You were ready for some football and instead you got Jesus mentioned not just by one inductee, but by three.\u00a0 Maybe you were a little (or a lot)\u00a0upset that religion was injected into a sporting event.\u00a0Do you think it’s right or wrong to talk about religion in a non-religious setting like the Hall of Fame Ceremony or at the end of a game?\u00a0 Why or why not?<\/p>\n

Of course, I was not offended at hearing the name of Jesus mentioned on national television.\u00a0 But, if three of the inductees had started their speeches with “thanking Allah,” or giving “praise to\u00a0Buddha,” would I have been as happy?\u00a0 To be honest, I would not have.\u00a0 We live in a pluralistic society\u00a0with\u00a0adherents of several major religions, including Christianity,\u00a0Judaism,\u00a0Mormonism, Buddhism, and Islam, not to mention the\u00a0untold number of minor religious sects.\u00a0 Because of that, I need to remember that when I’m ready for some football and Jesus, my neighbor maybe ready for some football and Allah.\u00a0 Let’s make a wager<\/span> bet<\/span> deal.\u00a0 I promise not to be offended if you’re not.\u00a0 Just let me know\u00a0what time\u00a0kick-off is!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Thank you to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ for blessing me to play the sport I so dearly love for almost three decades.\u00a0 Emmitt Smith Thank you. Thank you. I am still standing. And I give all the glory to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Floyd Little My last couple words I want…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,1],"tags":[199,348,392,551,754,804,805,3392,842],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","category-uncategorized","tag-canton","tag-emmitt-smith","tag-floyd-little","tag-jesus","tag-pahokee","tag-pro-football","tag-pro-football-hall-of-fame","tag-religion","tag-rickey-jackson"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-7X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}