Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Ep. 322 - An NFL Player’s Testimony of Standing for Christ

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Ep. 322 - An NFL Player’s Testimony of Standing for Christ · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I realized that I needed mercy, I needed forgiveness.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And now I'm able to explain what took place and the feeling that I had inside of this sorrow, this deep regret for what I have, for the way that I had lived and for the way in which I was professing to know Him but just completely denying who he was through the way that I lived.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: And so that moment my life changed.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: That was July 20, 2019.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And I remember going back to Carolina during the season and I remember thinking, okay, I'm a new man, I'm different, it was a miracle for me.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I ended up getting baptized October 16, 2019.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: And that was a really important day for me to just profess publicly what happened internally and really partake in the death of my old life and being raised to a new life in Christ.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And about a year later I look back at my life and I think, wow, my life has changed.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: In the past?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I tried to clean up my life, but there were certain areas that I couldn't get a grip on.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: But the music that I listened to clean up my life.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: But there were certain areas that I couldn't get a grip on.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: But the music that I listened to changed the way that I looked at.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Women changed my affections, my desires, my motives, everything changed.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: You changed.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It dawned on me that I had become born again, that God took my stony heart.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: He reached into my heart with his invisible hands and he took out out that stony heart and he gave me a heart of flesh.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: He gave me a heart that no longer loved my sin, but he gave me a heart that loved righteousness.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: He gave me a heart that wanted to please him and honor him and obey him.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: And I just had this insatiable desire to want to grow in my relationship with him and to know him and to know his word and to begin to share my faith, begin to tell people about Jesus.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And I didn't really know how to do that, but I just said I need to do this.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Do you guys hear that?
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: What it sounds glorious.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: It does.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: Peace.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Quiet.
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Serenity.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, someone's not here.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Someone is not here, yeah easy is playing hooky.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Today, franz, he's out sick at disneyland.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: At disneyland, ray, have you ever, I mean, can you imagine, ray, somebody getting a hole-in-one calling in sick to work and not able to tell their boss because they hit a hole-in-one playing golf?
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Is this what he's doing?
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Are you insinuating there?
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying he's doing it, but I don't think his hangnail is really that bad.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Ray, I need you to either confirm or deny the fact that I heard and I think you told me this that on your last day of school you looked out, you saw the surf, threw your books up in the air and didn't go to school on your last day of class.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Is that true?
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Well, I threw the books up in the air.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I had a whole satchel full of books, it's about a dozen books.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I threw them up in the air at least 20 feet and just let them crash.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Because I really hated school.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: They taught me things I didn't want to learn French.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to learn French.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: On the last day they said this isn't French French, this is school French.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: They want to understand what you're talking about if you go to France, except if I say passez-moi le salsifou-ple, pass the salt please.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: I take four years of French, you did.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: I did.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Have you ever experienced?
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Listen.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: This is what the podcast is brought to you by you, ready, here we go.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: This podcast is brought to you by you, ready, here we go.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: This podcast is brought to you by Pepsod Acid Relief.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Have you ever experienced heartburn so bad it felt like you just sat through one of Easy's dad joke marathons.
• 4:41
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• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Whether it's the fiery spice of bad Mexican food or the fiery spice of Easy attempting to rhyme atonement with condiment, pepsod can handle it all.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: One tablet and you'll feel as calm as Ray in a debate and as sharp as Oscar dismantling objections.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: Easy might be proof that laughter is the best medicine, but when it comes to heartburn, leave the healing to Pepsod, because some things, such as easy's insights or supposed wit, cannot cure.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: Should we thank AI for that?
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Absolutely Pepsit for heartburn relief faster than you could say.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: Really easy.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: You actually think you're a good senior.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: All right, not so.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: This podcast is brought to you by what?
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: The Evidence Study Bible.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, just like every other time we have a podcast it's brought to you by the Evidence Study Bible found at livingwaterscom.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: All right, so we do have a cool classy comment.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Ready the Living Waters podcast, gospel legends and dad jokes.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: Try to see who wrote this one.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Ray Comfort thunders with evangelistic brilliance, mark slices through objections like a gospel samurai and Oscar's wisdom flows so smoothly it could calm the Sea of Galilee.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Then there's Easy living proof that God's grace covers all things.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Ray delivers gospel truth with fire in his veins.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Mark's apologetics leave skeptics stunned and Oscar's profound insight makes you feel sharper just by listening.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Then there's Easy.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: He's the comic relief in a Shakespearean tragedy.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: Essential, but you're not sure why.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: This podcast is a symphony of faith and wisdom, with easy as the kazoo solo in the corner you didn't see coming.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: Tune in, get inspired and prepare for theology, evangelism and whatever pun or accent EZ attempts next.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: Did someone write that?
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: I did this morning with the AI.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: But isn't it nice.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I like the way you're using AI.
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: It's kind of cool and calm.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: I think this is actually the way AI is supposed to be used right whenever it comes to easy.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: But we do have some guests in the house it's all my family and they bleed purple and gold for a reason, lakers.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, come on, for a reason.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: Lakers.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: They are not just Laker fans, but they're more Clipper fans, but they are Minnesota Viking fans, which leads to the fact that we have another guest inside of our house.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: It is Jordan Kanoshek.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Wow, How'd.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I do Wow, not very good, not very good.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: That was perfect, was it really?
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, perfect, great job, mark, All right.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: Well, let me give you your introduction.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: I did this to my kids all growing up.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, can I have your attention please for a man who needs no introduction, Jordan Alexander Kanashik.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right, Yep, all right, let me give you a little background, ladies and gentlemen, who we have.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: We have a 6'3", 235-pound linebacker who is currently playing for the Minnesota Vikings.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: When he was in college, he was the first team All-Pac 12 recognized for his outstanding performance during his senior year at the University of Cal Berkeley, which we have open-air preached at Ray.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, wonderful.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: I don't think we can get away with preaching there if we get back then.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: We have the Bear Backers Award honored as Cal's co-most valuable defensive player, alongside fellow linebacker Evan Weaver.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: And then professional career in 2019 signed as an undrafted free agent with the Carolina Panthers.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: In 2020-21 joined the Redskins.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Can I say that?
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: Should I say the?
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: commanders are there.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because I actually was neither part of the Redskins nor commanders.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: It says Washington.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I was part of the Washington football team, so I was in the intermediary period between the Redskins and the commanders.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: So I played for the intermediary period between the Redskins and the Commanders.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: So I played for the Washington.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: No Names.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: The Washington no Names.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, I love that, all right.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Well, there we go.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: We signed with the Cleveland Browns in 2022 to 23.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: You played 15 games and then, most importantly, you have now signed with the Minnesota Vikings Skull.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: Do you find that to be silly or epic when that skull starts happening at the beginning and the horn is being blown and the crowd is going crazy?
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: It's electrifying, it is loud and it is something that's just such a cool scene.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: Do not just the fans get into it, do the players.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Do you see the players get in and get into it as well?
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: It gets them in the zone and in the mood to go out there.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: And you know playing special teams, you're out there first, so you get ready to go down and run on kickoff or kickoff return, whatever it is, but yeah, it gets you in the zone.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Well, I absolutely love it.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Whenever I speak in Minneapolis, I always hint that I'm always looking for Minnesota memorabilia.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: And it's funny people.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, I did it.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: It was a few years ago, but somebody brought me a little mini helmet signed by Adrian Peterson, nice, and so I gave it to my son, ethan, and it's on his bookshelf right now.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: But, jordan, let's start off.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: We'd love to hear your story, right?
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Share your testimony with us.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: If you would Tell us about your journey, how you maybe fell in love with football or you were forced into football, whatever it may be, and then transition, if you may, into your relationship with Christ, how you became a Christian.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think when I share my testimony it's just all weaved together, because it's hard to separate me now from my relationship with Jesus.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: But growing up that just wasn't the case.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: In fact, football was everything to me.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I started playing sports when I was a young kid.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: At six years old, I began playing football.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Football was the one sport that I just loved dearly.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I played baseball and basketball as well, but football was a sport that I just fell in love with.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: There was something about football that was unique among the other sports.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I think it was something like just going out there and putting on the shoulder pads and helmet.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: I thought it was the cool sport.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And I thought baseball was probably the sport that I was most skilled at, but it just wasn't as cool.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't get to go out there.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: At what point did you realize that you wanted to get into the NFL?
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: When I was a young kid.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: It's funny because growing up, football was my favorite sport.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: But I also loved WWE wrestling, Loved the rock and that's why you became a linebacker.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: So you just hit someone.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Perfect little mixture of the two, and so that was always my dream.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: It was either to play in the NFL or to be a WWE wrestler.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Well, the WWE wrestling started to fade away as I started to get older a bit, but football never faded away.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: It was something that was always something I was passionate about, something that I loved, something that I obsessed over, and, in fact, it was an idol to me for so much of my life.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: It was what my identity it was in football.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Everything was pertaining to football.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: So, growing up, the first year I played I played flag football for a year and then I transitioned and tackle football.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: And what's really cool about my football journey is that my very first play I ever played in football tackle football I scored a 60-yard touchdown and I still remember the play.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: It was splat green, sweep right and I was playing flyback.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: I was essentially like a wide receiver, but I went in motion and I ended up taking the handoff right down the sideline and I think at that moment football had captured my heart.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: What's tackle football?
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Is it different than only untackle football?
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So the difference would be flag football and then you know tackle football and you've got American or football, the way that here in the States it's American football but most people know it as soccer.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Jordan, you said your identity was in football.
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: Tell me, for those who don't understand, what that statement means.
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: What does it mean to say my identity was in football?
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Everything that I thought about was pertaining to football.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: It's funny, because the question that I used to ask myself was is this making me a better football player?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Every decision that I made was based off that question, because if it was making me a better football player, I wanted to do it, but if it wasn't making me a better football player, I didn't want to do it.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And so when football was going well, life was going well.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: When football wasn't going good, life was going well.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: When football wasn't going good, life was in the dumps.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Did you have any faith in God at that point?
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I would have said I did.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I grew up going to church.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I grew up hearing about Jesus dying on the cross for my sins, but I didn't know how that applied to me, and I wore a cross around my neck and I would be one who would profess to know God with my lips.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: But my life was far from anything pertaining to God.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: And so I went to Catholic church and at 10 years old, my dad had taken me to a Christian church camp for the first time and there was a woman who had gifted me a Bible, and it was the NIV Adventure Kids Bible.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: This was in July of 2005.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: And the only reason that I know that is because she wrote the date on the cover.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: And that Bible laid dusty in my closet until the Lord saved me in 2019.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: So for 14 years.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of dust, a lot of dust.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And, like you say, you dust off that Bible when you finish witnessing to people.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: So I did that.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: But I'll rewind and just kind of get into my testimony and tell you guys how I came to know Jesus.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: And, like I mentioned, I grew up hearing about Jesus.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I knew about him but I didn't actually know him.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a relationship with him, and the verse that really comes to mind is when Jesus talks and says this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: So I knew about him, but I didn't actually have a relationship with him.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: In fact, my life was crazy.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: When I was 10 years old I smoked pot for the first time.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I got arrested two times in middle school shoplifting, getting suspended from school, getting in fights.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: There was a time in my life where my parents didn't know what to do with me and I'm fully responsible for the decisions that I made because I had two parents who loved me, who cared for me.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: I had no worries, no concerns in the world I grew up under.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I lived in a beautiful home, I lived in a suburban neighborhood, I had played all the sports in the world, I had the friends I had, all of that.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: But I chose to live a rebellious life, and so this really continued throughout my adolescence.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: And when I got to high school I began to have a little bit of shift in my conduct, in my behavior, and it was because of football.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Football was an idol and I realized I can't continue living this way if I want to go play college football.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: And so when I first got to high school, my mindset was I just want to play college football.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't really know anything about division one Freshman year in high school.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: Freshman year of high school.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: This was the mindset.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And do you know how big I was my freshman year of high school?
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Ray's size.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was going to say, oh, that's wonderful, I was 5'4", 130 pounds You're way bigger than Ray, so it was a really interesting time of my life because I was a late bloomer and so growing up football.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: So what did you eat to change things, ray's?
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: taking notes.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: It wasn't anything that I ate, it was actually something that I drank.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I should get sponsored for saying this Raw milk, raw milk.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Raw milk.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I drank that for about two years.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: It didn't help.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: No, it's too late.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I started to grow throughout my high school period but, as I was mentioning, there was a lot of conduct that I began to change.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: But it was like me putting a Band-Aid over an open wound.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I basically just tried to slap a little bit of Neosporin and a Band-Aid on top of the real issue.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: The real issue was that I had a dead heart.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: The real issue was that I was walking in darkness, that I loved my sin, but I was trying to clean up my life because football.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: It wasn't because I wanted to honor Jesus, it wasn't because I wanted to obey God, but it was because I wanted to go and play college football.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And so, throughout high school, there was this change in my behavior and I ended up graduating from high school and I didn't have any scholarship offers.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: And all the while, I still would have said I was a Christian.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Yet I was practicing lawlessness.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I was partying, I was still drinking smoking.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: That started to subside a little bit, but something that I couldn't quite get a grip on was my language and also my sexual immorality.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I was like, as Ray says, a moth to the flame.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I could not get away from it, no matter how hard I tried, and I was a young, hardworking man, pull-it-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of guy and those certain areas I was able to clean up some areas, but some I just couldn't quite get a grip on.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I ended up going to American River College, which is a community college.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I ended up getting hurt my first season.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I was running downfield on kickoff the very first game of the season, ended up breaking my hand.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: And it was a blessing in disguise because going into that season I wanted to do something called gray shirt.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: It's essentially red shirting, where you sit out your first year in order to develop, in order to grow, and you preserve a year of eligibility.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: And so I wanted to do that.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: But my coaches persuaded me into playing while I ended up getting hurt.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: And so it forced me to sit out that season, which was a blessing in disguise that next year I end up playing.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I end up having all the accolades that you can imagine from a junior college football player, led the state in tackles, was all American and had the opportunity to choose what school I wanted to go to.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: This was like the pinnacle of my life, right?
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: I told you guys in college or, excuse me, in high school, my freshman year I just wanted to play college football.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Well, now I'm having the opportunity to choose where to go to school, and not just choose any school.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: But I had an opportunity to choose to go to a Division I school and there was a handful of schools that I had turned down.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: To choose to go to a Division I school, and there was a handful of schools that I had turned down, and I was actually going to go into my third year, which was technically my second year of eligibility at American River College.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: But I ended up signing to the University of California, berkeley, and so I get to school there and again still would have said I was a Christian.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: You know, start seeing some of my teammates and just wanting to fit in at this time and wanting to be considered one of the guys.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: But I had a teammate of mine.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: His name was James Looney.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: James was part of Athletes in Action, which is a ministry among athletes, and he was going to Bible study.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: We had one of the guys come and lead a Bible study and I remember him asking me hey, you, hey, I see that you're a Christian.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Like I said, a word crossed around my neck you should come to Bible study.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: So I thought I might as well.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I've never really read the Bible.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And what year is this?
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: This was in 2016, which was my sophomore year of college, which was my first year at Cal, which was my sophomore year of college, which was my first year at Cal.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And I ended up going to this Bible study and I remember walking away and I was so discouraged because I didn't understand anything that was being talked about, and it reminds me of a few verses the natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, but considers them foolishness.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: He cannot understand them because they're spiritually discerned.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: I didn't have the Spirit.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Why were you discouraged?
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Why didn't you just say what a load of trash that was.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Didn't make any sense.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Well, I think I had this longing in me that knew that the way that I was living was wrong.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I think I had this longing in me to know that there was something more out there and I actually wanted to get to know who God was.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: But I wasn't willing to forsake my life, I wasn't willing to give up certain areas of my life and I just didn't really know.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I grew up going to church.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I heard the gospel, but I didn't understand how it applied to me.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: So I end up leaving discouraged.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: And I think, at this time, in fact, when you open up the YouVersion app, I think the first translation was the King James Version and it was thee thy thou.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I'm like how can anybody understand this, not to mention me.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I had trouble with reading and comprehension as a child, so I thought, oh man, I have no chance.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: And so I told my friend hey, man, that's for those religious people.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Like you know, I'm a Christian.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I'll read the Bible later in life.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: But that same friend continued to invite me and sometimes I went willingly and sometimes I went reluctantly.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Well, about a year later he was getting ready to go to the NFL and he had become a good friend of mine.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: He was somebody that I looked up to.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: He was a team captain.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: He was getting ready to get drafted.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: He was from Florida.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: We went out to lunch and we're talking, and we're talking about the plans.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I'm getting ready to go into my senior season.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I'm desiring to follow in his footsteps and I say what's next for you?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I can imagine you're going to go visit your family now that the season's over and then you're going to go get ready to go train for the combine.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: And he said yeah, but before that I'm going with Athletes in Action, we're going to go to Mexico and we're going to do some ministry work.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: I said oh, that's cool.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: When are you going?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: He said tomorrow.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Do you want to go?
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I'm like what do you mean?
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Do I want to go?
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: And he's like yeah, you should come.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: So we busted out the itinerary and he said we have a place of lodging, we have transportation, you should come.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: You have no excuses too, because we went to Australia from where we're raised from, and we got to play Oof.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Excuse me.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: New Zealand.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Psalm 51.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Praise the Lord, yeah, I can handle it.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: So we ended up going.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: So he said you have your passport, so you have no excuses.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: So I called my mom.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I'm a momless boy.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I had to make sure I was okay with her.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: So she said yeah, you should go on this trip.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: So I ended up going and it was the first time that I really got to experience the love of God in a tangible way, where there's these kids and I didn't have anything in common with them.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't speak their language, I wasn't part of the world that they were from, but I had this desire to serve, which was a miracle for me, because I was a greedy kid.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I would have thought how much am I getting paid for this work?
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: But that thought didn't come across my mind.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: And so, like many kids who come home from a mission trip or anything like that, you come back and you're on fire.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: And as I begin to reflect, like why is that the case?
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: And it dawned on me, it's because you do the things that you should do as a Christian.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: You spend time in God's word, you spend time in prayer, you spend time in fellowship, you spend time serving.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: And so I come back home to Cal and I think, okay, like this time I'm going to give my life to God.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: This time I'm going to do it, but I was still trying to earn a right standing with him through my actions.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I hadn't understood the gospel of grace.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So I ended up coming and I knew one of the areas of my life that I couldn't continue to live in was my sexual immorality.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: However, internally I knew it was wrong, but I had nobody really telling me and I hadn't really opened up the Bible to see what it said.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: And so I ended up getting in a relationship my senior year and we lived as if we were married.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: But we weren't married and by the grace of God, I end up getting out of that relationship.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I graduate from the University of California Berkeley the number one public university in the world getting ready to go to the NFL.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: All the accolades first team, all Pac-12, second team, all-american and if I would have died in that moment I would have went to hell.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I would have been separated from God for all of eternity because I just had this intellectual knowledge about who he was, but I didn't actually have a relationship with him.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: So I end up going undrafted to the Carolina Panthers and I end up getting to Carolina and we're in a period of time called OTAs, which stands for Organized Team Activities.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: This is essentially a spring ball.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: You go for eight weeks and you're practicing with the team, you're learning the system, and then you go home for about a six-week period and then you come back for the season.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I'm on top of the world.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I'm again.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: You know, had a dream to play college football, fulfilled that dream.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Now I'm in the NFL and it's like wow, this is amazing.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: And I ended up getting put in a hotel about 500 feet away from a megachurch satellite campus.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And at this time, god has been working on my heart throughout this process, through my friend James, who invited me to the Bible study through the Ministry of Athletes in Action over at Cal, and I ended up going to a church about 500 feet away.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: And I remember having this emotional experience, similar to the mission trip that I went on, where the music was good and I thought the preaching was good and I thought, okay, man, this time it was this continual, like me saying, this time I'm going to give my life to God.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: But I still hadn't understood my sin.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And so I end up going over the course of eight weeks and I'm starting to build some relationships with people within the church, and I end up going home after that eight-week period and, as I look back on this, there was three things that I lacked.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I lacked genuine contrition, genuine repentance and genuine faith in Jesus Christ.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: I hadn't yet fully acknowledged my sin, I was never sorry for it, I never changed my thinking about it, I never turned from it and I never actually exercised faith in Jesus.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: As Ray says, I was like a man 10,000 feet up an airplane and I knew I had to jump and I saw the parachute to my right, but I failed to put it on.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: I actually hadn't put on the Lord, jesus Christ.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I was making provision for my flesh.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I loved my flesh and I loved the desires more than I loved Jesus.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: And so I end up going home after this OTA period and I thought you know what Like my life?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I got to clean it up a little bit, but I had a friend of mine who had a girlfriend, who had a friend, and we had this premeditated plan that we're going to indulge in a weekend of sexual immorality, and it was something that I had done in the past, but this time it was different.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: We executed the plan.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: But this time I felt the weight of my sin come crashing down on me like a load of bricks.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: If you can imagine a cliff and there's a pack of rocks and then there's one rock that's holding the pack back and that first rock gets pulled from underneath and then they all come crashing down.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: That's what happened to me.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: It's that I felt the weight of my sin.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I felt dirty, defiled, shame, guilt, condemnation all of those emotions.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And at that moment the gospel made sense.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: The gospel made sense that I needed to be forgiven and I understood that I was a recipient of God's grace.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I realized that I was dirty, that I was defiled, that I was a sinner, that I had disobeyed God, not only through my actions, but also in my thoughts.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I was a hypocrite.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I was a blasphemer of God through my works.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: If people looked at my life, they would say that man, I want nothing to do with the God that he follows.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: And I understood at that moment that the cross was my only hope, that Jesus died on the cross to pay for my sins.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: He shed his blood, he rose from the dead so that I may have complete forgiveness and the gift of eternal life.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: And at this moment.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily have the language of repentance and faith, but I just remember the experience of crying out to God, realizing that Jesus Christ is my only hope.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I realized that I needed mercy, I needed forgiveness.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: And now I'm able to explain what took place and the feeling that I had inside of this sorrow, this deep regret for what I have, for the way that I had lived and for the way in which I was professing to know him, but just completely denying who he was through the way that I lived.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: And so that moment, my life changed.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: That was July 20th 2019.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And I remember going back to Carolina during the season and I remember thinking, okay, I'm a new man, I'm different.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: It was a miracle for me.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: I ended up getting baptized October 16, 2019, and that was a really important day for me to just profess publicly what happened internally and really partake in the death of my old life and being raised to a new life in Christ.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And at this point, you know I'm a Christian.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I've placed my faith in Jesus Christ, but I didn't really know what I should do next.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I wasn't being discipled, but I thought, you know, as a Christian, I should probably read my Bible, I should probably go to church, I should probably spend time in prayer.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: So I'm doing these things and I remember somebody saying hey, begin to memorize scripture, memorize scripture.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: So I started reading the Bible and if there was the verse that I liked, I would write on a three by five index card and I would just begin committing Bible verses to memory.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: And about a year later I look back at my life and I think, wow, my life has changed.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: What happened In the past?
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: I tried to clean up my life, but there were certain areas that I couldn't get a grip on.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: But the music that I listened to changed the way that I looked at women, changed my affections, my desires, my motives, everything changed.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: You changed.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: It dawned on me that I had become born again, that God took my stony heart.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: He reached into my heart with his invisible hands and he took out that stony heart and he gave me a heart of flesh.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: He gave me a heart that no longer loved my sin, but he gave me a heart that loved righteousness.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: He gave me a heart that wanted to please him and honor him and obey him.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: And I just had this insatiable desire to want to grow in my relationship with him and to know him and to know his word and to begin to share my faith, begin to tell people about Jesus.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: And I didn't really know how to do that, but I just said I need to do this.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: You know a?
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: while back I had the opportunity to share with the Denver Broncos before they played the Chargers.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: They were in the town and I got invited by Luther Ellis, who was the chaplain for the Broncos, to be able to share.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: And when I was all done, one of their DBs came up to me and he said you know, there's no greater feeling than a pick six and looking up at the jumbo screen and everybody going crazy.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: Back up a little bit back in February I did something that was really bad and I got fined by the NFL.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: I got released from the team and just two weeks earlier from this moment that I was talking with him, he said the coach called me up and he said do you still want to play?
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: And I didn't know why I was going to play?
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Because when you come out of that tunnel and the stand goes crazy, when everybody's going insane, I realize that I'm living for myself.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: But it wasn't until this very moment that you began to share that I've been created to know God, and it reminds me of something Charles Spurgeon once said.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: He said you will never glory in God till, first of all, god has killed your glorying in yourself.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Oscar, you talk about the telos right that we have a reason for existing, that everything has a purpose for what we do.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: You want to expand on that just a little bit?
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the telos.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Thanks, mark.
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: The telos is this idea, and it's actually a transition to a question.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: I have a follow-up for you.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: The telos is this idea that the Greeks believed that each one of us was created for a purpose.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: So, if you think of like and telos is the perfect version of that thing.
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: So I use the example of a watch.
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: The telos watch is the watch that tells time on time all the time.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: It's never a second early or a second late.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: It never dies of batteries, and all other watches are created to be like the telos.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: But all other watches will fall short.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: They run out of batteries, they're early, they're late, whatever the case.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: And so the question is what is the telos of man?
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: And the telos of man is Jesus Christ.
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: He lived the perfect life.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: He lived the life that we should have lived.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: When we think about how we were created to be the Heidelberg Catechism what is your only comfort in life and death?
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: That I am not my own, but I belong to Christ.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: I have been created to glorify and enjoy God forever, but I fall short of my created order by glorifying myself, by glorifying creaturely comforts, by glorifying sin, whatever the case might be, and the beauty of the gospel, of course, is that God means to redeem us, back to being more like his son, the telos, or making us be who he intended us to be.
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: So many of us are living our lives in the way that like.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: I'll explain it to people on the street If I tried to use a watch as a hammer, nothing good would come of it.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: The watch would break.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: The goal of hammering the nail would not come about.
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: We so often are living our lives outside of our telos.
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: We are our watch trying to be a hammer.
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: And that gets back to the question I wanna ask you, jordan.
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: Earlier I asked you to say what does it mean to find your identity in football?
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: Now, tell me, what does it mean to find your identity in football?
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: Now tell me.
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: What does it mean to find your true telos, your identity in Christ?
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: There's a verse in 1 Corinthians 8, 6.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: It says yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things and we exist for him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we exist through him.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: And so when I realized that I am not my own, that I've been bought with a price the precious blood of Jesus when I realized that I've got to wear some great titles in life I've been able to put on a college uniform, I've been able to put on an NFL uniform three different teams, four different teams but the greatest joy that I get to have is I get to be an ambassador of the most high God.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I get to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: So that's the greatest hat that I've ever worn and the greatest hat that I ever will wear, and that is a stewardship that I hold very highly.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: And it's not something that I take light.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: You know, I tell people often that to be a follower of Jesus is a great privilege, it's a great honor, but it's also a great responsibility.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: And I get to bear the name of Christ, and so I live like a hypocrite for so much of my life that I no longer desire to live that way, so to be able to put my identity in Him, knowing that those moments of running out the tunnel are fun, but the reality that I am a child of God, made possible through faith in Christ.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: There's no greater joy than that.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: How do you reach out to your fellow players that are so successful?
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Well, the same way that I reach out to anybody on the streets, it's you begin to tell them about their need for Jesus.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: And I've been so encouraged just by this Living Waters ministry, and the Lord knows how great of an impact that you guys have had in my life, in my walk with Jesus.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, ray, you've revolutionized the way that I share the gospel walk with Jesus.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, ray, you've revolutionized the way that I share the gospel.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I wish that somebody had shared the gospel with me the way that you do with the lost, and it's effective, because that's how God meant for it to be shared.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Through the law comes the knowledge of sin, and so I talk with my teammates and I'm looking for any opportunity that I can in order to segue from the natural to the spiritual.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: And so I don't know if there's ever a time where I don't use the law to bring the knowledge of sin.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: And so I tell them about their sin and their need for a Savior, and oftentimes, if I'm not using it directly on them, then I'm using it on myself to hopefully they reflect on themselves.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: But I use the law, I show them that they've broken God's law and then I give them the gospel of grace.
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: Not a lot of people can relate to being an elite pro athlete like us, and so my you didn't need to say it, just kidding, I know.
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: I apologize, but you know what I want to know.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: There are so many people that are concerned.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: Like man, if I share the gospel in my secular workplace, I'm going to be ostracized, I'm going to be looked at differently.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: People aren't going to respect me.
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: It might cost me my career.
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: Do you feel that tension, and how do you faithfully pursue the glory of God through that?
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: It's interesting because that's a question that I get asked from time to time, in fact, pretty often and for me, I'm bold in the proclamation of the gospel in my locker room and I think I have not been ostracized, I have not been looked down upon.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think it's.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: People look at me in a way that's man, that dude is genuine about what he proclaims to be true, and so I've heard people say I don't know who this originated from, but people can look at your life and they could say man, I don't believe what he believes, but he surely does, and so, by the grace of God, I've had opportunities to be able to minister the gospel in settings that I didn't think were possible.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: In fact, I'll share one of those with you.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Back in 2023, we're in training camp and we're in West Virginia.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: We went away as a team and we went to this resort I'm blanking on the name of it, but our coach head coach at the time, kevin Stefanski I was playing with the Browns, he had texted me, it was one of the first days of camp and he said hey, I would like for you to go in front of the team and I'd love for you to share your four H's.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: The four H's were your history, your hero, your heartbreak and your hope.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: And so I get an opportunity the first one on the team to sit in front of the whole organization, not only the players, not only the coaches, but the front office management, all of them and I get an opportunity in order to share my testimony, I get to share the gospel with the whole organization.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: And it was a moment where people came to me and they said, man, I didn't know that that's what you endured growing up.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that that was what your life looked like.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: They would have thought that I was just, you know, spoon fed, or that my life was just rainbows and butterflies.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: But I had endured some hardship throughout the duration of my life and chose to live in rebellion and in sin.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: And so it broke a wall with some of my players.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Because I think sometimes I asked one of my teammates before I said hey, what do the people it's interesting because you know Jesus came up to the disciples what do the people say about me?
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Who do the people say that I am right?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: And so I was just curious.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: You know, I wanted to get feedback from one of my teammates who was a brother in Christ.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: I said what do the people in the locker room say about me?
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm curious because I never want.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to have an opening to be able to minister Christ to them, and I don't want to be, so you know, untouchable or I'm holier than thou, because that's not the case at all.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: And he said oh, you know, people say that you're religious, you know.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: And I said okay, what can I do in order to mediate and be able to reach the locker room in a more effective way?
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: And he said be open, allow people to know more about your past.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: And I felt like I was open about my past and who I was before I was in Christ, but I began to just be more quick to do so, and it was a great perspective to be sharing to me, because God ended up using it.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: You know, I remember meeting Tony Dungy and he was across the table, the same size as this about, and I saw down he was wearing his super bowl ring and I commented on it and I said, oh, you're wearing your super bowl ring and without me even asking to be able to see it, he took off his ring and he bounced it across the table over to me.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: He didn't even know who I was.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: I picked it up and I was just thinking this man was not playing or coaching for a perishable crown right, that his goal, his desire, was to coach for an imperishable crown right, I like in Matthew 16, it says then Jesus told his disciples if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me, for whoever will save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: Or, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, when Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die that there has to come a moment.
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: There has to come a time and a point I remember I mean I never played college ball, right, but I remember when I played high school ball and I had torn a ligament in my knee.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Now we won our league, but it's high school and I still.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: I found my identity in the sports that I played and when the coach told me that I was done for the season, I remember crying like a little baby inside the doctor's office, thinking you don't understand.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: You know I've got all these plans.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: You know I wanted to run in the Olympics and play and run the high hurdles at a teammate of mine who ran in the Olympics as well.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: And we're just we're talking to each other, just going.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: This is what we're going to do.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: This is so great.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: But when I became a Christian, I lost my competitive edge.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Like I had no desire to really be first.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: I found myself, you know, in pickup games allowing the other person to win.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: What have you done?
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, how have you kept that competitive edge?
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Given Christ the glory and just running your race with endurance?
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: What have you done to maintain that?
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I understand yeah, that is a great question and I understand that God desires for us to be excellent in whatever we do, and so, every practice, there'd be four different verses that I would typically go through just in my mind to make sure that my heart was in the right place as I was getting out to play.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: And it was 1 Corinthians 10, 31,.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: It was Matthew 6, 33,.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: It was Colossians 323-24,.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for man, knowing that the reward of your inheritance comes from the Lord.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Serve the Lord Christ.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: And it was Colossians 317,.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father, through him.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: So I realized that God had put me in the NFL for a reason.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: He gave me an opportunity to be in the locker room, and it was a stewardship, and I was entrusted with that privilege, and so I wanted to work hard.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I wanted to excel, not for my own glory, as in the past it would have been.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: It would have been all about me.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Hey, look at me, look what I did.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I earned this.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to point to Jesus and say Lord, you've been so good to me.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: You've given me every ability that I've had, you've given me the functions in my body, you've given me the mind.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Think.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: You've given me these opportunities.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I just want to show you how thankful I am to you.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I want to offer my body as a sacrifice for you.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: I want to point people to you.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: I want to continue to be light in this locker room, and the better that I played, the more opportunities that I would have to remain in the NFL.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: And so I said, lord, whatever you want for me, I'm yours.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I die daily.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: So really it was scripture that motivated you and encouraged you and challenges you still to this day for the day to grind.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: You mentioned that you are currently in the injured reserve.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: There's a couple plaques that are hanging up in the Coronado training base for the Navy SEALs here in Southern California.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: We have a friend who used to work here, who was a Navy SEAL, and one of the plaques says your only easy day was yesterday.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: And then there's another one that says the enemy would like to thank you for not giving 100% today.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: Carry that over into the spiritual realm.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Carry that over into your day-to-day actions, with being on injured reserve, still trying to figure out your place within football, your place within your profession and how you're going to make money.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: What are you doing currently?
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: What is your mindset when you think man, the enemy's thanking me for not giving 100%.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know how long my journey is.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: I don't know what I'm doing.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: I don't know where I'll be next year.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: Where are you currently at within your mindset, knowing of all the different things that can happen to you, and how do you stay focused?
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: There was a breakthrough that I had back in 2021.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: And this was after I had just wrapped up my third season in the NFL.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I had got cut for the third time and I'm at home, I'm on the streets.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: It's a term that you use if you're a free agent and you're not signed with the team.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: You're on the streets and at this point, I didn't know if I was going to play another down of football.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Are you discouraged at this point?
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: At this point, like overwhelmingly discouraged, I had this overwhelming sense of peace, knowing that you know what, lord, like I trust you and it was really this surrender that came upon my life of and I had done it in the past.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I had realized, lord, if you want me to be in the NFL, you continue to provide the opportunities, you continue to provide the skill for me to go and exhibit.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Like it's all you Like, I'm just, I'm yours, mold me, shape me however you desire.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: But it dawned on me at that moment that you know what If I don't play another snap in the NFL, lord, I'm so thankful.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I'm so thankful because you've blown my mind.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: If you would have told me as a kid, as a six-year-old kid who dreamt of playing in the NFL, that I would get to experience what I've experienced, I would have said pinch me, lord, you're so faithful.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: And it dawned on me that you know what being on the streets or being a bottom half of the roster guy, where you're scratching and clawing trying to make your way on the team, and it's uncomfortable, and you're living out of a suitcase and you could get cut at any point, and it could be for something that you didn't even do wrong.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: They just need another roster spot.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: And so I'm renting vehicles, I'm staying in Airbnb, staying in family's basements that I don't even know, and it was very uncomfortable.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: But it dawned on me that you know what, lord, if it means that I'm a journeyman and I get to go and be an ambassador for Jesus Christ from team to team to team, in order to make you known, I'm willing.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: And so I was praying for an opportunity to go to an organization who knew nothing about me and to just get a fresh start, and God was faithful in providing that opportunity with the Cleveland Browns, where I had the most fruitful years of my career, not only on the field but, more importantly, in the locker room, and with the ministry that the Lord entrusted to me.
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: Mark, you're way more sanctified than me.
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: I can't let people win.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: I try.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: You are very competitive, Oscar.
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: I've gotten better over the years.
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: I have a question for you.
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: Just the other day, actually this last week I coached my son's basketball team and one of the parents reaches out to me and they're like, hey, my son, he's got this Bible study thing that he really wants to go to, but he's worried that you know if he misses practice, blah, blah, blah.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: And he's like, would you be okay?
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, of course you know, but there are so many kids out there who dream of being a pro athlete, um, who also desire to follow Christ.
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: What, what is like?
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: What would you want to say to that kid that is trying to prioritize one thing over the other and that might start to make those small sacrifices in regards to his faith, for his sport?
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: How would you encourage that kid?
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I would encourage that kid with the reality that sports, or perhaps whatever it is, those things are good, we ought to do them, we ought to enjoy them.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: God has given them to us for us to enjoy, but they need to be in their right position.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: And so, for me personally, I understand that there's nothing more important than my relationship with Jesus, and so that's first place.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: There's no compromising in that.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: And I've experienced some of life's greatest joys of being a professional athlete and running out of the tunnel and having your name on the big screen and forcing a fumble or getting an interception and the crowd erupts.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: And I've experienced those moments and they're fun.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: But I tell you what having a relationship with Jesus Christ far surpasses that.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: As Paul says, I count those things but rubbish for the sake of knowing Christ and being found in Him.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: And so I count all the achievements, all of the trophies, all of those moments.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: They're pale in comparison to knowing Jesus.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Ray, what advice would you?
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: Well, I would say something here that I just is oozing out of you and that is the high-octane fuel of gratitude.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: It's something that motivates me.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: It's always motivated me.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: When I saw my sin back 50 something years ago and then suddenly saw the cross, gratitude exploded in me and it never, ever dies down.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: And I can detect that in you.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: You've seen your sin, you've seen the cross.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: You realize what God's done and what we have in store for us.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Earlier on, you mentioned someone saying do you believe what he believes?
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: And he says no, but he does.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Speaking of a Christian, that was David Hume, a skeptic of the 18th century Saw a friend going to hear George Whitefield and he says you don't believe that, and the guy says no, but he does.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: And that's because the man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: When you're truly born again, you've truly seen your sin, you've truly been made a new person in Christ.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: There's no denying that it's an experience and that gratitude is so essential to drive us to reach the lost.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: You know, the Bible says to let your light so shine among men that they may actually see your good works.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Right, and it brings glory to your Father in heaven.
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: Martin Luther.
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: He said God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: Inside of your position, right, you're surrounded with people who, if they want a car, they just go write a check for the car, right?
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: How are you rich and good works towards elite people, towards rich people, to people who seem to have it all together?
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: How do you find yourself serving your fellow man in this position?
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: You quickly realize that they may look on the outside like they have it all together, but their souls are in turmoil because they are living for the world and they're loving things of this world.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: And you begin to realize that these people are continuously looking to fill something within them that only God can truly fill and only God can truly satisfy.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: And so you're right.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: These people, they could just go and write a check and they could buy whatever they want, and they have all of the world's goods.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: They have the fame, they have the success, they have the wealth, they have the women.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: They have all these things.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: But I see it time and time and time again that these men are lost, and so the greatest thing that we can do for them, the most loving thing we could do for them, is to be rich in good works towards them, and that can merely just be asking questions, asking how are they doing, being genuine and ultimately sharing the gospel with them, because it's the most loving thing we can do.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: And so, for these men in the locker room, they've experienced the pinnacles as well, and they'll tell you the same thing that I'm telling you it's nothing at the end of the day, because we're all going to die.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: We're all going to stand in front of our maker and we're all going to have to give an account of our life.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: And God is not impressed with our accolades on earth.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: He's not impressed with how many years we played in the NFL or how much money we earned, or how many, whatever it is.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: All that matters is.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: So how do you broach the conversation right?
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: I had the opportunity recently to share the gospel with one of the linemen for the Chargers.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: He claimed to be a believer.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: We recorded, filmed it for our television program, haven't done anything with it yet, but I had asked him what is the hardest part on being on the Chargers and doing what you're doing?
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: He's like man.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: I can't find a community of solid believers who I can resonate with and share with.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: Do you find that to be very similar?
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: I mean because, listen, actors cannot wear their religion on their sleeve, right that you have to kind of keep everything under wraps.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: But then after a game, you know, you see all of the different athletes on both sides.
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: They come to the 50-yard line, they kneel down and pray and it seems like there's a camaraderie there.
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: Is that more of a facade or do you find that?
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: No, there really is some deep fellowship within the brotherhood there with fellow believers.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: You know it's tough.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: There's a handful of men that I've been able to cross paths with who are genuine in their relationship with Jesus and who desire to live a life above reproach and desire to honor God and to love Him and to obey Him and to proclaim Him.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: But there's a lot of people who, quite frankly, they have the Bible verse on their Instagram bio or the cross around their neck or the tattoo on their arm with the Bible verse I can do all things through Christ.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know it could be very discouraging.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: But I tell you what my team chaplain, robert Brooks, with the Cleveland Browns.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: He was such an encouragement to me because there'd be so many times where I would feel so discouraged by seeing the state of the locker room and hearing the way that my professing fellow believers, the people who would profess to be believers, the way that they would speak, the way that they were living, and I would be so discouraged.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: But then I would go and I would see him and he wouldn't even have to say anything, but just his presence was encouraging.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: How would you handle someone who's professing Christ, who has got kind of a twisted prosperity belief that God wants you to be a winner, which you so often see it among professional athletes?
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: That's, I'm doing what God wants me to do.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: I always believe God to you know, make me win.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: How do you handle that?
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do the most loving thing that I can do and that's to go talk with him one-on-one.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: And I've used the Matthew 18 approach where I go and I go to him one-on-one and I say, hey brother, this is what I've seen and let me show you what the Word of God says, in hopes that that restores the brother.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: And it's hard to take the next couple of steps because in the locker room there's not really two or three witnesses.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Or to the church I don't really know how to apply that in the state of the NFL, my team chaplain we've talked about things like that.
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: I like that question that you asked earlier in regards to how do you, how do you walk up to somebody that has everything.
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: And it reminds me.
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: Your answer reminded me of what Jim Carrey said, which you know.
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: Jim Carrey was like the elite, greatest comedian you know top of his game was getting blockbuster films.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: And he has this quote I'll never forget.
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: He says sometimes I wish everybody would get everything they ever asked for the career, the accolades, everything so they could realize just how empty they truly are, meaning like the accolades aren't going to bring it to you.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: I know you asked the question in more of a rhetorical way, but I think some people sincerely ask the question how do you talk to somebody about the gospel who has everything?
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: And the lie in that sincere question is that they've somehow obtained some idol, some God that will bring them satisfaction and joy.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: And David Foster Wallace is the one that said one of the reasons why maybe, perhaps he was an atheist.
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: He said maybe, perhaps one of the reasons why you should worship God, the God of the Bible, is because all other gods will take from you the God of comfort, the God of money, the God of fame, the God of wealth, whatever it is.
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: They will ask more and more and more of you and give back less and less and less until you are utterly undone.
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: But only the God of scriptures.
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: When you lay down your life for him, you receive life, and so, in other words, I think the answer to your question, or the way you answered, is simply those people who have everything actually have nothing.
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: You answered is simply those people who have everything actually have nothing.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: You know, when you opened up at the beginning, you talked about the atmosphere in a crowd of 80,000 people.
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: I've been in a crowd of 80,000 people, I'll never forget it.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: It was called the Commonwealth Games, the mini Olympic Games.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: The roar of the crowd was magic.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: You cannot duplicate that on an 80-inch flat-screen TV.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: It's just not there the spirit of that and that is so appealing to humanity.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: But that to me, is just a tiny fraction of what you feel when you're truly worshipping God.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: And that sort of adulation is for God and not for human beings, because it doesn't matter how much people compliment you and say you're great, you just get to sleep at night alone.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: You close your eyes, you're alone.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: And the only way you can get that satisfaction I don't like to say it is through trusting in Christ, because I don't want to preach a man-centered gospel, no-transcript because they've got to come through the door of genuine repentance, genuine contrition, to find that completeness that you find in Christ.
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: You just reminded me of something, Ray, which is I went to.
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: I was at the Lakers game when Kobe hit the mid-range against the Phoenix Suns and he pulls off his shirt and you see the Olympic logo and the crowd was just going insane.
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: It was an overtime game and, like I couldn't hear myself scream, I couldn't hear the person that I was with screaming.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: It was the loudest event that I'd ever been to in my entire life.
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: If that is a sign of the angels singing over God, holy, holy, holy is Lord, God almighty, who is, was and is to come.
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: I almost messed up that verse.
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: I might've messed up that verse no, you did good, but the point is that is a small sampling of the cheer and glory that is to come in heaven.
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: Amen.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: Jordan as we wrap up here, if somebody's listening who wants to enter into professional sports or their profession, whatever that may be, what words of advice, what counsel, what challenge perhaps, would you give to them?
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: In other words, like if you could go back in time and you could talk to a 17, 18-year-old Jordan, right, knowing the future, knowing all that you know right now, what advice would you give to that person?
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: knowing the future, knowing all that you know right now, what advice would you give to that person?
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: I think, answering this question it kind of brings me back to what Ray and Oscar were just talking about, and I can't help but think about the woman at the well when Jesus approached her and he said whoever drinks of this water will thirst again.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will become in him a well of this world.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: You will thirst again.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: There's only one who can truly satisfy that thirst he is the bread of life.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: He who comes to him will never hunger and he who believes in him will never thirst.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: And so I would say work hard at that, enjoy those moments, but never let it be at the altar of your relationship with Jesus Christ.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Cherish that Bottle that Represent him, honor him, glorify him in all that you do.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: As Mark said earlier, jesus said let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: Let it not be about you, let it be about Jesus Christ, because all of our names will perish, not in the stat book of eternity, but there's one name that has been given among men by which we must be saved, and there's one name that will endure forever, and it's the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: So let that be the name that we play, for that we work, for that we do all things for Amen.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: Well, there we have it, friends.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: Remember one with God will always be in the majority.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter who is against you if Christ is for you.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: Jesus paid it all.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: So here's the question for you Will you stand for him with the same boldness and courage and sacrifice as those who have gone before you?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: I've often told my kids, when I die, bury me in an unmarked grave with my name, not even on the tombstone, just simply saying here is a man that was forgiven by Christ and believed him, took him at his word.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: So listen, don't forget the Evidence Study Bible.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: All at livingwaterscom.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: Pray for EZ.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: Hopefully he'll be back with us next week, hoping that his hangnail hangs in there.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: We think he's actually sick.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: We'll see.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: But God bless you, friends, and thank you for joining us where we have no idea what we're doing still here on the Living Waters podcast.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: You chickened out, didn't you?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say that.