I love this chapter- I call it the Faith Hall of Fame! As I have walked in faith on this journey I call “My Wild Goose Chase”, The Lord has been stretching and refining my faith- asking me to trust in the unseen word He gave me on the trail in VA. There have been many “dangers, toils and snares” along this path and my resolve has been tested over and over again. But, God has been so gracious and faithful to encourage and strengthen me for each challenge I have faced. Many of those closest to me have “laughed” at the seeming “absurdity” of my path. But, you know, just as with Tim Tebow, I have found many friends, relatives and “strangers” who have been encouraged by my story of faith. Many of Tim’s fans are not Christians but are still drawn to his “story” of faith and passion! Like the shepherd boy who stood up to Goliath, people respond to “crazy” acts of faith. Many jeer and sneer, laugh and rebuke but, secretly, I have to believe that they wish they had a faith like that. A courage to live from the heart against all odds. Like David, God calls each of us to live counter intuitively. To step out of our “little” stories and journey with the One who Created the Heavens and the Earth! To have the Faith that looks your “Goliath” in the eyes and says- “who or what are you compared to the mighty God I serve?” “I put the reputation of the Living God on the line and will live by faith, the kind that moves mountains”.

It is my prayer that my faith would be found pleasing to my Lord and an encouragement to you my fellow faith traveler. Blessings to you on your journey! Love, Jon
Hebrews 11
By Faith
1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.
3By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. 4By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead.

5By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

7By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

8By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

11By faith Abraham, even though he was past age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he[a]considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

13All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. 14People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

17By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring[b] will be reckoned.”[c] 19Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

20By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.

21By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

22By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.

23By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

24By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. 26He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. 27By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. 28By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

29By faith the people passed through the Red Sea[d] as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.

30By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days.

31By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.[e]

32And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, 33who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37They were stoned[f]; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. 40God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Tebow draws fans like no other in NFL

By Les Carpenter, Yahoo! Sports
Sep 7, 2:46 pm EDT

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – They arrived like pilgrims this summer, each looking for something different and yet ultimately searching for the same thing: a hero, an inspiration, somebody to believe. It was, as the woman, a nurse and mother of six said, they were tired of “the garbage” of “the gunfights and murders and dogfights.” She wanted someone her children could admire.
Josh McDaniels’ faith in Tebow might be as strong as the quarterback’s growing fan base.

As the summer wore on and the Denver Broncos training camp stretched through August, the lines of cars inched along Arapahoe Road, winding around the office park and delivering fans to a hill beside the Broncos’ practice fields. And they came devoted, wearing his jersey, No. 15, despite the fact he was the team’s third-string quarterback.

They shouted his name. They screamed for handshakes and hugs, autographs, anything to get close, to touch him, until no one around the team had seen anything like this before. Not for a player who had yet to do a thing in professional football.

Arguably, the biggest story in the NFL this summer was not in Minnesota and had nothing to do with the New York Jets. It wasn’t a holdout or the recalcitrant Albert Haynesworth(notes). It was here where the team’s store at training camp – a trailer in the parking lot – sold any number of different Tebow shirts in various sizes and nothing for Kyle Orton(notes), the starting quarterback and perhaps the Broncos’ most important player this season.

“It’s been an interesting summer,” several Denver players said shaking their heads.

And the story only continues this Sunday in Jacksonville, Fla., Tebow’s hometown, where serendipity has the Broncos playing the season’s first game just 1 ½ hours from Gainesville, where Tebow won a Heisman Trophy and the Florida Gators were the 2006 and 2008 national champions. Tebow might not even play. If he does it will be for only a few moments. And yet the game is all but sold out in a stadium that was sold out just once for an NFL game last season. Sports radio is filled with callers who wonder why the Jacksonville Jaguars didn’t draft the quarterback who they are certain would have become the franchise’s savior in Northeast Florida.

There has really never been a player like this in the NFL. One whose every move appears to be so pure and without pretense that he is beloved by millions, many of whom wouldn’t call themselves sports fans. Yes, much of it is based on his Christian faith and his proud admission that as a star athlete he is still a virgin and also about the television commercial he filmed with his mother explaining why she did not abort him when it appeared that complications were life-threatening.
It was this devotion of his fans that led Tom Krattenmaker, the author of “Onward Christian Athletes,” a book about player’s expressions of religion, to say: “the way fans talk about him is almost idolatry.”
But Tebow’s fan base goes beyond those who share his faith. “I’m Catholic and he’s [evangelical] Christian. We couldn’t be farther apart,” said Don Tehan of Denver. “A lot of people believe he’s going to win. We think he’s going to take us to the Super Bowl.”

Just days after the draft in late April, when he was taken in the first round by Denver, his Broncos jersey had become the No. 1 seller in the NFL. And this summer when Nike put a training shoe in his name on sale, it sold out in 15 minutes. Such things do not happen in sports. Not to players this young, with seemingly no redeeming talent to play professionally.
Yet every day, hundreds of No. 15s stared down at the Broncos practices.

Where has this happened before, especially for a player who is still deemed a project, about whom many NFL people still sit on the fence unsure if he has a chance at an average career and only a small few – including Broncos coach Josh McDaniels – believe to be a superstar in the making? It is unprecedented.

“I don’t know if I can put it into words,” said Debbie Hightower, the nurse, who is at Broncos practice wearing his jersey. She is originally from Orlando, Fla., and considers herself a Florida Gator fan but has lived in Denver for two years. “He’s a good player and a great person. I find myself drawn to those players.”

About 20 feet away stood Jon Cannon. A pleasant man, he smiled easily as he held a sign with the Bible verse 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity but spirit of power, of love and of self discipline.”

Cannon is from Charleston, S.C., he always admired Tebow’s devotion to his Christian faith, especially at a time when bad things were happening in his own life to make him question the strength of his belief. It was on those Saturday afternoons when Cannon watched college football on television and saw Tebow as “such a good witness of his faith.” This past summer he was hiking the Appalachian Trail in Virginia when he kept bumping into people from Colorado. He took this as a sign and stopped and prayed as to why he was meeting Coloradoans.

God, Cannon said, told him he is supposed to come to Denver to work for Tebow’s charitable foundation. So Cannon flew out. He wrote a letter explaining this to Tebow and handed it to safety David Bruton(notes), who happened to be the first player he could find and asked Bruton to hand it to Tebow. Two days later he wasn’t sure if Tebow had seen his letter. So he held his sign and hoped Tebow would notice.

Such is the lure of Tebow.

“People may not agree with his beliefs but they admire his conviction,” Cannon said. “People are looking for that hero. He’s living what he believes and he’s genuine.”

Tebow, who professes to have locked himself into studying the NFL, nonetheless notices the mania that surrounds him.

“I think it would be hard to miss,” said rookie wide receiver Eric Decker(notes), who was Tebow’s training camp roommate. It was Decker who watched the mail pile up, watched the fans clamor for attention, examined the player’s personal hyperbaric chamber in which everyone now knows Tebow sleeps, and he wondered how anyone could deal with such a mania.

“Yet at the same time, he has surrounded himself with the right people,” Decker said

Maybe his new teammates would resent it, wondering why a quarterback whose NFL potential is still very much in question. But he has been charming, so unfailingly polite they couldn’t hate him. And like everyone else, they have melted.

“You can tell this is a kid who didn’t ask for any of this,” said Broncos wide receiver Brandon Lloyd(notes).

And yet now that it has only grown, Tebow says he is unfazed.

“This is part of the platform you are on when you are the quarterback at the University of Florida and you are on a pedestal and then you do the things we have done, the attention comes,” he said pleasantly but flatly.

Then he brightened.

“It’s not all negative,” he said. “I do have the opportunity to go to hospitals.”

He said this with seriousness, not the phoniness of some athletes who use public events like hospital visits to buff their public image, but rather with joy as if it genuinely pleases him to see sick children. And it will probably be seen by thousands more who will find it as a sincere gesture in a sports world where athletes are so hard to trust.

The mania will continue to burgeon as it moves into the season, back to Florida, to his hometown and propel the Broncos toward a year like none a team has ever seen.

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