The faith of an MVP
What a game! It’s just too bad that both teams couldn’t have won; they are superbly coached and have many outstanding players. Among those players are several who openly praise God for their success. Frankly, it warmed my heart to see both quarterbacks kneeling in prayer before the game on television.
Patrick Mahomes, the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs and NFL and Super Bowl game MVP, expressed his faith to the media during the week before the game by giving God the glory for whatever he does. To quote, “My Christian faith plays a role in everything I do. I mean I always ask God to lead me in the right direction and let me be who I am for His name. So it has a role in everything that I do, and obviously it will be on a huge stage at the Super Bowl that He’s given me and I want to make sure I’m glorifying Him while I do it.”
Mahomes had pointed to God after the Chiefs ground out a victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship Game on Jan. 29 (and he did so again after his team won the Super Bowl). When interviewed, he immediately said, “First of all, I wanna thank God, man. He healed my body this week to battle through that. He gave me the strength to be out here.” This isn’t the first time Mahomes has given God the glory for what he has done. In 2020, he said, “I understand that He’s given me a lot of blessings in my life, and I’m trying to maximize them and glorify Him.” His mother added that he was saved while attending middle school.
Interestingly, this Super Bowl featured two quarterbacks who are vocal about their faith. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has said the he could never succeed without God. He told CBS Sports in September, “I’ve just matured and realized that God is everything and He’s worthy of praise. You have to put Him at the center of everything that you do. That’s what I believe. All my spiritual wisdom—
of my wisdom as a whole— comes from Him, in some way, shape or form, whether that be passed down from my father, my mother, my grandmother. I just think, in all the things that we experience in life — good, bad or indifferent — you have to keep Him in the center. I give Him all the praise, I lean on Him all the time, and I know that everything unfolds the way it’s supposed to.”
If you think about it, there are a lot of professional athletes who routinely lift up their hands to praise God whenever they do something significant like make a touchdown. We see it in basketball, baseball and other sports as well. This is significant, since the media is reluctant to carry anything related to God, and it is obvious it takes quite an effort to praise God when so many others are ignoring him.
So much of what we see or hear in the media these days has ulterior motives. People want to be elected,
have their names enshrined before the public both for glory and for financial gain, and appear overjoyed whenever someone bestows some kind of award upon them. This obviously is not the case with these athletic stars. Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts are not worried about money — they’re rich — and they’re not worried about fame and fortune. They’re at the top of their game and are known by everybody. And, they are not worried about promoting a particular brand of Christianity, since they never mention a church or a particular religion.
Since they espouse Christianity, one may assume that they also believe in Jesus, but their media statements focus specifically upon God. There is no biblical quotations or theology involved, or specific entreaties of God for winning. They just want to praise God for allowing them to be who God made them to be. That’s admirable. If it were about asking God for special favors, like winning the Super Bowl in 2023, it would present God with a dilemma: How do you answer the same
request from two strong Christian prayers? Someone has to win and someone has to lose. That’s the reality of the game of football and of life itself.
One would hope that the witness of these two athletes and others like them would be an encouragement to young people (and others who are seeking) who are growing up in a country that really longs to be a religionless society much like Karl Marx envisioned a long time ago. Whenever a person considers the immensity of the universe and the uniqueness of our planet, it doesn’t take a lot of mental acuity to recognize the creativity and sustainability of God. To refuse to recognize God is to ignore the realities of the past and to severely limit the possibilities of the future.