Tim Tebow and God's providence

How many people have actually escaped the Tim Tebow phenomenon the last three months? It would seem few, even among those who have little interest in football. The stunning exploits of Tim Tebow and his team, the Denver Broncos, have captured widespread attention. During an eight-game stretch, Tebow helped lead his National Football League team to seven victories, often in comebacks against great odds. Three times, they won in overtime. Though his team and he lost their final three games of the regular season, they qualified for the playoffs.

Because Tebow is an outspoken, evangelical Christian, many believers have followed him closely. But his bold witness also has produced many Tebow haters.

The rise of Tebow in the American consciousness hit a new peak last Sunday, when the Broncos upset the defending American Conference-champion Pittsburgh Steelers. On the first play from scrimmage in overtime, Tebow hit Demaryius Thomas on an 80-yard touchdown pass to win the game, 29-23. He passed for a total of 316 yards – a stat that many reporters and bloggers, including non-Christians, connected to John 3:16. That address of what is probably the best known verse in the Bible was one Tebow inscribed in his eye-black for a big game when he was quarterback at the University of Florida.

The interest, and reaction, not only in the United States but around the world was overwhelming. The CBS-TV affiliate in Denver reported the winning pass Sunday produced a record 9,240 tweets per second, according to Twitter. Based on Tebow’s passing yardage, John 3:16 was the most widely searched item on Google for much of Sunday night into Monday, according to Denver’s CBS station. The TV audience was the largest ever for a NFL, wild-card game.

To watch and listen to Tebow at a press conference after such a win is undoubtedly frustrating for sportswriters looking for provocative quotes but inspiring and instructional for Christians and some others. He thanks the Lord Jesus. He continually deflects attention to his teammates and coaches. He demonstrates humility and unselfishness in a sports culture too often marked by displays of self-glory and entitlement.

One of the subjects the heroics of Tebow and his team have brought attention to is God’s involvement in their success. After a well-known TV sportscaster tackled the subject Dec. 11, a young theologian responded with a blog post for The Gospel Coalition. You can read Owen Strachan’s post here. You will have to read it to get the entire flow of his thought. Strachan, a professor at Boyce College in Louisville, Ky., finished his post – which he titled “Tebow, Calvin and the Hand of God in Sports” – with the following:

As with every other believer, God's hand is leading Tebow's life, blessing him as he applies Christian character to the task before him. God moves in mysterious ways. As previously stated, I do not have biblical grounds for seeing Tebow's fourth-quarter heroics as an outworking of God's direct causation. But I do know that God often delights to spurn the wisdom of the world by the efforts of his people (1 Cor. 1:20).

And I know, lastly, that the most important story here is not that Tebow and the Broncos are winning in dramatic fashion, but that the Lord seems to have worked in this man such that, though faced with unbelievable fame, major wealth, constant attention, and the classically all-American success story, Tebow seems only to want to talk about the gospel.

That, my friends, is the real miracle, and the work in which all of us -- whether church planter, pipe-fitter, or homemaker -- may participate.

Strachan wrote a similar piece for the readers of The Atlantic that was published today. You can read it here.

Also, Nathan Busenitz posted today five reasons he likes Tebow and five concerns he has about Tebow mania. You can read it here.