Whether or not he leads his team to victory in the Super Bowl this Sunday, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Nick Foles has a plan for his future. He wants to become a pastor.
At a media event three days before the championship game, Foles told reporters that he has already taken steps toward that goal and thinks he might like to become a high school pastor.
“When I speak to high schoolers, when I speak to middle schoolers, that’s such a time of young men and young women’s lives that there’s a lot of things that are thrown at them, so much temptation in this world,” said Foles, according to a CBS Philly report.
“I took a leap of faith last year and signed up to take classes at seminary, and do that in the offseason, because in the offseason there’s a lot of down time, so I wanted to be productive, I wanted to continue to learn and challenge my faith,” Foles said.
After considering retiring from the NFL, Foles said, he prayerfully decided that returning to the sport he loved was the best way to live out his faith.
“The reason I decided to come back is I’ve loved the game of football since I was a kid, I loved playing sports, I loved being part of a team and I knew as a person that the more growth I’ve had and the more opportunity I would have to glorify God and trust in him would be to go back and play football.”
Last fall Foles took part in the YouVersion Bible App, which features professional football players talking about how Bible verses have inspired them. In the devotional series, Foles talked about his struggles, according to a CBS Sports report:
“I kept reading scripture, I kept praying, I kept asking God — and so many of us ask God for signs, we ask God, ‘Hey, please just put it on the wall, like, I want to know,’ but that’s not how it works,” Foles said. “He’s not always going to do that. He was shaping me. He was bringing me down to my knees … At that moment, through that prayer, He said, ‘Hey, just take a step of faith. You’re either going to stop playing the game of football and you’re going to go onto a different area of your life and I’m going to be with you, I’m going to be the most important thing in your life, or you’re going to step back into football and you’re going to continue to play and I’m going to be with you every step of the way and you’re going to play to glorify me.”
The Eagles take on the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII on Sunday.
And today we celebrate...