ChristianNews
Michael Vick shared how he used God’s word to get drafted into the NFL, but left it behind once he signed his $10 million NFL contract, only to have to pick it up again when he found himself in trouble.
Vick shared his testimony when he spoke at Liberty University’s Convocation.
The retired NFL quarterback shared with the students that he started reading the Bible when he was 12, because he thought it would give him the edge he needed to fulfill his dream of one day becoming an NFL player.
Reading the word and following its instructions paid off. Vick was drafted by the Atlanta falcons, and signed a $10 million deal, but it was also at that point he stopped reading God’s word.
“When I got drafted and I got that $100 million deal and when I went to Atlanta, this didn’t come with me,” Vick said as he held up his Bible. “I must have left it under the pillow in the neighborhood that I grew up in. I really felt like I did it on my own. I totally forgot about the prayers that I had at night — numerous prayers, numerous nights where I asked God to forgive me for all my sins.”
“The correlation is that I lost sight of everything that I felt that I needed in order to become the man that I wanted to become
Vick explained that he didn’t read the Bible from the time he got drafted in 2001 until he went to prison for dog fighting in 2007.
“The correlation is that I lost sight of everything that I felt that I needed in order to become the man that I wanted to become,” Vick said. “From all the role models that I had from my high school coach to my uncles to [former Virginia Tech head football coach] Frank Beamer, I just left everybody behind.”
“All those years I was going through the Bible and trying to interpret what was being said and trying to understand it. When I went to [prison], it gave me strength. It gave me a reason to believe,” he said. “It empowered me in such a way where empathy and sympathy became important and perseverance became important and being a role model became important — all these things that I forgot about, all these things that was unimportant to me all of a sudden became important again.”