Christian Hospitality Committee

The Lifestory of Joe Gibbs

When Joe Gibbs was a young lad he moved with his family from North Carolina to California. Little did he know that his days of moving had only just begun. After college Joe went into a life long coaching career, beginning at San Diego State University. In the ensuing years he criss-crossed the country until becoming head coach of the Washington Redskins. For twelve years he was their head coach, compiling one of the most impressive records in the history of the game. Joe led his team to the Super Bowl four times. Three times they were world champions. But the life of this NFL coach has not just been filled with Super Bowls. In this recording Joe Gibbs frankly shares his life in pro football. More important you will hear how his faith in God has made him able to cope with both the stress and success of a coaching career. So let’s bring in the coach. Here’s Joe Gibbs.

How did I get this opportunity? Sometimes do you ever stop and say, “How in the world did I get someplace?” You’re talking about a guy who went to school and got a bunch of C’s. Sat on the front row and pointed at my lettermen jacket and said, “I need a C. I need to be eligible.” Many people ask, “Joe, how did you get to be the head coach of the Washington Redskins?” It’s not like you get a PhD in coaching or something. I have to tell them, “I don’t know”

I wound up in San Diego State and I got to be about a junior or senior out there and used to kid my mother because I was trying to make up my mind. Do I want to be a neurosurgeon, a physicist, or a football coach. I said what the heck I’ll be a football coach.

I got on that staff there at San Diego State coaching. I wasn’t good enough to play pro sports. I’ll tell you a trivia question for all those sports fans. That original coaching staff at San Diego State had a guy on it by the name of Don Corielle who went on to coach in pro ball in two different places and did a fantastic job. Some people graded him as the best ever and then there was the guy by the name of John Madden. That’s who I worked under. I went in and volunteered for that job and I said, “Hey I’ll work for nothing.” That’s how I got started coaching. The most important job I had was to go to the local Jack in the Box and get the tacos and hamburgers and bring them back and the only time I really got in trouble was if I left something off John Madden’s taco.

I wind up moving on and coaching a bunch of places and of all things got an opportunity to go the Washington Redskins to coach their football team as the head coach. I started out 0 and 5. Now 0 and 5 in Washington is a big deal. I was looking for different ways home at night. I didn’t want anyone to know where I was. I told Pat to please get rid of the dog because it’s no telling what’s going to happen. But of all things we get this thing turned around and got to go to some Super Bowls and, I tell you, it was one of the greatest experiences anyone could ever have.

Then about a year ago several things had happened in my life and I made up my mind I was going to step down and try to get a little closer to my family and enjoy some of those things. Some people used the word retired and I said I’m not old enough to retire. To illustrate that, we were getting ready to play out in Seattle and I was walking down the hall in this hotel and I heard this music coming out of the ballroom. I said, “Man, that’s my year. That’s the fifties. That’s some fifties’ music.” I went down there and I asked them, “What’s going on?” They said, “It’s a reunion.” I said, “What year?”" and they said, “1959″? and I said, “That’s my year.” I was all excited and I go charging down there and I threw open the doors of this place and I looked in there and I went, “Good Gosh, these people are old.”

I don’t feel old enough to retire but I did wind up retiring and of all things I had a dream about getting into auto racing. I had one big challenge there and that was to talk my wife, who could care less about auto racing, into coming in and spending some of her money on race cars. My wife is very tight. I asked somebody in the racing world, “What’s the best race to bring my wife to. I can’t bring her to some of those long things and bring her out in the heat. We’ll be dead.” They said, “OK, I’ll tell you what, bring her to Charlotte. We’ve got a beautiful racetrack there. They’ve got these two hundred and fifty thousand dollar suites. We’ll put her up into one of the suites. We’ll get a lot of food and people to talk to. There’s going to be three races in this particular race. She won’t get bored.” I said,” Man, that’s great.” What a great game plan. Sure enough, it turned out perfect. The day was just right. The people, the box, everything’s great. I got Pat up there trying to persuade her with all that stuff. We got down there and this first race starts and twenty laps into the first race and I looked and Pat was totally asleep. I knew we were in trouble. I said, “Good Gosh, what are we going to do here?”

I kept talking and I got my two sons to talk and we eventually persuade my wife to make an investment in a race car team. Now in Nascar they start out with the Super Bowl. Our first race was the Daytona 500. Our car started thirty-first in this race because we got in a wreck qualifying so we’re way at the back. Well, Pat’s up in this box now and she’s got money in this car and they said every time that car came by she was on her toes and she’s watching her money go by. We started thirty-first and we go right to the front. We’re seventh after two hundred miles. They said Pat was up there saying this is a piece of cake. We’re going to win our very first race. At about three hundred and fifty miles three cars decide to go abreast on the back straight away and there’s a fourteen car wreck and guess who’s car is right in the middle of it? Our car gets tore all to pieces. It’s the only one that we’ve ever lost. Now I’m in the back and I’m all dejected and I said, “I better go find Pat.” I went to the box and she wasn’t in the box. They said she’d left. She’d gone to the motorhome. I beat it down to the motorhome and go inside and there’s Pat laying on the bed in the motorhome and she looked at me and the first thing she said was, “I don’t think I like this.” The second thing she said was, “How much did that cost?” I told her no problem, it’s in the budget.

Somehow we’ve managed to survive our years in racing. We love that. My one son’s working there and we’re having a ball with that. Pat doesn’t quite understand that though, either. The one son that’s working in racing always wanted to get into racing and after five years of college he’s changing left side tires on race day. Pat goes, “Five years of college and he’s changing tires?”

The other thing I’m doing is a little TV analysis. You’ve heard all those guys. Now those guys are the biggest critics of the coaches on the sideline. I’ve moved about two hundred yards up in the box up there and I tell you I’m getting a lot smarter. I’m second guessing these guys like mad. We’re having fun doing that. I’m enjoying the TV part of it.

I tell you the last three years though have been kind of a trying time for me. About three years I lost my father who was somebody I really, really loved. He was cop and a tough guy and somebody that was really close to me. I had the chance to stand at the foot of his bed and see him kind of be sorry for some of things that he had passed by in life. About two and one half years ago I lost my spiritual father. He was a little Sunday School teacher who came really close to me at the University of Arkansas. We were probably at opposite ends of the world. He, I don’t think, had ever played a sport of any kind in his life. He was a businessman, yet that guy just took me to heart. He prayed over me and brought me back to where I should be. I had a chance to talk to George and realized in his last days there were some things that he’d looked at and wished that he had done better job.

At the same time I lost a real good friend of mine named Glen Brenner. Maybe some of you know that he was a sportscaster in the Washington area. Here’s a guy who was totally different than the other two. My dad was seventy-two and George was in his seventies. Here’s a guy who was forty-four years old and had just run a marathon. Within two weeks after that marathon he had an inoperable brain tumor and passed away. I had a chance to stand at the foot of his bed. You know what that caused me to do after losing all three of those guys? I started doing a little analysis myself. I’m fifty-two years old and my dad passed away at seventy-two. How much longer do I have? How am I investing my life? What are some of the things that I might be sorry for when it comes to that time when I realize that I don’t have much longer to live myself. It’s caused me to really think. It’s been a good time but a sad time. It’s caused me to really evaluate my life. I got to tell you guys, I’ve wasted some of the years of my life. I think the question becomes what am I going to do with the rest of the years I have.

Let me back up and tell you a little bit about my life. I grew up in the hills of North Carolina. My grandmother and mother had me go to church there. I can remember some of the first big decisions I had to make in life because in school I was being taught that two amoeba happened to hit in a muddy puddle of water a couple million years ago and we evolved into man and woman. Or I was being taught in my church by my pastor and my grandmother and in Bible school that, no, that wasn’t the case at all. God looked down and loved me and made me special and put me on this earth with special abilities. That was the two things I was weighing. I started searching for some truth in that because you know you like to have proof that it’s truth. Those were the things that I was really searching for. I started looking around at the world. If you want proof look at this world. The way this thing is put together. Ain’t it marvelous? We’ve got trees, we’ve got men and women with the ability to love each other. Could that be an accident? Think about it. Sometimes I use my watch as an example. I’m not real smart but I know this is a complicated piece of machinery here. I know where there’s a watch there’s a watch maker. I can figure that out. I tell you what, you look at this world and the way this thing is put together and I tell you what, I’m not very smart, but where there’s a world there’s a world maker. I think that is real proof.

I think the Bible is the second bit of proof to all of us that God exists. When you think about this thing, it was written by thirty-five authors over a period of fifteen hundred years and so far everything from the beginning to the end has been perfect. Do you know how hard that is. I tell you how hard that is. I went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to be the offensive coordinator down there. Now in football language offensive coordinators are the guys that make the calls on the sidelines. I went down there and I was so excited because, man, I wanted to be a head coach and I knew my next step up was going to be a head coach as soon as I went down there and put the Tampa Bay Bucs in the Super Bowl. I made up my mind that was what I was going to do and I went down there and the first thing that the head coach said was, “Joe, why don’t you go out and work out the quarterbacks.” I said, “OK” and I went out and did that. I came back in and he said, “What do you think?” I said, “I don’t think we have one.” He goes, “I agree with you. I don’t think we do either and so let’s go try and find one.”

We went out and worked out some quarterbacks and we came across a guy named Doug Williams. We drafted that guy in the first round and I was all set. I’m on the sidelines and I’m calling plays and you can see them wave guys signals on the sideline and we kind of developed that, and that was the way I was calling plays to Doug. It was a short quick way to get things into the quarterback. We took off and won a game or two and then we lost a couple of games and Coach came to me and said, “Joe, listen. I’m not real comfortable using those signals. I want to know what plays you’re calling . I want you to tell a player on the sideline who will go in and tell Doug Williams who will tell the team.” Now have you ever tried calling a play like this play? Trips right zoom, liz nine eighty-nine F cross snake. Now you want to try and call that to a receiver that’s been hit in the head about three times that’s going to go in and tell Doug Williams.

They go in and tell Doug and Doug looks back and goes, “What was that?” I’m here to tell you we went about another two games and we lost another couple. Coach came to me and said, “Listen Joe, I’ve figured this out. I don’t think you’re real comfortable on the sideline so I want you to go up in the press box where you’re used to calling those plays and you call the play down to an assistant coach on the sidelines who will tell a player on the sideline who will go in and tell Doug Williams who will tell the team.”

Do you realize a lot of people call plays like that? What’s wrong with that? It’s just like at the party where you passed the sentence around the room and when you get to the other side what? It’s never the same sentence. That’s too complicated. That’s too hard to do. Stop and thing about it. Thirty-five over a period of about fifteen hundred years. Now how hard is that? What’s that tell you? This book (The Bible) is a miracle. This book was put here by God. This book is our game plan. When you go to play a game you’ve got to have a game plan. When we go and play a game we know what we’re going to try and do. We got about seven running plays. We got about twelve passing plays on first down and we know what we’re going after. This book is our game plan. If you want to study the way to succeed in life, God left this for us and this book is a miracle.

Now I put those two things together along with my grandmother’s love for me and I started thinking about some other things. I started picking up from my Bible school and from my grandmother and mother the story about God’s love for you and me. He put Adam and Eve here and He loved them so much He gave them freedom of choice. He put them in a garden of Eden and said, “This thing is going to be perfect. All you have to do is just stay with me.” But they didn’t want to do that. He gave them freedom of choice. He could have made them His robots but He loved them too much for that.

Many times I want to take my kids and lock them away in a room because I don’t want them to get out and make mistakes. If you love them enough you’ve got to let them go. You’ve got to give them freedom of choice. God gave that to Adam and Eve and they sinned. At that point when they sinned everything that is evil entered the world. God in His infinite wisdom then said, “Now listen, there’s really only one way to get man back. That’s to send my Son Jesus Christ.” He died for us and lived a perfect life, as crucified, arose, went back to heaven and sits on the right hand of God. He’s our way back to God. Isn’t that a fantastic story. God’s Word tells us that God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son that whosoever should believe on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Do you realize how great that is. I know I love my children and I know you love your children. Can you imagine what it would be to give one of those up and God did that for us.

When I put those things together in my life I was nine years old. I said, “Hey I’m not a mistake.” The world is proof that God exists. This Bible is proof and the love of my mother and my grandmother and then when I found out how much God loved me, I tell you, at nine years old I got up and took off forward in church and here’s what I said. I said, “God, I know you’re there. I know you made me. I know you love me and I want to give you my life.” That’s one of the greatest decisions I ever made.

Now, I took off in life, though, and you know I started in high school and then I went on into college and I came out of college and, man, I tell you, I’m probably like a lot of you guys. I wanted to be happy and successful. I took off on this journey and, I tell you, all of a sudden, I started seeing that there was a game plan out there. There was a world’s game plan. The world’s game plan is sold to us where? In the papers and it’s in magazines and it’s in the movies and it’s on TV. It said, “If you want to be happy and successful here’s what you have to do. The first thing is you’ve got to make money, gain position if you can, hopefully a position of power in some ways (my case win football games). If you do enough of that you’re going to be happy and successful”

The second thing that the world kind of tells us is that it loves us. The world says, “Man, I love you.” Now if there’s anybody that can talk to you about that, it’s a football coach. Because I’ve heard you guys on fourth and one. What do you all say? “Go for it, go for it.” When I was a young coach I went, “Man, they want to go for it.” The first time I went for it and didn’t make it you all went, “Boo!” A football coach can tell you how the world loves you or not.

The third thing is the world tells you that you have one life to live and then you’re going to die. If that’s the case then you need to do your own thing. It doesn’t matter what you do to other people or anything else. You’ve got one life. You die. Boom, it’s gone and over with.

The last thing the world says is that if you can accomplish enough of these things you’re going to be happy and successful in life, and I wanted that. Probably like some of you out there. I took this game plan and I took off. I came out of college and I’m roaring. I’m trying to do all these things. I kind of put God on the back shelf. I started living by this game plan. I wasted a lot of years. In 1972, God put me back together with that little Sunday School teacher and some other people. You know what happened? By looking at their life I started seeing that there was another game plan.

It was God’s game plan. It was a different game plan then the world’s game plan. The world says you’ve got to make money, gain position, and win football games and God says that’s not it at all. If you have a the right perspective on all those things and have God’s perspective on all those things which you can get from God, that is the most important thing. It’s not making the money but having the right perspective on money. It’s not your career and all the things you can achieve and all the things you can store up from a financial standpoint. It’s having a right perspective on those things.

The second point about the world loves you, I’d like to illustrate by telling a little story. In 1983 we probably had one of the best football games I think that has ever played in the NFL. We were thirteen and two with two one point losses. We had John Riggs as a full back and Joe Thiesman at quarterback. We had a defense that was rock solid and, I’m telling you, we were pretty good. We were going to the Super Bowl in 1983 and we were going to play the Raiders in Tampa. Here I was a P.E. major from San Diego State who was coaching a football team that had gone to a couple of Super Bowls. Everybody in Washington was saying I was pretty smart. The worst part of that is I started to believe it.

We go down to Tampa and we line up and I was sure that we were going to beat the Raiders that day. We took off in that game and that first half was awful. We got a punt blocked, we fumbled the ball, and everything in the world went wrong. It comes down to twelve seconds to go in the first half and I was confronted with a decision. They had just punted to us and the ball was all the way back on our twenty yard line. The football buffs will tell you that you can’t throw a pass into the end zone eighty yards. I was confronted by do I fall on this football or do I try to go for something. Now I know how you guys all are. If I could have stopped the TV sets whereever you were you would have said to me, because I’ve heard you in the stands, “Are you crazy? Try it. Go for something. Take a chance.”

It’s a little different for me on the sidelines. I’d like to have you all down there with me sometimes. I’ve got Joe Thiesman yacking in this ear and I’ve got other guys yelling and screaming in this ear. So I said, “Shut up. Here’s what were going to do. We’re going to take a shot.” We had two timeouts left. We going to try and throw a little screen pass here and try to pick up about twenty or thirty yards and get to midfield. Call time out, hopefully with a few seconds left, and throw a Hail Mary in the end zone and at least we’ll have a chance. Makes sense, doesn’t it? I told Joe Thiesman that’s what you’re going to do.

Joe takes off in the ball game and he drops back. Now when you’re that far away from the goal line nobody plays man to man defense. Everybody drops straight back. Well, one lineman went man to man with Joe Washington who we were going to throw the screen pass to and Joe Thiesman goes back and throws the prettiest screen pass in the world to the Raider linebacker who scored that day. Remember I told you I was a pretty smart guy in Washington? The next day in the Washington post I was called a buffoon. That’s got to hurt.

I say this to illustrate to you that if there’s anything a football coach can tell you is the only way to please the world is to win every time. Now if you’re going to live by those standards and you’re in business, you better make the deal every time. You better not have any financial problems. You better not have any relationship problems because the world loves somebody who wins all the time. That isn’t the case at all with God. God loves us more when we’re having a tough time then when we are winning.

The third thing is we only have one life to live and then we die. That’s probably the biggest mistake any of us can make believing that. I found out through some other people and studying God’s word that He’s says, “No, I gave you a soul that’s going to live forever.” Now you stop and think about that. If we’re only playing this game until we die, well, do your own thing. It kind of makes sense. If we’re talking about living forever, the question becomes where are we going to live forever? That’s the question we’ve got to ask ourselves. We find out that from God’s Word we either going to live with Him forever or separated from Him forever. That’s an eye opener. That’s something we need to strongly consider. The question becomes where are you and I going to live forever?

The fourth thing I talked about was that the world says to do your own thing. I don’t think you ever do your own thing. I had just won a big football game in Washington and we were getting ready to play the Dallas Cowboys in about 1984 for the divisional championship. I tell you what, that day I was strutting around that house. You know how we are, guys, we made a great deal, we won the football game, or we had a great sermon and God puts great woman in our life, doesn’t He, to know right when to knock us down. I’m strutting around the house that morning and getting ready to go to work and Pat said, “Do you mind picking up your socks and your bathrobe?” I said, “The nerve of her to tell such an important guy to do that.”

I kept getting ready for work and she started telling something about the two boys. She’d had some problems with one of them and I thought what is the deal here? I started getting edgy. What’s she doing worrying me with this. Something about my sons when I trying to get ready for work and trying to win this big football game. I kind of stormed out of the house and slammed the door and got in the car. I’d made a promise to myself that I’d try to pray each day on my way to work. All of a sudden in that prayer time it came to me. When I got to work here’s what I did. I called Pat back and I said, “Pat, I want to tell you something. What you’re taking care of at home is more important than what I am taking care of at work.” The most important thing that I’m going to leave on this earth is not those football games, it’s my two sons and the influence I’ve had on others. If there’s anything we need straight in our minds it’s that. That’s the only thing we’re going to leave here that amounts to anything.

Every time I accomplished something like winning games, went to the Super Bowls, went to Rose Bowls, made some money and all that, I still had an emptiness inside of me. You know why I had that emptiness? I started discovering in 1982 that God had made me and He had put that void there and it didn’t matter how much money I tried to put in there or how many football games I tried to win, I still had that empty feeling inside of me. Maybe some of you have that. God made us with that empty feeling because He made us for a personal relationship with Him. That’s the only thing that can fill that. You see what happened to me was that sin over that period of time (about 16 years) kind of separated me from God. You know the great thing is God has a solution to that. Do you know what His solution to sin is? It’s Jesus Christ and a personal relationship with Him.

The other thing I started to find out after putting those two together, the world’s view and God’s view, was that God didn’t want me to just have a life and just have some fun. He wanted me to have an abundant life. Not just a life. He wanted me to be the best football coach. He wanted you to be the best businessman or the best pastor and the best mechanic. He wanted us to be great. John 10:10 tells us that I am come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. I started discovering in this world’s game plan I wasn’t having an abundant life. I needed to start following God’s game plan so in 1972 in church I got up and went forward and here’s what I said. God I’ve known you were there ever since I was nine years old but I’ve not been living for you and tonight I want to rededicate my life and commit my life to you.

Thinking back to those three guys in my life that past away I’m sure there were things that they looked at and wished that they could change about there life. I wish I could change those sixteen years. I wasted those. That rededication that night started a new life for me. I kind of took off in a different direction.

I want to share with you three little instances about since I rededicated my life and have put myself back in a right relationship with the Lord. The first one starts with our careers. Careers are important to guys and gals. We all want to be successful in our fields. I had wanted to be a head coach. I’d made up my mind that ’s want I wanted. Sometimes that’s what I wanted more than the other things. More than God. More than my family. I had that way up high. I was going after it.

Well, I went down to Tampa Bay, like I said to be the offensive coordinator and I just knew that was the next step to being a head coach. That thing started out being good and all of a sudden it went to pieces. We wound up 4 and 12 that year. When I finished that season I could hold out my hand and it would be shaking like a leaf. That thing just fell apart and the whole time I’m going, “Why, why Lord? Why are you doing that?” You see every program I’d ever been in I’d been successful. All of a sudden now I’m losing and I’m saying, “Why? Why is this happening?” Maybe some of you have had experiences like that in your career.

Don Corielle, the other coach that I’d had, had just got a job with the chargers. I prayed a prayer. I said, “God, don’t have him call me unless you want me to go.” The next day Don called me and he offered me a job. The only problem was this job was not being the offensive coordinator. I was going to have to back up in my career and go back to being a backfield coach and work under another assistant coach. Man, with pride and stuff, that bothered me, but I prayed about it and took the job but I had no peace about that decision. I made up my mind that I was going to see that old spiritual father of mine back in Arkansas.

I got on the plane and there weren’t even any players there to work out that year but I was going anyway. It was snowing that day and we had to divert the landing and we went back and landed in a little town called Fort Smith. And again I’m saying, “Why, God, why you doing this?” Questioning God all the time. I got to Fort Smith and I said, “I’m still going to Thalo” and I grabbed my bags and I went out front and there was two little guys out there renting a car and I heard them say they were going to Thalo, Arkansas. I went over and I said, “Are you guys going to Thalo?” and they said, “Yea and I said, “I’m going with you.” I opened the back door and just threw my bags in there. These two guys are looking at each other.

We get in the car and we start driving down the road and these guys must have been from Louisiana or Georgia or something because they were all over the place on the road. The snow is starting to accumulate and I can tell these guys are making it. We get about two miles down this freeway and I said, “Hey, pull over and let me out” and I think they were glad too. They pulled over.

I got out on that freeway and took my bags and I went across and climbed across the center divide in the freeway and I hitchhiked my way back to Fort Smith. I went in there and I got my flight. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go to Thalo. I’m really down and questioning God. I went over to sit down in the airport at Fort Smith. I sat there kind of praying and I looked over and there was a Bible sitting in that airport. How many of you have ever seen a Bible in an airport? Not many. I picked this Bible up and I turned to the first chapter in James because that’s the chapter I claimed on making decisions in this career.

Without me saying a word a young guy about my age tapped me on the shoulder and he said, “I claimed that verse and those verses in that chapter in my life about six months ago.” I said, “Really, really?” Without me saying anything else this guy rattled of a story that paralleled mine almost exactly. He’d had a job one he always wanted then lost it and was trying to get it back and God had given it back. Now the world would tell us that was just a coincidence. That Bible just happened to be there. This guy just happened to tap me on the shoulder. Are you kidding? That’s like the two amoeba in the puddle of water. That’s not an accident. I look at it this way. God either put that guy there or that was an angel. That’s the way I look at it. I got up and put his name in my Bible and ran and jumped on that plane and I said, “God, I been wanting to be a head football coach all this time but I’m going to leave that up to you from now. You’ve convinced me. I’m putting my career in your hands.”

I went to San Diego and two weeks after I was there the guy that I was going to be working under got another head coaching job. Don called me in the next day and said, “Joe, I want you to be the offensive coordinator.” Two years later I was the head coach for the Washington Redskins. I’m just sharing from my heart the way God has guided my life and my vocation.

The second thing I want to share with you is in 1980 I came home one night when I was an assistant coach for the chargers and my wife was at the house. I’ve got a wife and there’s not many like her, I don’t think. I got there that night and I could tell that she had been crying. There was about two weeks left in the football season. I started prying it out of her. What’s the matter? What’s the problem? She didn’t want to tell me but eventually I got it out of her. She had gone to the doctor and she had lost the hearing in one ear and they had found a brain tumor and she was supposed to have surgery at the first of the year.

We finished the season and two weeks later I took my wife in for surgery. That brain tumor was located very close to all the facial nerves. My wife had one of the prettiest faces in the world. Perfectly round with beautiful lips and big eyes. When we came out of that surgery she had partial paralysis on one side of her face. For me and my boys nothing has touched us like that. The great comfort that I got from that was knowing that God loved her and she belonged to Him. The promise we have in His Word is that all things work together for good to them that love God. What a comfort that was. Maybe you have loved ones that have suffered like that. Maybe you yourself have suffered like that. I just cling to that. That’s the only thing in my life that I can’t wait to get to God and ask Him why. I know there is a reason because she belongs to Him and she loves Him. That is a comfort when things don’t go well in your life.

The third thing I want to share with you is that I have a problem with finances, I think. I don’t gamble but it seems like I want to gamble on big things. I got my job at the Redskins and I had a three year contract and man I said, “I could get fired here.” I wasn’t going to put my faith in God. I was going to make some money. I jumped out and made a financial investment over my wife’s best opinion. I found a way to make her say yes.

I got into this investment which was a land deal and a partnership and I was going to be a passive investor and make some money. Instead of just trusting God and coaching football, I was going to get rich in real estate. I don’t think I’m an egotist about football because I always know there’s somebody around the corner ready to knock our block off but in the business world I was somebody who thought he had this all worked out. I got into this investment and it was for about two years and all of a sudden I started getting late notices right before a football season started. I have a friend of mine, a guy by the name of Don Meredith, who’s very close to me, and sent him down there. He went down there and spent sixty-four days trying to work on this problem. I just coached the season. I said,” Hey, I can’t worry about this. I’m going to coach the season.”

After the season I beat it down to Oklahoma and when I sat down with the attorneys there were nine banks involved and it was way over a million dollars in debt. The interest alone was over thirty thousand dollars a month. I was bankrupt. I can remember the night when I figured all this out I got on my knees in the motel room and said, “God, I am bankrupt. There’s no question about it. I’m willing to go through this if this is what you want me to do but I don’t feel like I should file for bankruptcy. I feel like I have an obligation to these banks and to these people and I’d like to work this out. I’m just praying to you and saying this is the biggest mess in the world. Only you could straighten this out.”

I went to all nine of those banks and they all worked something out and you know what’s a bigger miracle than that? Not a one of them let out one peep to the press or anything else. All it would have taken was for one of those people working at those banks to say one thing. Hey, Joe Gibbs of the Washington Redskins and that would have been all over USA Today. They would have had a ball with that. It was miraculous.

I learned so many things about myself and my wife. That Pat stood up for me during that process, and my kids. I’d ordered one of them a car and can you imagine what that is like getting a brand new car? My son told my wife, “Listen, you tell Dad I don’t need that car.” I learned some things that I never would have learned about my wife, my family, and myself during that family crisis. Now the point is this. The world will tell you that you’ve got to win in all those things but I’m hear to tell you that God will work in those down times and adversity and He’ll mold you and make you and work through those processes. We don’t want to miss those things.

That was one of the most serious times in my life and I didn’t like it when I was going through it but I learned from it. I wrote down fifteen things that I learned from that experience. The world says you have to win in everything and we all know you’re not going to win in everything. There’s going to be tough relationships. There’s going to be things that happen to you in the business world and in your personal life. Isn’t it great to know that no matter what I do or how bad I can mess it up God will love me through all of it. I’ll wind up getting stronger and stronger and stronger as He molds me and makes me.

I’d like to close by sharing a few little things. I stood at the foot of the bed of those guys and started questioning some of the things in my life. Maybe some of you have wasted some of the years in your life. The key becomes this. What are we going to do with the rest of our life? Where are we going to store up our treasures from here on? We need to store up our treasures in heaven. Invest in it and in other people. Maybe some of you have had some of those feelings that I had and have been second guessing things in your life. Maybe your battling adversity in some way. Maybe you could be having problems with you finances. You could be having a problem physically or maybe you could be battling some kind of an addiction. My hope is that by me sharing some of these personal things about my life you can say, “If God can do that for him, think what He can do for me.”

I want to close now with just a simple prayer. If you pray this prayer to yourself wherever you are and mean it and you ask Him to come into your life, He’s promised to do that.

Father, I want to thank you for each person here tonight. Father, we realize there’s no mistakes or accidents in life. You meant for each one of them to be here tonight. I pray if anybody here wants to make a commitment to you, I pray they’ll pray this simple prayer after me. Father, I know that I’m a sinner. I know that you sent your Son Jesus Christ to die for me. I know that He arose and sits at your right hand now. I want to have a personal relationship with you. I ask you to forgive me of my sins and to come into my life and live with me forever. I thank you for the promise that you’re going to do that. I believe it in your Son’s name, Amen

I hope you enjoyed my life story. If you prayed that prayer with me I would like to take a few minutes to share with you how you can continue on your spiritual journey. I would encourage you to begin to read God’s Word daily beginning with the Gospel of John.

Second, I would suggest you find a Bible teaching church and attend there on a regular basis. Third, pray and be open and honest with God. He knows what you’re going through. Finally, take the initiative to tell others about your decision to follow Christ. Maybe you’ve listened and you’re not ready to make a commitment. I challenge you to read the New Testament portion of the Bible and I encourage you to talk to someone about the questions you have regarding Jesus Christ. The things I’ve talked about today are important. I want you to know that God really cares for you and me and our spiritual walk. God Bless you on your spiritual journey.