By Robert Ashcraft and Mark Ellis

When Carolina Panthers Quarterback Cam Newton walked away relatively unscathed from a horrible accident that rolled his truck in December 2014, he offered praise to God.

“Somebody had His good hands on me,” Newton told reporters. “One plus one always equals two. I’m looking at this truck. I’m looking at this accident, and I’m like dude, one plus one ain’t equaling two, because I’m looking at this truck, and I’m like, somebody is supposed to be dead. Me being a religious person, God is good. I’m lucky to be standing in front of you today.”

Newton, arguably the NFL’s greatest player of 2015-16 and a Super Bowl contender, is on top of the world. Passing for 400 yards in his debut game in 2012, he bested Peyton Manning’s passing record of 280 yards in Manning’s first regular season game. This year, the Panthers are 15-1. His dual threat capabilities crushed the Arizona Cardinals 49-15 in the NFC finals.

But while his professional trajectory seemed to sail through the air on heaven’s wings, things in his personal life have not always gone so well. He was hounded by an NCAA investigation for receiving payment to enroll at college, and he was accused of stealing a laptop at Auburn University. As a pro, he met and began to live with ex-stripper Kia Proctor.

Newton had grown up with God. His father, Cecil Newton, is a bishop overseeing five Pentecostal churches in Georgia.

But the intoxicating power of riding atop the sports world may have caused a momentarily lapse from his humble, God-fearing roots. After the accident left him shaken, he received a none-too-subtle reminder about his need for God.

On that fateful day, he was negotiating a confusing intersection in Charlotte when another car slammed into the rear side of his black pickup truck and sent it rolling. He clambered out the back cabin window, and paramedics took him to the hospital where doctors treated him for minor fractures in his lower back.

He only missed one game as a result of the accident.

“I am a prime example of how God can turn something that was bad into something that good,” Newton said after the crash.

At 6’5” and 245 pounds of muscle, Newton is currently the most feared quarterback in the National Football League. Most QBs either specialize in throwing or running, but Newton excels in both, which is why the Panthers made the NFC’s best defense, the Cardinals, look like their fine-feathered namesakes — birds.

When they face the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50 on Feb. 7, they will again be facing a team with a stalwart defense – not to mention legendary Quarterback Peyton Manning.

Newton will be up to his old antics. He performs a celebratory dance for every touchdown — ostentation that football purists frown upon. He also runs the touchdown football over to the fans and hands it to a little kid — a gesture that is hard for anyone to frown upon. His broad, ubiquitous smile shows he enjoys the game.

Newton hopes his gridiron prowess will do for the Panthers, who have never won a Super Bowl, what it did for the University of Auburn. At Auburn, he became the third player in major college football history to both rush and pass for 20 or more touchdowns in a single season. His outstanding performance earned him the Heisman Trophy, and he led Auburn to their second national championship in 2011.

His throws rival the speed and accuracy of the military’s laser-guided missiles. When a receiver doesn’t get open, he runs brashly down the field with an agility and quickness rare in a player of his weight and height.

Many Christians have questioned the unmarried relationship that produced a boy, named Chosen Sebastian Newton, in December 2015.

Even his father, Bishop Cecil has offered reserved criticism for his son’s decision. The Advertiser.com quotes him: “I want it to be known that his mother and I are staunch Christian proponents of marriage and all things pertaining to legitimacy,” Cecil says. “I have three sons and one woman, and I have been a living example all his life of what a man should be in a family. Cam is 26 years old, not 18 or 19. He has a heightened consciousness of who he is as a man, and I always tell him the decisions you make you have to live with short and long term. I don’t style it as a mistake; I style it as something that can be a gift for him and the young lady.”

But by pro football standards, Newton is one of the upstanding citizens of the NFL who has not fallen into the disgrace of domestic abuse, cheating and doping.

After the shootings of nine African Americans at a church in Charleston by a lone white supremacist gunman, Newton spent part of a day visiting the families of the victims. He sat and talked with Chris Singleton, a local baseball player who lost his mother in the attack.

On Instagram, Newton recently posted Luke 12:48: “To whom much is given, much is required. Thank You, God, for giving me this platform. I will forever be thankful.”

His predecessor in the QB role for the Panthers, Steve Smith, piled praise on Newton: “He makes guys around him better by what he does. He can run the ball, scramble around and throw off his back foot 60, 70 yards without even looking. He just makes everybody better and makes you bring up your game. What he brings to the offense, he makes the defense play well, too. He says, ‘Hey, I’m going to make my plays. We’re going to do our job. Will you keep up with us?’ I think that just makes everyone raise their game.

Newton, who frequently sports a Superman T-shirt, has no lack of self-confidence — and he continues to credit God for his successes. “I’m a living testimony that anything is possible,” Newton said. “I’m an example of why people deserve second chances.”

Robert Ashcraft writes as a student of the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica

Related: The faith of Peyton Manning

Source: Godreports

By Michael Ashcraft and Mark Ellis

The most important moment in quarterback Peyton Manning’s life was NOT when he surpassed the NFL record of 509 touchdown passes. It wasn’t any of his league-record five MVPs. It wasn’t his Superbowl championship. And it wasn’t being named player of the decade of the 2000s by Fox News and Sports Illustrated.

The most emotional and dramatic moment of his life came when the Denver Broncos quarterback accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord.

“My faith has been number one since I was 13 years old and heard from the pulpit on a Sunday morning in New Orleans a simple question: ‘If you died today, are you one hundred percent sure you’d go to heaven?’” Manning writes in his book “Manning.”

“My heart was pounding,” he writes. “The minister invited those who would like that assurance through Jesus Christ to raise their hands, and I did. Then he invited us to come forward, to take a stand, and my heart really started pounding. And from where we sat, it looked like a mile to the front.

“But I got up and did it. I committed my life to Christ, and that faith has been the most important to me ever since.”

Manning displays his faith on the field more quietly than some other players.

“Some players get more vocal about it – the Reggie Whites, for example – and some point to Heaven after scoring a touchdown and praise God after games,” he writes. “I have no problem with that. But I don’t do it and don’t think it makes me any less a Christian. I just want my actions to speak louder than words.”

Part of Manning’s “actions” include the Peyback Foundation, which he started to help disadvantaged kids in his home state of Louisiana. After Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans in 2005, Manning and his brother Eli, who is a quarterback for the New York Giants, helped pack and deliver potable water and other emergency supplies to the affected.

Manning also speaks before groups.

“I make it a point when I speak to groups about priorities, and when it’s school kids, I rank those priorities as: faith, family, and education, then football,” Manning writes. “I tell them that as important as football is to me, it can never be higher than fourth. My faith has been number one since I was thirteen years old and accepted Jesus.”

While he instills faith in Christ off the field, Manning infuses faith into his team on the gridiron. Known as the ‘Sherriff’ for calling plays from the line of scrimmage instead of the huddle, Manning scans the defense and marshals the offense to exploit any perceived weaknesses. A mastermind quarterback, he jockeys with Tom Brady for the moniker “best.”

“I pray every night, sometimes long prayers about a lot of things and a lot of people, but I don’t talk about it or brag about it because that’s between God and me, and I’m no better than anybody else in God’s sight,” Manning writes. “I’ve been blessed—having so little go wrong in my life, and being given so much.”

Manning has golden boy good looks, a Python-thick throwing arm and a brilliant football IQ.

But he’s also had struggles. A herniated disk in his neck caused him pain for years. After a surgery in 2011 successfully alleviated the pain, a pinched nerve debilitated his throwing arm. During rehab he threw and the ball sputtered clumsily to the ground. Then he re-injured the herniated disk. A second surgery was performed.

Manning is an intense competitor who watches game videos three times before the coach shows it to the team. He trains incessantly. But after his surgery he was helpless. If he trained too hard it would risk re-injury.

“Sometimes progress was not going backwards,” he told the Washington Post. “It was just a real test of patience unlike anything I had to go through. There was nothing I could do about it.”

Manning spent the entire 2011 season sidelined, and in March 2012, the Colts released him. It appeared that his long, successful football career was over.

Instead of wallowing in self-pity, Manning considered his older brother’s injury. Cooper was an all-state wide receiver with a scholarship to Ole Miss when he suddenly experienced numbness and mysterious atrophying in his right bicep.

The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota detected spinal degeneration. The operation was beset with complications and Cooper spent weeks subsequently in a wheel chair. His football days ended abruptly.

The memory helped Peyton keep things in perspective. “I just thought, wow, I got almost 20 years out of this neck. Boy, I’m grateful for the time I’ve had,” he told the Post.

But the end of his football career was hardly over. The Denver Broncos signed him on March 20, 2012, not without concerns over his recovery. By October, Manning had “silenced his critics,” according to ESPN.

In 2013, Manning led the Broncos to the Super Bowl against the Seattle Seahawks. Despite losing, he made a Super Bowl record of 34 completions.

In pre-Super Bowl controversy, Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman taunted Manning, garnering the antipathy of much of the football public. In the game, Sherman sprained his ankle and was taken out of play.

Manning lost 43-8 in the largest point differential in Super Bowl history. But he held his head high and demonstrated Christian class – he went over to the Seahawk sideline and inquired about Sherman’s ankle.

“He was really concerned about my well-being,” said a thunderstruck Sherman, quoted on Bleacher Report. “After a game like that, a guy who’s still classy enough to say ‘How are you doing?’ To show that kind of concern for an opponent shows a lot of humility and class. I could learn so much from him.”

The quiet Christian walk is Manning’s trademark. “I consider myself fortunate to be able to go to Him for guidance, and I hope (and pray) I don’t do too many things that displease Him before I get to Heaven myself,” Manning writes. “I believe, too, that life is much better and freer when you’re committed to God in that way.

 

Do you want to know God personally? Here are four steps…

Source: Godreports