The Watering Hole

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With football season once again upon us, the Raider Nation will once again be swarming to their favorite watering well? Okay, let's get one thing straight right off the bat, we are talking about Raider fans in christian fellowship in a Sports Bar? How can anyone be a Christian and a Raiders fan? It's quite simple, a Christian Raiders fan doesn't buy into his or her surroundings whether it's in a sports bar or at the stadium. The notion that being part of the Raider Nation automatically means one is a gang banger is a joke. A Christian Raiders fan endures the jokes even in the church? We know better a Christian Raiders fan points to the many players who over the years have worn the Silver and Black whose lives are shaped by their faith in Christ. The challenge for a believer here is to share their relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior in those surroundings. The bible tells us that Jesus encountered the same with his own disciples as they brought judgment on the Samaritan woman.

I want to share a story from the Gospel of John about a woman that met Jesus at a well. Jesus was on his way to the land of Galilee. His disciples were probably a little nervous. Jesus had decided to go directly through the region of Samaria -- and the Samaritans did not get along with the Jews. Jesus was tired and thirsty and sat down to rest beside Jacob's well. He sent his disciples to buy food in the nearby city of Sychar. About noon a Samaritan woman came by herself to draw some water from the well. Most women went early in the morning or late in the afternoon when it was cooler. They went in groups for safety and to talk with their friends. This woman probably came at noon to avoid them. She had a bad reputation and not many of them would talk to her. Then Jesus surprised her by asking her to give him something to drink.

(Read John 4:9-15) Jesus has a way of meeting us where we are and offering us what we need. And that includes a place like Ricky's Sports Bar? or at the ball game. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well. He knew she needed water to live but Jesus offered her a way to live forever! It didn't matter to Jesus that she was a Samaritan, or that she was a woman, or that she was a sinner. When he looked at her he saw her as a person created in the image of God. Jesus cares about everyone! Today people have to try and put a label on everyone and anything. When most folks picture the image of the Raider Nation it's of people painted Silver and Black with spiked hair, spiked shoulder pads, the Black Hole, out and out fanatical fans. Some in this world might say Jesus could not deal with our sinful nature much less forgive and love us?

The Bible tells us that Jesus dealt with her sin. Jesus does the same today! Jesus told her things about her personal life that she didn't think a stranger would know. She was shocked that he knew her so well. She tried to change the subject to a religious argument about where to worship. He let her know that what matters is not about being religious, it is about knowing who he is. Instead of changing the subject he changed her life by what he told her. (Read John 4:23,24.) Jesus said it didn't matter where you worship as long as you worship the true God sincerely, in spirit and in truth. Then he came to the point. He told her something he had not told anyone else until then: that he was the Messiah she was expecting. That changed her life completely. Suddenly she realized he was not a psychic in Sychar but the Savior of Samaritans. She was so excited that she left her water pot and went to the city to tell others about meeting Jesus by the well. Many people came to believe on Jesus as their Messiah because she cared about them enough to tell them the good news.

Meanwhile, the disciples came back from the city. As usual they didn't understand why Jesus was breaking all their traditions. Men did not talk to strange women in public. Jews did not talk to Samaritans. Men only taught men about religion in public. Once again he was turning their way of thinking upside-down. They wondered what he was doing. While they were busy buying lunch, the first woman evangelist was heading to Samaria! Jesus is waiting by the well of your life too. He is ready to accept you as you are, where you are, for who you are today. We are all sinners. We all need Jesus in our lives. He is ready to offer eternal life to all who will worship him in spirit and in truth.

The "good news" here the Lord is still breaking tradition today? By sending his believers to Ricky's a shrine to the Oakland Raiders, a watering well which is considered the headquarters of the Raider Nation. From the legends of the Oakland Raiders. To the fans in Christ. Once again Raiders for Christ are turning the church's way of thinking upside-down true mavericks in the kingdom of God, by building relationships amongst fellow Raider fans who do not have an understanding of Gods kingdom. I once asked Ricky Ricardo owner of Ricky's Sports Bar can you tell me more about your relationship with the fans and players, his response was that everyone knows each other by name. It's a place where friendships are made. The same held true with Jesus and the Samaritan women. Today, Jesus is looking for new friends, he knows your name. He never has to say, “Hey, you.” He never says, “Hi.” He always calls by your name. Jesus never drops his eyes to the floor and walks to the other side of the room.

Knowing a person’s name is like crossing an ocean into his or her world. Knowing a name opens us to the miracle of fellowship. Nameless greetings are cordial but they are not the stuff relationships are made of. No one introduces his friend as “what’s-his-name.” Never hearing your own name is extraordinarily depersonalizing. How will you know that Jesus is calling you by your name? Your heart will pause in thought as you recognize that only God can fill that void in your heart. He is ready to offer you the living water of eternal life, right where your at..."Behold, I am standing at your heart's door, knocking and asking entrance, but I will not force My will on you. Call to Me now and ask Me to come in; into your heart and your life. Call to Me, for I am listening and waiting even as you read this. I'm only a word away, and if you will invite Me in, I will come in and never will I leave you alone. Give Me your heart and your love, and as I live, say's the Lord, this day you shall be one with Me in Paradise." Your friend, Jesus...

Pastor Mando
"keep the faith"

What do Raiderettes do with their pom-poms when the retire? Do they pass them on, like some kind of symbolic torch, to the rookies so that the new representatives will carry on the burning tradition?Actually, most Raiderettes, like Anjelah Johnson keep their pom-poms as mementos of all the great times they shared with each other and the fans. While many Raiderettes hang on to their pom-poms for the sentimental value, the symbolic value remains for the rookies who will dazzle the fans with their own.

For even though the rookie Raiderettes will not have received their pom-poms directly fro their retired sisters, when they take up their own, they'll know deep inside that, in a sense, they will be taking up the gauntlet. Thus, they will be challenged to live up to the tradition that their fore sisters built as they follow in the dance steps of those that cheered the way. They will also come to learn that the football field is no the only place where they must spread the good cheer, but that they must stand as role models who give hope and inspiration to many young girls who aspire to be like them. And when their time comes to retire, the will come to realize that they must go on to new fields of endeavor, bringing with them the dedication and discipline of a Raiderette, and doing it all without pom-poms.

Anjelah Johnson is a departing Raiderette who not only has cherished memories but also had some veteran words of advice for the newly appointed Rookies. She is also going on to pursue her lifetime dream of making it in TV or on the silver screen, and she is learning that success has nothing to do with pom-poms.

For Anjelah, her year as a Raiderette, especially on the field, was filled with so many exciting times that it was difficult for her to name any one single outstanding event: "My most memorable experience? Hmm...either being named on of the Rookies of the Year or...the rainy 'monsoon' (Kansas City) game...wait, the AFC Championship game was a night I will never forget. And, you can't forget about the whole Super Bowl experience! The whole season was awesome!

Aside from a winning season, one thing that makes for an awesome season is an awesome cheerleader like Anjelah. Besides wowing the fans with her dancing ability, Anjelah, the girl of a "thousand voices," regaled her friends with her acting talents, especially her fascinating accents. You name it-from British to good ole New Joisey dialects'-this vivacious dark-haired beauty can bring you on an imaginary journey to any part of the world with her dialectical repertoire. However, her most profound accent is the emphasis she places on faith, and her loudest voice is her silent prayer. Her spirituality is evidenced by her confidence as she goes forth in a bold attempt to make it in the difficult entertainment industry: "God has big plans for my life, and I am doing what I have to do to follow "His Will."

The concept of having faith in God is not an ideal that she reserves for her self-and it is not always silent, but one that she shares with all that she meets with a loud and clear message. The following experience demonstrates that often the most memorable experiences for a Raiderette occur off the field: At an autograph signing, Anjelah met a young girl about twelve years old who wanted an autographed picture. The girl expressed the desire to be a cheerleader but feared she was overweight. Anjelah lifted the girl's spirits by telling her "she was beautiful and could do anything she wanted to."

Not only did Anjelah sign her name on the picture, but she also added her version of her favorite Bible scripture from Philippians 4:13, which she writes on all of her photographs: I can do All things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me. "She was touched by that," Anjelah recalled, "and so was her mom and aunt, who were there with her." A short while later, the girl came back and asked if she could have Anjelah's e-mail address so that she could seek advice whenever she felt the need. Anjelah was quite moved by the request: "The fact that she looked up to me and wanted to be just like me was such a blessing. I felt so honored. We have kept in contact since then. I am thankful that I was able to be a blessing in her life."

The key personality trait that endears Anjelah to all who meet her is her genuine interest in others and her ability to make them feel a sense of self-worth. Many youngsters who seek autographs from high-profile personalities may be so impressed with their role models that they may have realize their own potential. Thus, Anjelah has her won way of making them feel important: "Sometimes when kids would come up to me and ask me for my autograph, I would ask them for theirs. They would get all excited because I was so serious about wanting their autographs. No one had ever asked them for that before."

Now that she is living in LA, Anjelah may not get to meet any of the new Raiderettes in the near future. Therefore, Anjelah sends this message to those that follow her: "Take advantage of every moment. You're never promised another season, let alone another day. Soak it all up!" Even if it's during a "monsoon," she might have added.

And while Anjelah won't be brandishing her pom-poms in front of the fans at the Coliseum anymore, she will no doubt continue to use her multifaceted talents, charm, and personality to inspire children, co-workers, or whomever she comes in contact with, continuing to make new fans and to build new memories. Moreover, she may be doing it on TV or the silver screen. And if and when she fulfills her dream of stardom, should you ever meet her and ask her for her autograph, don't be surprised if she asks for yours. And if you're extra lucky, she might do it with one of her accents.

Although Anjelah is no longer cheering, always in her heart-with or without pom-poms-she will be a Raiderette, and that is one thing she will never forget. Moreover, her fans will never forget her because she is living proof that pom-poms don't make a Raiderette.

By Raiderdrive-Contributer
Paul Turse,

 

ex-Raider's Safety Works to Protect Man's Best Friend
click here to visit his website

A Message From Jarrod Cooper

"When I first began volunteering at the Oakland Animal Shelter it was more than shocking for me to see that countless injured and neglected animals that were dropped off on a daily basis. I was curious about volunteering since I have always loved animals. Growing up I always wanted to be a veterinarian but my hectic football schedule did not allow it. I knew that volunteering my time at the shelter would allow me to help these animals and at the same time help me figure out future career plans after football.

Once I was certified to volunteer I quickly noticed that each animal was different in many ways. Each animal had its own special needs...some more than others. I only planned on volunteering once a week, but that changed quickly. Once I saw how grateful those animals were to get out of the cages.....one hour turned into six. There is just not enough one can do when you see the pain these animals have been through. So I wanted to do more. I have been blessed with a great life and I want to be able to give back. I soon began to realize that this was my calling in life and it truly made me happy...I wanted to keep animals out of shelters!!

This is why I started this foundation...solely to help animals and their pet owners. Most people don't realize that when an animal abuse case is reported it can be about anything. It can be about an animal not having proper shelter, health care, microchip etc; it can be anything. Animal control officers go out each day to help animals in need. When a pet owner is approached about their pets they are given two options. To make the proper changes or they can surrender their dog. After doing many ride along with Animal control officers I realized that some pet owners just don't have the means or resources to get the animals what they need. That is why this program is so great. It is structured to work directly with Animal Control allowing them to help in most situations when it is needed. I want to help other shelters too. There is no other program like this in the Nation and my foundation will help train other shelters nationwide. I want to personally thank everyone for their support. These animals have changed my life and now I am here to help!" -Jarrod Cooper

Several years ago I had the opportunity of meeting Jarrod Cooper, not knowing much about him other than being a player for the Silver and Black. Having only a few minutes to speak with him, knowing the autograph seekers were waiting, I had to be quick. To summarize our conversation it was more of a prophetic message than anything else? "confirmation of his calling in life" The conversation lead to wishing him the best for the up coming season. His reaction was being thankful,then breathless, When I said Jarrod, you love Jesus, you walk with him! You also have the heart of Noah?

Truly, the Oakland community has been blessed with Jarrod Cooper's passion and love for animals. When a man has an opportunity to stand above all others to show his kindness, his gentleness, his courage to defy the character of "manliness," and most of all, to his great humanity. Is a true role model for every NFL player who stands to set for young people everywhere...-Pastor Mando

God's Message


He breathed life into animals and man, and made them living souls and Spirits. We can see a manifestation of the love of God reflected in a mother caring for her new born child and tending to its every need. Likewise, as a mother bear protects her cub from danger, God is always watching over us, protecting us from evil. “The Lord is good to everyone. He showers compassion on all His creation” (Psalm 145:9). God created man and animals according to His infinite love and wisdom. “O Lord, how many are Your works! You made them all in wisdom. The earth is full of what You have made. There is the wide sea full of both large and small animals. There are too many for us to number” (Psalm 104:24-25). God values everything He created, including animals, and He wants only the best for them.

When God entered into His eternal covenant with Noah in Genesis 9, He was making peace with His creation, until the time when Jesus would come and restore all things back to the Him. God specifically included animals in this covenant. This is one reason we should have an understanding that animals are very important to God, and that He places great value upon them. Many people who do not agree with is position. The most prominent statement we hear is: “animals are not created in the image of God, and we are called to win the lost to Jesus.” It is true that man was “created in the image of God.”

However, this fact does not justify man assuming an attitude of superiority or indifference toward animals. God placed intrinsic value in them, and we should respect them as part of God’s creation, thereby honoring God. God owns every animal and has entrusted man with a stewardship over them. Our example is Jesus, who came as a servant and humbled Himself before sinful and wicked men. He came to serve, not to be served, even though He was God. He would pay the price for man’s sin by dying on the cross. In return, God expects man to follow Jesus’ example. His Word says: “No, O people, the LORD has already told you what is good, and this is what He requires: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Therefore, man’s attitude toward animals must be one of loving-kindness and compassion.

What God Says About the Treatment of Animals

Jesus was the perfect reflection of God, and the manifestation of God’s love and mercy toward His creation. We are to be “imitators of Christ.” Jesus called Himself the Good Shepherd. A shepherd’s duty is to care for his flock and protect them. Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds, the leaders of Israel. Give them this message from the Sovereign Lord: “What sorrow awaits you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of your flocks. Shouldn’t shepherds feed their sheep? You drink the milk, wear the wool, and butcher the best animals, but you let your flocks starve. You have not taken care of the weak. You have not tended the sick or bound up the injured. You have not gone looking for those who have wandered away and are lost. Instead, you have ruled them with harshness and cruelty” (Ezekiel 34:2-4 2).

Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and commanded us to help the oppressed and weak. As this passage indicates, God refers to the sheep as weak, and Jesus rebuked the shepherds for their cruel treatment of their flocks. True, the scriptures speak illustrations of animals towards the human care of the church, which allows us to recognize the flaws of stewardship in man. Another example of God’s displeasure at cruelty to animals is found in Proverbs 12:10: “The godly are concerned for the welfare of their animals, but even the kindness of the wicked is cruel.” God calls cruelty to animals wicked.

Every day thousands of animals are systematically and mercilessly abused, tortured and exploited. Animals that have no means of defending themselves are being victimized by the ones that God called to care for them. Animals are God’s creatures, precious in God’s sight....Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God’s absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering...

The current plight of animals is heart-breaking. Instead of being respected and protected by man, animals are being subjected to cruelty, suffering and oppression. And their suffering is rapidly increasing and is being largely ignored. What should move our very hearts and sicken us,… is the realization that animals are morally innocent, that they have done no harm. Next they have no power whatever of resisting; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are victims which makes their suffering so especially touching... there is something so very dreadful, something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power …” Jesus was our example of the grace and mercy that God expects us to extend to one another and to the animals He created in His love and wisdom. If we love God, it is right to consider our attitudes toward animals and our treatment of them.

Pastor Mando
"keep the faith"

Raiders for Christ
"Hearing God's Voice"

People often wonder if they can hear God's voice, and how to determine whether it is God's voice or their own. God speaks to us in many ways. Sometimes it is through a voice that we can hear. Sometimes it is through a peace that flows over our heart. Sometimes it is though another person. Sometimes it is through a new insight that suddenly comes into our mind and seems to solve a problem that has been keeping us confused. "Call upon Me and I will answer you show you great and mighty things..." As it says in the book of Jeremiah! Sometimes it will not always be the answer we want, and it may not always seem at first to solve our problem, but in time we will know that is was God and to it was the answer we needed to hear. Our soul grows deeply in love of God's presence, as we find trust in His voice.

Hearing God speak, does He speak audibly? These days we read and hear all kinds of claims regarding "hearing from God. How can we know who or what to believe? Does God really speak to people today, and if He does, can we hear Him like anyone else? While there is no single one answer to this question, we can know God wants you and me to hear His voice. How to hear God is the real question. Just as He has created us uniquely, so He speaks to us individually, even in corporate settings, for we hear His voice not with our ears, but in our hearts? or do we...

Have you ever wondered why some Christians communicate with God in a clear and powerful way, and others don't? Spiritually sensitive Christians will say they have a relationship with God and that's where they talk and listen to God. There are several ways, to hear God's voice, through getting impressions from Him while being still? Or at a moments notice? In some Christian circles it's a controversial subject. (Daniel 9:10) describes God's voice as His Word. Knowing the Bible forms the foundation for knowing God's voice and will. When we read and study, we learn God's way, His precepts, and His Will for human beings. Most important we learn to listen to His voice by experience. Many believers will say scripture comes to mind during prayer or when in tough situations. This type of experience is more widely accepted because it comes from the Holy Spirit nudging us with scripture-scripture is God's foundational statement of truth.

While it's unlikely you will hear God speak to you-out loud, in a big booming voice like coach Tom Cable of the Oakland Raiders during practice or during Sunday's game. God does speak audibly through teachers, pastors, friends, family members-even songs, events, and people we don't especially like. Are you surprised? God is God, after all, and can communicate with us any way He chooses. Hearing the voice of God is as natural as an idea that comes into your mind. If fact, that's often exactly how He speaks. A thought occurs to you-something you've never thought of before-and it leads you to some kind of action that either answers a prayer or helps someone else who's in trouble. God speaks to us in the natural moments of life. Then we must be ready to listen. If we want to hear God's voice?

The memory that stands out the most where one can clearing see that God was at work, was during Super Bowl XVIII on "Defense! With 12-seconds left in the half, the Raiders where on the prowl and alert. Remembering that in October in a league game against the Redskins a screen pass to halfback Joe Washington, out of a three wide receiver formation had triggered a winning drive for the Redskins, when that same scenario was being played out by head coach Joe Gibbs on that day. The Raider coaching staff reacted by instinct by remembering the experience of defeat during the regular season.

The coaching staff countered immediately by inserting speedy linebacker Jack Squirek and removing Matt Millen, with specific instructions to go "man to man" on Joe Washington. A big outside rush from defense end Lyle Alzado forced quarterback Joe Theismann to put an extra loft on his soft lob pass toward Joe Washington over the out stretched hands of the oncoming Alzado, The rest is history, interception, "touch down Raiders! The opponent never recovered. The game was over by half-time...sometimes recalling events and experiences in life can bring opportunities to bring a blessing in your life. God is looking for folks to hear Him-out. Let's hope in 2009 the Raiders coaching staff is listening? God just might be answering the prayers of the Raider faithful this season?

Everyone of us should take a few moments each day to sit in a quiet place. Close your eyes and try to feel God's presence around you. Take some time to tell God what troubles your heart. Speak to God like you would your most intimate friend? Until you have said all you need to say, sit in stillness again, and let God speak to you. You might have a warmth, you might suddenly have a thought that has not occurred to you before, you might immediately have a fresh understanding of something that has been confusing you, you might have clarity about an action you should take, or you might notice a gently and serene peace all around you. Let the presence of God move your soul as you sit quietly. When you feel God's silence again, you will know that it is time to end your prayer and thank God for being so intimate with you. As you take up this daily practice, know this as believers you will encounter His voice as you get deeper in your relationship with Him. The audible voice that spoke to many in the biblical accounts awaits you...

Pastor Mando
"keep the faith"

 

 

Raiders for Christ
Weekly Message: Hearing God's Voice

"The Gospel is the news that Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, died for our sins and rose again, eternally triumphant over all His enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy of reconciliation to God-God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus." "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me." (Galatians 2:20).

A voice crying out to us, Christ alone who gets the glory. This work of salvation is a gift from the Lord and comes by humbling ourselves before Him and repenting of our sins and believing on Christ's substitution death on the cross. Those receiving God's free gift of grace are forgiven of their sins and are chosen to live a life here on earth as well as for all eternity with the Lord. "What Great News! Hearing God's voice. So we have the Bible, prayer, fellowship with others, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and our own hearts to help us in hearing God's voice. Do you want to hear God's voice? That is the final question, for God responds to willing hearts. In the book of Revelation, we read: "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with Me." (Revelation 3:20). God will never force you to obey Him, but waits for your willing response to His call. Are you hearing His voice right now?

The willing desire to understand change to be different. Is a heart condition that is always open to suggestions, humbling ourselves to the matter at hand is important, life has it's many changing seasons. If we don't have an understanding of this we will struggle. Phil Villapiano #41 One of the Raider greats of all-time truly understood this. After meeting Mr. Davis at the Senior Bowl he never thought that the Raiders would draft him, Al Davis shook his hand and told him that he had played well. Never putting much thought of the Raiders. He heard that Cleveland and a couple of other teams were looking at him, but he really had no idea. Phil Villapiano played linebacker for the Silver and Black from 1971-1979, causing havoc against opponents, and he participated in some of the greatest games in Raider history. A four time Pro Bowl selection forced a fumble during Super Bowl XI, which helped the Raiders win the first of three Super Bowl titles.

In order for us to understand the good news of the gospel we must first understand a mans heart is transformed being able to see beyond a persons natural abilities. In the Old Testament, God spoke to Samuel in regards of the young Shepherd boy who would become King of Israel (King David) "do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7). Today many folks hear from God? They have this God given insight to see greatness in people. Al Davis has been a testimony to receiving God's gift. The good news is that God is everywhere waiting for open hearts to understand His divine purpose. The reward for the Raiders? Was the insight of seeing the future.

The character and passion was evident to Al Davis on that first day. Phil Villapiano, never thought he would be traded. The Raiders where in dire need in 1979 for a possession receiver to replace the retired Fred Bilentikoff. Phil was traded to Buffalo for Bob Chandler. He was so dedicated to the Raiders. But knowing he was one of the guys. Phil, said he would have killed for Al Davis. A company man at heart who would take the same passion and intensity to the Buffalo Bills. It's the same character that Jesus Christ showed by going about the Father's business. Sent to the world to die for our sins and rose again. Only to return to His Father, for our divine purpose of eternal life. It's the essence of faith that Paul the apostle wrote about to be crucified with Christ no longer living in self-mode. The voice of God can literally be seen in the actions of our sports hero's. The passion and the "Will To Win" Phil Villapiano showed with the Oakland Raiders has brought him back as an ambassador, it's the everlasting joy of being one of the guys. It's the triumphant glory of teamwork we see among the Raider faithful.

Today, it's become customary for Raider owner Al Davis to take care of those that played for him, giving back to his former players and recognizing their achievements of the past, which has always been something Al Davis acknowledges. Phil Villapiano has had the opportunity quenching his thirst in retirement for the love and passion of his playing days by motivating, redirecting and inspiring the current crop of players donning the Silver & Black. Last season, Villapiano was able to loosen up the team as well by addressing JaMarcus Russell by giving him some advice. He asked if he forgot, how to run the football. The team all started laughing and he said, 'JaMarcus... you are such a weapon." Villapiano's insight on JaMarcus Russell was heart felt, that this team has what it takes to move forward, but he emphasized the reason why some of those old Raider teams of the past had such great success was their accountability to leadership. As wild and crazy as they where On and Off the field, they responded to leadership.

Christ is the good news of the gospel, the bad news for many is holding themselves accountable to God and their fellow man. The glory of God can be seen throughout this great game of football. Today these players are tremendous football players. But they lack the intensity and passion to be "Raiders" like the Phil Villapiano's of old. The Raiders of the past made it easy to understand how to be a Raider. In the body of Christ many lack the spiritual ears to hear God's voice. God will use all avenues of communication to get His message across. To bring discipline like Paul the apostle spoke about, to submit to the living God. Taking a page from the gladiators of old whether it be from the National Football League or from the living Bible it's the profile that God desires for every man and women it's what legends are made of. It should give us an insight how we should approach the living God. As for Phil Villapiano his days are filled with countless charitable activities. The good news, he's ministering the Raider Way to those young kids wearing the Silver & Black. It's a God given gift that comes from the heart.

Pastor Mando
"keep the faith"

 

 

Raiders for Christ
Hearing God's Voice

Moses is well known as the lawgiver of the Hebrews, but he was also a great man of faith and prayer. He exemplifies the fundamental choice each of us must make between pursing this present world, and pursuing the reward of God by identifying with His people. The author of Hebrews tells us that Moses carefully weighed the alternatives and made sound decisions.

The law was given through Moses, but the law did not provide the "ability to perform the principles of grace." It left the individual frustrated and defeated. Paul's frustration with the law is indicated in (Romans 7:18). "For I know that in me dwells no good thing: for my "WILL" is present with me, but how do I perform that which is good. I don't see it...Paul wanted to "paint the portrait" of God's glory in grace, but lacked the artistic talent. In his human nature the law of grace was far reaching, feeling uncoordinated and unskilled. There was an element missing.

The revelation that prayer and testimony brought evidence of God's final covenant, Jesus was also a law-giver, establishing the new covenant. However, distinct from Moses, along with His truth, He provided grace. In Christ, truth, or law, is complemented by grace. In Christ there is a resource by which truth can be performed. That resource provides the ability to achieve truth and to live it out. As Paul experienced in his journey in life.

The prayers of many past generation were being answered. In truth the prayers of Moses showed us that in God's divine purpose. God in the end would reveal to Moses that although in all his potential. All His promises, they could not take place, the time had simply not come and the world was not ready. Though we are left with the question that if someone as great as Moses was not answered, only allowed to see the promise land from a distance. Then how can we expect any different. And if so what is the point of prayer if not to be granted according to the way we see the big picture in prayer. In truth, God listens and accepts all our prayers, and responds as well.

The problem is that we don't always hear, understand or feel the answer in a clear and immediate manner. But every thought, word and action of an individual has its effect and is recorded above the heavens. Nothing is ever lost and no prayer in the bigger picture is in vain. God's grace and promise came to Moses in such a divine and majestic manner, as Jesus was transfigured before Moses and Elijah? Peter says to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!" (Matthew 17:2-5) God's promise to Moses finally came according to His timing.

The covenant of Old was truly a battle within. Like fire-the flesh at war against the law the concentration to keep the law, would bend a man's confidence. To stay true to the living God-God the Father brought forth not only Moses but Elijah, for one purpose. To show us today that He answers prayer according to His divine purpose. The insight of God's technique brought revelation of the warfare that takes place in a persons prayer life. Paul the apostle warns us that the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh? It's a battle that works within. How does one grasp of this technique of grace.

Once again we gaze at the illustrations of the football world: The Raiders game plan to bring the element of surprise? Every technique and trick in the book, That can possibly be mustard up, for starters the "bump and run" Brings chills to the opponent, "Why" It's nature of teamwork bringing an overwhelming pressure. Lester Hayes, spoke about this technique of teamwork. From a bump and run mentality, he says some of my best friends were the defensive front seven, my sack men. Playing bump and run corner-back, was to maintain a level of consistent confidence, the defensive seven had to apply pressure especially on passing downs. Coach Summer would never rush just four players on passing downs. He would always blitz seven or eight or even nine players. Our focus was to bend the opponents concentration. And we were very successful at that.

For the many football fans that witnessed this tactical game of defense should take note! especially the body of Christ. "football tactic," and "prayer tactic." A persons prayer life resembles the defensive battlefield on the grid Iron. When the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to describe our heavenly armor, he listed only one common weapon-the Sword, identified as the Word of God. The Holy Spirit "bumps" those dysfunctional human thoughts and literally runs down that "sinful" desire. That come from the adversary, the teamwork that takes place one must call on the Lord to bring his mighty hand of grace, then the Holy Spirit moves to bring prayer warriors into battle to cover you in prayer? that's right your "front seven." Other defensive means are revealed as well, but they are all dependent on the Word, and the fellowship we have with our Lord and the body of Christ. When was the last time someone said, "Hey you okay" I had you in prayer?

We must constantly and consistently feed on the Word. To use our weapon effectively we must know it intimately. Our prayers depend on how much nourishment we're getting. Jesus promised, "If you remain in Me and My Words remain in you, ask whatever you will, and it will be given to you. This is to My Father's glory, that you bear fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples. (John 15:7-8). Prayer Warriors, who intercede, must spend time with their Bibles. Quality time. It involves more than knowing a sequence of doctrinal proofs. Joshua, Moses right hand man was told to meditate on God's Word day and night, this was his secret as a great warrior for the Lord, it's important to know one's play-book. Knowing scripture is just the first step. Now the Christian, and newcomer must learn how to use the armor and it's weapons against the many different varied attacks and obstacles that the evil one, brings to battle field.

ARMED & DANGEROUS! It seems that this years Raider team is taking a biblical approach like the body of Christ to ensure players have a full-armor? Tom Cable has taken the team through a learning phase, the emphasis is by design, before they put on the pads. They must know their plays, it's to cut down on mistakes and to develop teamwork early in the season. John Madden in his years of coaching was known as a teacher of the game. Always giving players like Lester Hayes words of encouragement always persuasive in making sure Lester understood the greatness that awaited him. By having veterans tutoring players like Lester Hayes. At one point Lester had no desire to play anywhere but in the state of Texas. He was the 14Th safety drafted in 1977. Rumor was that "Lester Hayes might have difficulty playing in the NFL." Lester eventually was thankful to be a Raider. Hayes still looks back at his introduction to stickum and laughs at what it did for his career. Before that, he become the portrait of a team that literally would try any tactic if it helped produce a victory on game day.

The Hayes stickum-coated jerseys were found to be undisputed evidence that he was a devoted believer in that philosophy. The Christian philosophy for victory is pretty much the same? Use all at your disposal? According to God's Will without His gifts we become mere mortals. Coach John Madden was asked the question of cheating? His response was "yea, we play dirty, all teams do. We're just better at it than the rest!! Something to think about, as you begin to understand your relationship with Almighty God, it just takes "simple instructions" It just might be time for the Body of Christ to get down and dirty? Lester Hayes in his unique stance at corner-back, came from his linebacker mentality. Many Raiders fans come from a proud background and we know how to deal with whatever comes our way!

The football illustration here is to show us the fundamental approach we should take in prayer, by "blitzing" Satan and his team of demons, with all our might in faith bringing an element of surprise by breaking their will against our families and friends. Knowing our only back-up is Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God the Father. We just can't do it on our own, show no mercy be quick to pray by suppressing their movement. Like Moses and all the gladiators in the past. God will sake things up to get our attention.

One can ask Lester Hayes himself. While living in Los Angeles. There was a 6.9 earthquake centered in Northridge, CA. It left extensive damage to his home. He had a choice to make, spend time rebuilding or go visit some friends in Las Vegas, Nevada or stay in Modesto CA. The hand of God led him to Modesto, there he began dating his first Christian lady of his life. And she introduced him to God. His destiny was then to learn the complete destiny of forgiveness. The superiority of God's word and guidance by the Holy Spirit out weighed the tricks of the adversary. In guiding him to the "sonic boom" of love that comes from the grace of the Lord. In reality, Lester Hayes understood that by taking a "bump and run stance" behind the cross, was all he needed. Which would allow Jesus Christ the minister of defense to take over. Simple instructions, that's all it takes. Jesus, represents all God has brought forth for humanity in His excellence of Salvation. Even in the majestic way that God answered Moses prayers in seeing the promise land. Likewise, in the same graceful manner the prayers of the Hayes family were answered...

Pastor Mando
''keep the faith"

 

 

Raiders for Christ
Hearing God's Voice

Expectations are often based upon our past experiences, emotions, and desires. They can get us motivated because we look forward to something good. They can cause us to feel dread and fear when we don’t know what is going to happen or we don’t like what might. Expectations can be unrealistic. They can be too high or too low. They can be unfair to us or to others. Our expectations can lead us to develop fixed patterns of thinking about some things or people. This can weaken our faith, block our goals and diminish our resolve. On the other hand, this can be a good thing. It can help us to be hopeful, accepting, secure and optimistic.

We all have predictable expectations. This applies to every area of our lives. Our expectations are closely linked to our level of hope. If we are hopeful, we will expect good things to happen. We will confidently anticipate something good. However, when we expect the worst; or to be disappointed we begin to lose our hope. Hope is like the air we breathe. We can’t live without it. Hope helps us see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even a glimmer of hope can sustain us and keep us believing.

If there is an area of your life in which you have lost hope and ceased expecting something good to happen, know that nothing is ever hopeless because God is a God of hope. He will make a way when there is no way. It might not be in the way you expect, but it will be for your best. It will be better than you can ask, think, or imagine. You can begin expecting victory in every area of your life today because God’s plans for you are good. He knows the desires of your heart. He wants to be the anchor of your soul and fill you with joyful expectation of all that He has for you. You can expect the best from Him. You can expect good things to happen. You can expect God to help you and guide you. You can expect God to bless you and fill you with His love, peace and joy. Your expectations won’t be disappointed when your faith is in the God of hope.

Expectations of failure

The hopes and fears of Howie Long started at a young age. "The Projects," he said. There was no further comment. It was a bleak situation. Mike Mullan, a man as tough as his name. Bald, hard, who spoke in four-and five-word sentences, and his occasional snappers had an edge of bitterness. When he died of leukemia months later, it hit Howie Long very hard. Uncle Mike was one of the four Mullan brothers, Long's four uncles who took charge of a maverick Charlestown street kid and turned him into a 6' 5", 275-pound All-Pro defensive end for the Raiders. Actually five Mullans had a hand in it. The fifth was Long's grandmother, Elizabeth Hilton Mullan, whom everybody, including Howie, calls Ma. It was her house, which she shared with Uncle Mike until his death. The neighborhood had it's character, parking is no problem in the area. People just don't park in front of someone else's house. An occasional stranger who would make that mistake didn't make it again.

Once, several off-seasons ago, Long, with out-of-state license plates on his car, parked in front of his grandmother's house at 7 Albion Place and someone ripped off his stereo. It made headlines in the Boston papers and provided a lively topic for the interview sessions before the Raiders-Redskins Super Bowl. "They wrote that I came from the slums, the ghetto, Gangland, U.S.A.," Long says. "It became a locker room joke. The people here didn't think it was very funny. They were offended. They're very proud people, working-class people, Irish mostly, and very close. They're suspicious of outsiders, and that's what I am now, an outsider. You'd think I'd be a favorite son in Charlestown. I'm not. I'm not a hero. I didn't play my football here. I left." Heroes played for the Townies, the local semipro team in the Park League. The games were down by the Neck. Jack the barber coached them.

Playing football held no appeal for Long as a child. He could run fast and was big, too big. When he was nine he weighed 120 pounds. When he was 11 he was as big as the 13- and 14-year-old. His uncle Billy, and then his cousin by marriage, Bob Murray, got him onto the Pop Warner teams they coached. He didn't stick around for good reason. "I was C-team age and A-team weight," Long said. "I didn't feel like going out there and taking a daily beating from kids two and three years older." There was another thing, though, and it has been the dark shadow that has followed Long throughout his life. No confidence. Fear of failure, fear of being humiliated. On the street it was no problem. He could play street hockey, the No. 1 sport in Charlestown -- "ball hockey," they called it, and he could play basketball and baseball in the playground, but football was different. It was organized, the real thing, uniforms, adults to yell at you, everybody watching. Pressure. The downside potential was too great. Even as he climbed the football ladder, conquering each plateau as it came, the fear never left him. Two years after he finally committed himself to football he was a high school all-state, seriously recruited by major schools. But to him, big-time college football meant only the chance for big-time failure.

"I'd just finished reading Meat on the Hoof, by Gary Shaw, where he tells about what they did to guys at Texas when they wanted their scholarships back," Long says, "how they ran them off the team and put them through torture drills. I was terrified. What if I can't play?" He signed a letter of intent at Boston College and immediately had second thoughts. "What happens if he gets hurt?" his uncle Billy asked a BC coach. "The guy told me, 'Well, we only have so many scholarships a year,' " Bill Mullan says. 'He'd lose it.' So Howie switched and went to Villanova, where they offered him a four-year." By his senior year he was good enough to be chosen for the Blue-Gray all-star game in Montgomery, Ala. As a late entry. Joe Restic, the Harvard coach and one of the assistant coaches for the Blue team, needed a spot on the roster filled. He chose Howie, who had been a high school teammate of his son, Joe Restic Jr. "He roomed with Colin McCarty, the middle guard from Temple who'd driven trucks with Joe Klecko," Long says. "No one talked to us. No one offered to take us out to dinner.

It was the worst week of my life. They had a banquet the night before the game, and they introduced me to the guy I was going to play against, Zach Guthrie of Texas A & M. Texas? I'd never met anyone from Texas in my whole life. I'd seen him during the week. Great big guy, two-tone shoes, leather jacket, leather cap, toothpick in his mouth all the time. Never said a word. They announced his name at the banquet, then they announced me as the guy who'd be playing against him, and Frank Howard, the old Clemson coach who was emceeing the thing, pointed his finger at me and said, 'That's you, boy.' Scared? Hell, yes, I was scared." And when the game started, when Long got his first taste of combat, the fear melted, and it was just football. He blocked a punt and pressured the quarterback all day. When it was over he was named defensive MVP. He said hello to his grandmother on national TV afterward and added, "Ma, it stinks here. I want to come home."

Predictable expectations of failure

In his first training camp with the Raiders the fear came back. "I thought I stunk," he says. "I had no confidence, "none." I couldn't understand why they'd drafted me in the second round." He remembers lining up for his first live-contact drill and looking across the line at the glare of 300-pound Art Shell. "I thought, Oh my God," Long says. Sitting in his grandmother's kitchen in Charlestown, his great frame crowding the room, his face alight and open as he tells these stories. It's the face of innocence, an Irish minstrel boy's face transported to the body of a massive grown man. This magnificent body, combined with those clean, chiseled good looks, who had the Hollywood talent scouts buzzing. Along with all the women of the world yearning for his attention at public events. Now where is there a part for a 275-pound choirboy? At a young age with two years of All-Pro behind him, a wife who had completed two years of law school and a healthy baby son named Christopher Howard Long. It's all there ahead of him, a life of infinite promise, and yet almost every story he tells about himself, every anecdote, has an undercurrent of despair. It's not me, he seems to be telling you, this isn't really me that you see here in front of you.

Long achieved celebrity status in 1983, his first All-Pro year. Writers who met him for the first time during Super Bowl week in Tampa in the tent put up for mass interviews were surprised by his soft-spoken, articulate manner and his wry, often hilarious way of expressing himself. One morning, with 30 or so writers crowding his little interview table, Long tipped his chair back, stared up at the top of the tent and proceeded to let loose a stream of consciousness that could become the definitive word on the surrealism of Super Bowl press days: "Give me a day to die. . . . Are we in Kansas yet, Toto? I don't know where I am. . . . Oh God, I'm in a tent. . . ."Some kid, huh? Bright, great talent. "Do you know what I was thinking the first day they had those press interviews?" he says. "I was thinking, Every player has his own table. What if nobody's at mine? How will I handle the embarrassment?" Fear. Self-doubt. Curt Marsh, the Raider guard who roomed with Long at their first mini-camp, remembers waking up in the middle of the night to see a frenzied Long wrestling the TV set off the wall and preparing to throw it out the window. "His eyes were wide open, and they had the glassy look of a maniac's," Marsh says. "I thought, Who am I living with? Then I realized he was asleep. I called, 'Howie! Howie!' There were nights when I saw him get up in his sleep and start fighting people. Once he almost went through a window. . . ."Long's wife, Diane, says, "He was always like a volcano about to erupt, always driven. Everywhere we went, he thought people were staring at him."

Expectations of deliverance

The story starts in Charlestown, one of the oldest towns in Massachusetts -- it was settled in 1628. There are a few Colonial landmarks in Charlestown, but the pervading look is early industrial revolution, dark, soot-stained brick walls, abandoned factories, and the great gray shadow of the Projects. Long's first memories are street memories. "There's the Bunker Hill Elementary School, the first school I went to," he said as the car cruised the area last winter. "And this is Hood's the dairy, where my grandmother worked for 26 years. We used to play touch football on this little 10-foot-wide patch of grass between the dairy and the street. If you could catch a down-and-out pass on that field you were a serious player. And that's Eden Street Park across the street. See those three kids on the bench? That was me several years ago. Here's the place, Decatur Street, under the highway, where I got hit in the head with a bat. Me and this kid were hitting rocks, and as I bent down he cut loose with his home run swing and it caught me in the forehead. I didn't go down. I went to one knee. I had a lump this big. I walked home. Nobody was there; I went to bed."

"Howie was always bigger than everybody else," says his cousin Michael Mullan, a brewer for Anheuser-Busch, "but he wasn't tough. When you're that big and you ain't tough you've got a problem. Everyone wants a piece of a big guy. Kids would pick on him. I used to have to force him to fight. He'd be crying; he wouldn't do it. I gave him a choice -- fight them or get smacked by me. After a while people left him alone." Those memories haunt Howie Long to this day. The bitterness never leaves. "My cousin talks about throwing me into the street at seven or eight years old to defend myself," he says. "Can you imagine what that's like? What seven-year-old kid wants to fight?" At home there was no one to turn to. The Long family lived with his grandmother and Uncle Mike at 7 Albion Place, but his father, Howie Long Sr., was pulling long hours loading milk for Hood's Dairy, and his mother was bedridden most of the time, suffering from periodic attacks of epilepsy. Howie's four uncles, the Mullan brothers, had their own kids to worry about. There was only his grandmother, Ma, to feed him and clothe him. She knew what it was like to grow up alone. She was an orphan who finally had been rescued from a Catholic children's home in Yonkers, N.Y. by her aunt, Nellie O'Neill of Charlestown. She married Michael Mullan from Londonderry in 1925. He died of cancer in 1955.

"He'd been a major in the IRA," Long says. "He lived next to the police station, and they tell stories about how he used to pass information along by a series of smoke signals from the chimney." When Howie was nine, the Longs moved out of his grandmother's home to a house at 170 Bunker Hill St. "From that minute on, everything went downhill," Long says. "No one ever cooked in our house." He remembers sneaking over to 7 Albion Place, where his grandmother or his aunt Edie would feed him. Two years after the move his parents separated; a year after that they were divorced. The memories remain, always dark, always haunting. He says that on the day the divorce went through, his mother "kind of went crazy" and went after his sister. He broke up the fight. After the separation he remembers his mother dragging him through the neighborhood at night, trying to find his father, hoping to catch him with another woman.

When the Raiders played in the Super Bowl in Tampa, the Boston Herald found Long's mother in Port Richey, Fla. She had remarried and retired. They took a picture of her with rosary beads in one hand and a picture of Howie in the other. "Mother's pride . . ." the caption read. "A reporter from that paper called me up," Long says, "and asked me if I would get on a conference call with my mother. They wanted to do a This Is Your Life kind of thing. I told him, 'Don't you ever call me again." After the divorce, the court had awarded custody of Howie, then 12, to his mother. "That was just their ruling, but nobody fought for custody. No one wanted the responsibility," he says. "Eventually I wound up back at my uncle Mike's house. I felt like the orphan everybody took in. Do you know what it's like to be 12 years old and not wanted?

"I would have liked to have lived with my dad, but when they got divorced he was working as a day laborer, sleeping in his car at night. Then he lived in a rooming house in City Square. He'd had a terrible life. He'd spent 13 years in an orphanage in Salem. Once we drove by it, an awful-looking place with barbed wire outside. As a kid I remember my father waking up at night in a cold sweat, ready to defend himself." Howard Long Sr. had moved back into 7 Albion Place and lived with his ex-wife's mother and brother for nine years, until April 13 when he remarried and moved to East Boston. He describes his relationship with Howie as "cordial, but we'll never be as close as we should be because of what has happened in the past. I'm not proud of what happened, but what could I do? I was struggling." Howie owes his height to his father, who stands 6' 8" and weighs 230, with black hair and sharply defined features. Sitting in the Mullans' kitchen, his hands gripping a cup of cold coffee, he speaks in subdued tones as he tells a story of Gothic horror about the Massachusetts of his boyhood. "I lived with foster parents until I was four," he says, "and then I was sent to Plummer Farms School in Winter Island near Salem. It was a terrible, terrible place. You did 10 hours of farm-work a day and two hours of school. There was one teacher for the whole place. I was in the sixth grade at 17. There was no talking allowed inside the building. If you were caught talking, they made you hold your hands out, and you were beaten with a leather strap soaked in kerosene overnight. The kids who were too big for that were punched in the face. When I was 17, I was given a choice of staying in the home or going into the Army. I jumped at the chance. I'd never seen a dollar bill until I went into the service, never talked to a girl until I was 18. I met Peggy Mullan at a record hop in Charlestown as I was rotating out of the Army."

He studies the coffee cup and his hands tighten. "Seven of us went into the service," he says. "Six of them got dishonorable discharges. I was the only one who didn't. I've only met one guy who was in the home when I was there. He was a bum. I saw him on a bench in Boston Common." He pauses again. "You know," he says, "there was a time when Howie and I almost didn't talk at all. I'm very happy for him now, for what he's done." It's a life that could have gone in almost any direction, but underneath it all, underlying the bitterness and despair, runs a strong current of self-preservation. "I never fooled around with drugs, and I was never an outlaw or a punk," Howie says. "Drugs scared me. I thought that if I did any kind of drugs I'd die. It was such an easy choice. It was as if someone said, 'Hey, kid, do you want a hot-fudge sundae, or do you want to hold your hand over a fire?'

"I was a street kid, but that meant hopping a ride on the back of the MTA down to Revere Beach, that's the beach that's made out of concrete or sneaking into the Boston Garden to watch the Celtics or the Bruins. We had our whole plan of attack drawn up like a battle plan; we'd scratch it in the dirt. I'd cut school and go over to the Lori-Ann Donut Shop and eat doughnuts. I got a job at the pet store near Lechmere, unloading fish tanks. They gave me $10 for unloading a full long-bed truckload. I never broke a fish tank. When I asked for a raise, I got fired.

"My uncle John was a cop at the time, and he got me a job at this bar, the Rusty Scupper, sweeping up. I was 13, and I looked 16. I stood 6' 1", and I had this little broom and dustpan, and the place would be packed and I'd have to bend over and go around people's legs -- 'Excuse me, sir.' "I loved it: They gave me a striped rugby shirt. It said Rusty Scupper on it, and I'd take it to bed with me. To me it was the Cadillac of sport shirts. My idol was a bouncer with a cast on his hand, a guy named Topper Rogers. He's a Boston cop. I wanted to be like him. Anyway Ma, my grandmother, came down and made me get out of the place."

Expectations in faith

By the time Howie was 14 and ready for his sophomore year in high school, a major problem had developed: He had become a truant. No classroom could hold him. He had missed 45 consecutive days of school. The busing riots were a convenient excuse, for many parents were hesitant about sending their kids to school. But Howie Long needed no excuses to stay away from class. There was too much going on outside. . . fish tanks to unload, an occasional $20 to pick up long-shoring on the docks when he could convince them he was 16. The Mullans had a conference. What should they do with this overgrown kid? He could stay with Uncle George or Uncle Mike in Charlestown, but that didn't seem likely to work. It would just be more of the same. There was Uncle John, the cop, a solid officer who had once won the Medal of Valor for saving his partner's life. Uncle John had moved out of the area. "I was the social climber," he says. "I moved to South Boston." But, no, his hours were too irregular. Then there was Uncle Billy, a supervisor with the Boston Housing Authority, a star for the Townies, who had played service football in France. He ran his house with the same military discipline he had learned in the Army. He lived in Milford, Mass., a suburban community 20 miles to the southwest, in a house that was crowded with two of his own children and two that he and his wife, Aida, had adopted. There were no luxuries, but Uncle Billy looked like he might be the answer for a truant teenager. The family had already tried to enroll Howie in a vocational course to train him to be an electrician, but he had been turned down mainly because of those 45 missed days. Uncle Billy said he would take the kid, but he would have to obey the house rules. They packed a suitcase for Howie, and Uncle John took him downtown, bought him his first suit, and sent him to the suburbs.

Expectations of hope and change

Milford, Long says, was "high school, U.S.A. A beautiful place. They had cheerleaders, grass fields. I didn't know there was grass on the other side of the hill. I thought every place was like Charlestown. The first time I saw it, it was intimidating because it was so beautiful. The kids called me 'the Bostonian.' As an out-of-towner, I wasn't well received. I didn't have the kind of clothes the other kids had. I didn't have any parents in the booster club." But Milford also had something else, a very dedicated coach named Dick Corbin. The first time he got a look at the 6' 2", 200-pound Long he suggested that he come out for football. Corbin, who's the offensive line coach at Harvard now, says Long was a "survivor" as a sophomore but had become a "player" as a 6' 3", 235-pound junior tackle. In the winter between those seasons he played basketball and in the spring he threw the weights. The football team went undefeated his junior year and beat Pittsfield, 42-7, in the state championship. By his senior year, recruiters already had a pretty good handle on him. "He broke his ankle on the first play of our second game," Corbin recalls. "The doctor said it was a four- to six-week injury. Howie said, 'Coach, my life is over.' In three days he had the cast off, and 1 saw him jogging around the field by himself, limping actually, and two weeks later he played." In the classroom his dedication wasn't as evident. "When I first got there the teacher said, 'O.K., class, write a short story on your vacation.' " Long says. "Vacation? What vacation? I didn't even know how to start it." He began cutting classes, and finally Corbin turned him over to his wife, Ruth Ann, an English and math teacher, for special tutoring. "He was bright, you could see that right away," she says, "but he'd never had any discipline. In Charlestown he'd just been passed along. The interesting thing was that he always spoke with perfect grammar, even though he had no formal knowledge of it. That was probably his grandmother's influence.

"He let things slide, though. He'd show up an hour late for our appointment; he hadn't done the work. One day I told him, 'I can't work with you.' He was shocked. Everyone had always made allowances. After that he was O.K." Life at home, according to Long, was a series of groundings. Those were Uncle Billy's traditional punishments, usually for missing the 9 p.m. curfew. To this day, Long perceives his uncle Billy as a man of stern and unbending principle, but that doesn't give the whole picture. There's a fine strain of humor in the man, and underlying all is compassion, always great compassion. In the Mullan family Uncle Billy's house was the refuge for wayward relatives. "That grounding was about Matthew's 40th life sentence," he says, calling Howie by his middle name, "the sentences to run concurrently. You know there were times when he wouldn't talk to me for two or three days. But the end of it is, look how he turned out."

Villanova received Long with these words from head coach Dick Bedesem: "He's unquestionably the finest recruit that our coaching staff has signed since we've been here." Long was a big fish in a little pond. The Wildcats had losing seasons his first three years. "No film room," he says, "no reporters in the locker room; Ivy League level without IW League wealth." Diane Addonizio, a classical-studies major from Red Bank, N.J., met Howie Long in her freshman year when he was a sophomore. She recalls him as being moody and hard to know -- "but attractive, boy was he attractive. I'd never met anyone that big who was that good-looking." The first real date they had was when Howie invited her to his room to watch an NFL game on TV. "A little 12-inch, black-and-white TV that my grandmother gave me," he says. "A TV with lines on it and a coat hanger for an antenna. We watched a Dallas game. That's when they were still experimenting with Randy White at linebacker. On one play he got a running start and wham, he knocked the ballcarrier's helmet off. I started cheering. 'Wow, did you see that!' Diane must have thought I was nuts."

"Howie wasn't one of these guys who's too cool to have idols," says Diane, who married Long in June 1982. "He had pictures of Matt Millen and Bruce Clark from Penn State on his wall, and Mike Webster and Jack Lambert of the Steelers, and Joe Klecko from this area. Once he took me to a powerlifting competition at Villanova, and after we sat down he nudged me and said, 'Don't look around, but Joe Klecko just showed up.' He was absolutely in awe." It took her some time to finally understand this strange, moody young giant she was so attached to. "He didn't send me a Valentine's Day card when we first started going together. That upset me, and I told him so," she says. "Then he explained how holidays never meant anything special to him.

At Villanova when everyone went home for the holidays or the summer he was always the guy who stayed in the dorms. You know how a child's bed is special to him? Well, he never had his own. It was always a couch or something, while he was bouncing around from relative to relative. He was always living out of a suitcase, he always had his possessions on him. It took me awhile to understand that." NFL scouts who came to test Long after his senior year saw another side of his character: He was always willing to work out, to run, to test, at any hour of the day or night.

"The Patriots worked me out in the snow," he says. "They plowed the field. I ran 40s and 20s, did a vertical jump. I asked the guy for a pair of turf shoes. He gave me a Patriots key ring. I kept it. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world." He was rated as a third- or fourth-round draft choice, but after the BlueGray game his stock rose. The Raiders sent their defensive line coach, Earl Leggett, to Villanova to work him out. "Earl had me set a couple of times and plant and come upfield 20 yards, and then he left," Long said. "I thought, Well, that's one team I can forget about, and I went up to my room and watched "Leave It to Beaver." "I had seen his Blue-Gray films," Leggett recalls, "and we knew he'd run a 4.75 forty, but when you got around him you could feel the damn power and energy. You could just feel the brute strength." Long finished his college career at 251 pounds. When he showed up at the Raiders' first minicamp he weighed 297, "just a biscuit away from 300," he says. "I thought everyone had to weigh 290 in the NFL. Earl looked at me and said, 'What happened to the guy I drafted?'

When the regular camp opened, Long found himself across the line from Art Shell. "It was the first pit drill," he says. "I had checked out the line, and I saw that Matuszak was going against Lawrence, and Kinlaw against Dalby and Dave Browning against Shell, and I was going to get Lindsey Mason. I was getting ready for Mason when Shell came up and Earl said, 'Browning, step out of there, I want to see Long against him.' I thought, He's going to kill me. And he almost did. He hit me so hard he split the top of my right cheekbone and at the same time gave me the fists in the stomach. It was the most devastating pop I ever got in the NFL. My cheekbone still lumps up every year in the same spot."

Expectations turn Passionate

In 1981 he was 21, the second-youngest rookie in the NFL, Houston cornerback Bill Kay edging him by four days. "Howie was the greenest of the green," Leggett says. "He didn't know nothing about playing the game." Leggett called him "My pro from Villanowhere." Each scrimmage, each game, became a death struggle. Eventually, all of Long's fears crystallized into one overwhelming urge to get the guy opposite him before he could deliver another dose of the Art Shell treatment. The rookies gave Long the nickname Caveman. The veterans were amused by him, by his intensity. What the hell, we're the Raiders. We've seen all types. "I didn't know what to make of them," Long says. "I remember going into a bar in Santa Rosa, where we trained -- the Bamboo Room it was called -- and Ted Hendricks was sitting on a stool and next to him was this life-size blowup doll. He said, 'Howie, meet Molly. Molly's my date tonight."

The Raiders would use Long in pass-rush situations as a tackle in the nickel defense. He remembers the Patriots' John Hannah and the Chargers' Ed White taking him to school. Mike Webster of the Steelers put him on his back on the first play, and Doug Wilkerson of the Chargers "did tricks with me." But the intensity was always there. And in the fourth quarter, when things started to sag a little, Long would come on strong. He got his sacks and he wound up leading the team as a rookie. He started the last five games of the strike year, 1982, and by 1983 he was a regular. He began following Leggett around like a puppy. The players called him Howie Leggett. Lyle Alzado arrived from Cleveland with plenty of giddap left in his aging legs and a willingness to share 11 NFL seasons' worth of knowledge with the young lineman. The club decided that Alzado should room with Long. "Lyle would bring a piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk up to the room at 8:30, and at nine o'clock it was lights-out and the TV off," Long says. "I thought, Oh my God, I'm back with my uncle Billy again. I'd get a roll-away cot and sneak over to Calvin Peterson and Marcus Allen's room and watch TV.

"In the huddle Alzado was our leader, no question about it," Long says. We would always say that Lyle would never retire. Eventually we'll prop him up on a horse and sew his eyelids open and he'll play forever. He'll be our El Cid. . . ." Long had become the Raiders' strongman on the defensive line, controlling the run and exerting pressure from the left end spot or as a tackle in the four-man pass rush. The night before a game he locks himself in his room with two cheeseburgers, a dozen iced teas and two reels of film. "If I don't look at films the night before, I feel naked the next day," he says. He has mastered lots of subtle tricks of the trade, for example: "One thing I learned is never bend over in the defensive huddle. Stay up high and watch the other team's sideline, especially if the quarterback is over there talking to the coach. There's always that moment when he leaves him and starts back to the huddle and then forgets something and goes back. If you watch their lips, "that's when you might pick something off."

Long's basic move off the line was devastating, it is the rip, an uppercut designed to break the opponent's grip and stop all forms of hand-to-hand combat. The hand fighters, he says, simply waste too much time. To counter Long's move, offenses use the tackle to set him up and then have the tight end crack down on his legs. That's where the trouble usually starts, setting off one of "the 80 or so fights I've had in the NFL," which have earned Long a reputation as a wild man. "A lot of teams use that, but Kansas City was the worst," he says. "Willie Scott, their tight end, almost maimed me, and a big fight started. I told him, "It might be legal, but do it again and I'll come down with my three-quarter-inch spikes and rip your ribs off.' That's the Catholic in me. Warn 'em first. Hey, look, I can't be responsible for what I do."

There was the time he went into the Seattle offensive huddle during a time-out and said to the trainer, "Give me that water. They don't need it. They're not doing anything." "A few guys in the huddle laughed, guys that I know," Long says. "Ken Easley reminded me of it during the Pro Bowl. He loved it." There was the time Long screamed at Chicago guard Kurt Becker: "I'm going to get you in the parking lot after the game and beat you up in front of your family!" "Yeah, I said it," Long says." He'd spent the day flying over the pile and hitting defensive backs late. He was my target for the game, but I had missed him and sprained my back, so I was upset. Everyone has their favorite threat, and that's mine. Lyle's is "I'll kill you and everything you love."

The humble state of all his expectations

The Raiders' reputation as intimidators took some lumps. Chicago outplayed them. Pittsburgh and Seattle ran the ball on them. Long sighs and admits, "Things were bad. Injuries, mistakes, some people just didn't play well." During his career before the end of the season Long was wondering if he would have a shot at the Pro Bowl. His sacks were down, thanks to the double-team attention he was getting, but the statistics didn't show holding penalties by opponents, and the Raiders figure that Long and the Bucs' Lee Roy Selmon led the league in that category. "I won't have the sacks of a Mark Gastineau," Long says, "and I won't get all those pursuit tackles. Our responsibilities were different. He's was allowed to free-lance all over the field. I had back-side responsibility. I had to play the reverses and cutbacks. "I would always say, let me know when Gastineau decides to play the run."

Al Davis, the Raiders' managing general partner, felt that Long was a player with "superstar qualities and had room for improvement." Long dedicate the 1985 season to zeroing in more accurately on quarterbacks. "I came in too high a lot of times," he says. "They'd duck, and I'd miss." The Raiders acknowledged Long's worth when they rewrote his contract after he staged a four-day holdout last July. They eventually gave him $3 million for four years, none of it deferred, a package that was best in it's time of NFL in terms of real money for a defensive lineman. It's always a shock when people meet Long for the first time. Last winter his uncle John, the ex-cop who was the driver and bodyguard for the agent Bob Woolf, took Long to meet Woolf. They talked for a while and finally Woolf said, "You know I don't know how to say this, but you're . . . well, you're really not like I expected you to be . . . you're. . . . "Civilized," Long said. "That's it," said Woolf. "It happens all the time," Long said later. "I always spend the first five minutes convincing people I'm really Howie Long. They say, "No, you're not. He's much meaner looking." They figure I should be wearing a torn black jersey, going around raping and pillaging."

The Boys and Girls Club of Boston sees a very private side of him. He has come back and spoken to the group several times. He's treated many of the kids to tickets to the Raiders-Patriots games in Foxboro. "What I would have given if someone would have done that for me when I was a kid," he says. It's a simple matter. You've gotten something from life, you give something back.

Long's fears and his self-doubts are almost gone now. But sometimes at night they do come back, and he feels that maybe this has just been a dream, that he'll wake up and he'll be back in Charlestown again. Then he begins to wonder what might have happened, if . . . What if his grandmother hadn't been around? What if his uncle Billy hadn't taken him in? What if Dick Corbin hadn't taken him in hand? What if he had been accepted for the electrician's course at vocational school instead of being rejected?

"Well, he'd be an electrician right now," says his aunt Aida. "A tall one. He wouldn't need a ladder." "I never would have made it out of Charlestown if not for all those people," Long says. "I'd probably be working for the Boston Housing Authority, and I wouldn't be very happy. I wasn't a happy kid. But there was always someone there, always someone saving my ass. Ma, my uncle Billy, Dick Corbin and his wife and Earl Leggett." "Call it luck, call it circumstance," Diane Long says, "but you have to wonder how many others there are like him out there, people who could have really done something if given a chance. They knew they were better than what they were, but they never knew what to do about it." Long stares and reflects, "God gave me good people around me, and He gave me size," he says. "It's kind of a miracle, really Diane and I have talked about it. Where would I be now if God hadn't decided to rip me from stone?"

Howie Long's Testimony

This story written by Paul Zimmerman "The Long Way Up" a Sports Illustrated exclusive in 1989, can only bring us to the understanding Howie Long's life was an on-going spiritual battle to sustain his drive for survival. Through the many hardships. First one must recognize his surrondings. The New England area which has an abundance in spiritual roots? Had it's beginning's where the gospel was introduced to this country hundreds of years ago.

The spiritual warfare is first and foremost a battle within our own hearts and souls...as Howie Long's father gave us description's of the gothic horror that took place in a young boys life, painting the picture of his surroundings, bringing us to the revelation everyone of us is fully engaged on this battlefield, no matter where we live. To that degree we are graced by the Holy Spirit with the courage needed to face the larger battlefield in the world. The oppression that exsit in many area's around the world effects our expectations in understanding God's Will for our lives...The words that Jesus spoke to Peter the aspostle, in taking care of My sheep (John 21:15-17), echoed in the hearts of Howie's family as they had a conference to make sure this young boy would not wonder in an unforegiving world.

His fear and despair of failure brought forth a passion that would brake the cycle. That hindered many in the family. The Lord's promise, He put good people in his path, blessed with a physical frame that would allow him to dominate opposing linemen in the National Football League for years. But most important he finds himself blessed in fatherhood and in marriage. Howie, says I wait to see, "just maybe," I'll wake-up one day, and realize it was all a dream? "No" Howie, you've been living the promise that God desires for everyone of us...

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:11-13).

Pastor Mando
"keep the faith"

Bo Knows

Running up the left-field wall. Bowling over the Boz. Blasting three home runs in a row.
The images of Bo Jackson seemed to keep coming, week after week, 10 months a year, in two very different sports. For almost five years the Royal-Raider had been a human highlight film, a god-given gift to the bedtime sportscasters. Although Jackson's exploits were beamed into millions of homes, they were really being shown on one big screen for the American sporting public. Breaking bats over his knee or, sometimes, his head. Breaking tackles en route to another touchdown. Throwing out a runner trying to score from third on a single to left.

"When people would tell me I could have been the best athlete ever, I just let it go in one ear and out the other," Jackson said when his star was near its apex in 1990. "There is always somebody out there who is better than you are." Maybe in one sport or the other. But from the fall of 1987 to the winter of 1991, Bo knew no equal among paid athletes who took less than two months off. In baseball, he was a career .250 hitter with 141 homers and 415 RBI in 2,393 at-bats in eight seasons as an outfielder and designated hitter with the Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox and California Angels. He hit 107 homers for the Royals from 1987-90, when he played pro football. As a part-time running back making full-time money with the Los Angeles Raiders, he ran for 2,782 yards on 515 carries, an impressive 5.4 average, and scored 18 touchdowns running and receiving. When Bo scored his first touchdown for the Raiders, in 1987, a Denver defensive back named Mike Harden tried to stop him by himself. Mike Harden had a better chance of seeing God that day than stopping Bo Jackson." "Howie Longs" observation... He was the first player in NFL history to have two rushing touchdowns of 90 yards or more, with a 91-yarder coming when he ran for a Raiders' record 221 yards against Seattle in his fifth pro game.

Vincent Edward Jackson was born on Nov. 30, 1962, in the steel town of Bessemer, Ala. The eighth of Florence Jackson Bond's 10 children, he was named after her favorite television actor, Vince Edwards, who portrayed Dr. Ben Casey. A child renegade, his family said Jackson was as wild as a "boar hog." Eventually, he came to be known as "Bo." About his tough childhood, Bo said in his book Bo Knows Bo, "We never had enough food. But at least I could beat on other kids and steal their lunch money and buy myself something to eat. But I couldn't steal a father. I couldn't steal a father's hug when I needed one. I couldn't steal a father's whipping when I needed one."

The name Vincent quickly disappeared as Jackson entered adolescence and gained a reputation as a troublemaker. He seemed unable to stay out of trouble, breaking windows, stealing bicycles, and beating up the other kids in the neighborhood. Jackson says, "He even hired kids to beat up other kids for me (because) He didn't have time to beat all of them up Himself." His brothers started calling him a "wild boar," because it was the only animal they felt he compared to. They soon shortened the nickname to "Bo."

Bo gets back home to Alabama a few times every year, but he does not have any great yearning to go back there for good, or to retire down South. For every fond memory he has, there is a pain that lingers, because Bo Jackson grew up fatherless. His dad, A.D. Adams, lived across town, and used to work in the steel mills, but Adams had a new wife and a new family, and rarely made an appearance except to leave a few dollars on the table. Bo inherited his father's enormous frame and his greatest burden (his stutter), and he combatted his own insecurities by utilizing that musculature he'd been given, by lashing out at anyone who stood in his way. He was a bully of the purest sort, "the John Gotti of my neighborhood," he says, a character straight out of Mark Twain. He once clubbed one of his cousins, a female cousin, with a baseball bat. Although his mother, Florence Bond, who worked as a housekeeper at a local Ramada Inn, tried every trick she knew to tame him, whipping him with switches and extension cords, Bo would not be tamed.

Bo Changes Direction

His nickname is a truncation of the term, "Bo'Hog," for a wild boar, gained a reputation for throwing rocks with uncanny accuracy, mostly at other human beings. He pummeled his classmates on a regular basis. When he was a teenager, in the summer of 1976, he and his friends began throwing rocks at pigs on their way to a local swimming hole, killing several of them. They got caught in the act by a farmer who had hired the local barber to keep watch, and Florence Bond told the barber who caught them that she was ready to send her son to reform school.

The barber asked Bo for the names of his co-conspirators. The way Bo tells it in his autobiography, "Bo Knows Bo," he suddenly saw where his life was headed, and he spilled his guts. In truth, the transformation was probably more gradual, but it seems to have begun here. He worked all summer mowing lawns to pay back the money, and then, scared straight, he began playing organized sports, endeavoring to find his niche. In baseball, he volunteered to be a catcher. He wrestled at heavyweight ("slippery as a wet catfish," one of his coaches called him), and he ran track. Later, though his mom didn't want him playing football, Bo joined the football team. When she found out he'd done it anyway, she locked him out of the house, and left him out there all night long; Bo curled up in a parked car...

Just Do It

Hardly a model student, Jackson showed his prowess in sports - plural. At McAdory High School in McCalla, Ala., Jackson won two state decathlon championships. As a senior, he ran for 1,173 yards on 108 carries (10.9 average) and scored 17 touchdowns. In baseball, his 20 homer -- in just 25 games -- tied the national high school record. His talent caught the attention of the New York Yankees, who selected him in the second round of the June 1982 draft. But Jackson turned down their $250,000 offer to accept a football scholarship from Auburn. In college, Jackson ran for 4,303 yards and scored 45 touchdowns. Twenty-one times he rushed for three figures. He culminated his Auburn career in 1985 with four 200-yard rushing games in a 1,786-yard season and won the Heisman Trophy, an achievement Jackson called "my greatest honor."

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers made Jackson the first selection of the 1986 NFL draft. But Jackson rejected their five-year offer that was worth a reported $7.6 million, which would have made him the NFL's highest paid rookie. "My first love is baseball," he said, "and it has always been a dream of mine to be a major league player." So Jackson who as a junior hit .401 with 17 homers with 43 RBI in 42 games as Auburn's center-fielder, waited until the Royals made him a fourth-round pick in the 1986 baseball draft before signing his first pro sports contract. After spending only 53 games in the minors, Jackson made his major league debut on Sept. 2, 1986, and got an infield single off Steve Carlton in his first at-bat.

It would not be long before he would moonlight. Since he did not sign with the Buccaneers, his name went back into the 1987 draft, and the Raiders picked Jackson in the seventh round (No. 183 overall). Unlike the Bucs, Raiders owner Al Davis embraced Jackson's baseball career. When Davis offered full-time money to pursue part-time football work after each baseball season, Jackson signed a four-year contract. By 1989, Jackson was a baseball all-star. His mammoth homer to center-field in Anaheim off Rick Reuschel leading off for the American League made him the All-Star Game MVP.

In 1990, the 698 yards he gained in 10 games with the Raiders earned him a selection to the Pro Bowl, though he would never play in the game. That's because on Jan. 13, 1991, he suffered a hip injury while being tackled during the Raiders' playoff victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. No one knew at the time, but the resulting condition, known as avascular necrosis, would lead to the deterioration of the cartilage and bone around his left hip joint.

When Jackson's hip did not respond to treatment, the Royals released him in spring training. Picked up by the White Sox two weeks later, Jackson only played 23 games. By 1992, his left hip had deteriorated so much, doctors replaced it with an artificial one. Medical and athletic experts figured Jackson would not be heard from again. Apparently, there were no Bo Jackson experts to be heard. During the months after the operation, Jackson worked himself and his prosthetic hip back into shape. Not just to walk; to run and compete. Maybe more unlikely than his double burst into pro sports, Jackson returned to the White Sox. Typically, it was with a flourish. In his first game back in 1993, Jackson pinch-hit a home run off the Yankees' Neal Heaton. Although he hit 16 homers that year, he batted just .232 and the White Sox released him. Jackson hit a career-high .279 with 13 homers in 201 at-bats for the Angels in 1994.

Jackson's career ended all too quietly, when that season was cut off by a players' strike in August. Not long after, his "Bo Knows" campaign for Nike, once a loud voice on the advertising landscape, ended just as quietly. Before the 1995 season began, Jackson retired from baseball. "God has his way of opening up our eyes to see reality," he said. It's a rough way to go, but I had to accept the fact. Keeping a promise he made to his mother before she died of cancer in April 1992, Jackson went back to Auburn and graduated in December 1995 with a bachelor of science degree in family and child development. Don't be sorry for me. It was a blessing in disguise," he said. "We as humans have to realize that God puts speed bumps in our road of life. My speed bump was me injuring myself. I've gotten over that. I've moved on from being an employee to being an employer."

The 46-year-old businessman, Jackson said he finds being a businessman just as rewarding and challenging as being an athlete. "I'm learning something new every day. I'm eager to learn," he said. "I'm also learning that if you don't watch yourself you can be taken advantage of quickly in the business world. The thing I try to do is surround myself with smart, astute business people and that seems to help out a great deal." "God has his way of blessing us in adverse conditions" I've been blessed in many ways, by opening up a motorcycle shop outside Chicago and went into partnership with Charles Barkley on an Alabama restaurant. He serves as president of the Sports Medicine Council, a non-profit, youth outreach organization of Health-South Corporation.

Another big event for Jackson that happened during his career. He made the "Bo Knows" commercial in which Michael Jordan, Kirk Gibson, Jim Everett and other sports stars attest that Bo knows their sport, then Wayne Gretzky skates up and says, "No." The commercial ends with Jackson trying to play a guitar on stage along with Bo Diddley. Jackson said his mother, uncles and aunts, all big fans of Diddley, wouldn't believe he was with the famous musician until they saw the commercial. "That's part of what makes my life so unique," Jackson said. "I've gotten to do things, go places, see people, that I never dreamed of. It's fun."

Bo Knows Forgiveness

The admission of not having a father figure in his life would have it's effect. Years after his playing days, God's Will would come upon Bo Jackson of dealing with the difficulties in childhood. Growing up without a father was not easy for him. As he recalls, “We never had enough food. But he always found a way to get lunch money whether it was good or bad, and bought himself something to eat. But he couldn't deny a fathers love and discipline had left a void in his heart. Being the eighth out of ten kids, and being the one that stayed in trouble, I sort of became a mommas boy.”

I had a father but I never had a dad. Meaning my parents were never married. He lived across town with his family. Up until I was eleven I thought having a dad meant a man who came by every month and left twenty bucks. My mother was my mother and father. I missed out. That haunted me all the way up to pro sports. Here was Bo Jackson, all-star baseball player, football player, top of the world in my profession. But I was envious of my teammates, because they'd fly in their dad to have beers in the locker room after games. In all other aspects my teammates envied me for my athletic ability. But for a dad I would have traded all that in. Just like that. A few years ago, Bo made up with his father, and goes to visit him often now that A.D. is old and in ill health. But there is something holding Bo back from a complete reconciliation with his past. He say's that when a stranger hugs or pats him on his back, he hate's it? Or whenever his high school asks him for a donation, Bo declines. All in good time, he says.

It is not easy to let go of everything. Bo's entire athletic career was based upon channeling that seething childhood anger into a purpose; his high school teammates, he wrote in "Bo Knows Bo," didn't make it in college athletics because "they had better lives at home than I did. It was as simple as that." He played games because that was his gift, because he liked to run, he once called himself "half-human, half-deer," but he also hated to work at it. Imagine if Bo had actually worked at it. Imagine if he had actually cared about something like making the Hall of Fame?

Mostly, Bo strived to fashion an existence for himself, and for his own family, out of his gift. He used sports, he says, to become a businessman, which might be a little bit of Bo rationalizing the sudden end to his career. But there is truth to it, as well. Bo's primary goal as an adult was to exist in direct opposition to his own father. It is nothing Bo hasn't thought out before; his wife is a psychologist, after all. That anger remains, buried beneath the surface. Mostly, he takes it out on the deer he kills and butchers, on the golf balls he hacks at day after day...

The Message of Healing

One of the hardest things in life is change. To be where we are is a lot easier than to implement a big change. It's just easier to go on with the hurt and pain with which we are already familiar and accustomed. To change means hard work. It means getting past - the past. It may be over, but in our mind it still is very much there. To go see our fathers and let go of the anger and hurt is a big step. Perhaps we could just go on and forget about it.

All those years of blame, hurt and pain! They are all for nothing. We have brought upon ourself feelings of resentment toward our fathers, and feelings of insecurity within ourself. If we had only been willing to open our eyes and see what was really happening we could have spared ourself years of hurt and pain. There is no deeper wound than the abandonment by a parent. Sometimes a parents broken promises as they enbrace us with comfort only to fall short and never to fullfill that promise. God has given everyone of us a special challenge we should make the choice of life exactly as it is. And except our dads exactly as they are. Is it fare, Not at all but forgiveness brings a supernatural result that in reality "makes no sense" It's God's Holy Spirit that does the work of healing! You just can't explain it? According to the Lords promise My Father will send the comforter to you... In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but he Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because He intercedes for the saints according to the Will of God. (Romans 28:26-27) Just like Bo says, All in good time.

Every day becomes a new opportunity to make choices in life. Today, we should choose to utilize the power of forgiveness. Bo says, it's all about spending time with your kids. I ask my kids if they want to play golf, go fishing, work on my cars. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes they say no. Sometimes I make them go. You've got to make that effort. And it pays off. I tell them, don't ever be ashamed to hug your mom or dad. Don't ever be ashamed to kiss them in front of everybody. We drop them off at school and get out of the car and kiss. Their friends go, "You still hug your mom?" The benefit of Bo's testimony of forgiveness has brought a passion in his life, to provide for others that do not have a father figure in their lives. His extended family... We teach kids to be champions, whether it's on the field or in the classroom. It's my way of giving something back to the community. We teach kids to stay off drugs, to eat right and stay fit. To stay in the classroom and respect their elders.

Pastor Mando
"keep the faith"