A conversation between two quarterbacks made the rounds this week. Bo Nix, now playing on Sundays in the NFL, sat down with Tim Tebow to talk about Jesus — and somewhere in it Nix said the line that got picked up everywhere: he was my childhood hero. A kid in Alabama watching a college quarterback he had never met, absorbing not just the footwork but the faith. Two decades later, the kid is grown, the hero is older, and they are sitting across from each other talking about the same Lord.
I keep turning that over. Not because famous athletes matter more than the rest of us — they don't — but because of the simple mechanism it exposes. Somebody was watching. The one being watched had no idea. And the thing that traveled between them was not a strategy or a program. It was a life, lived out loud enough to be seen.
Imitation is how faith has always traveled
Paul wrote to a young church in Thessalonica that had existed for a matter of months, and he said something remarkable about them:
"And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere" (1 Thessalonians 1:6-8).
Notice the chain. They watched Paul. Paul was watching Christ. Then, without setting out to, they became the thing other people watched — and their faith "sounded forth" into regions they had never visited. Nobody in that church stood up and announced, "I shall now be an example." They just received the word with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and the joy was visible, and visible joy is contagious.
That is still how it works. Most people who come to faith do not come because of an argument. They come because of a person they could not explain.
You don't get to choose who is watching
Here is the part that should make us all sit up a little straighter, gently. You cannot select your audience. Tebow did not pick a ten-year-old in Alabama. The people forming their picture of what a Christian is are not the ones you'd nominate. It's the grandson in the back seat while you're stuck in traffic on 112th. It's the twenty-year-old at work who noticed you don't join in when the conversation turns mean. It's the neighbor who sees your car leave on Sunday morning and has never asked why.
They're not studying your theology. They're watching how you handle being disappointed. Whether you tell the truth when it costs you. Whether the God you sing about on Sunday shows up in your tone of voice on Thursday.
And before that sinks into guilt — hear this. The goal is not to perform. Performed faith is the one thing young people spot instantly and never forgive. The goal is to be genuinely caught up in Jesus and let people watch it happen, unedited, including the parts where you need mercy. A faith that admits it needs grace is far more imitable than a faith that pretends it doesn't.
The Spirit carries it further than you can follow
What moves me about Paul's words is the phrase "has gone forth everywhere." Paul didn't carry it there. He couldn't. The Holy Spirit took what those believers were living and carried it into rooms Paul would never enter.
That is still God's habit. He is doing it right now, in this church and in this county. A prayer you prayed over someone years ago is still working. A kindness you don't remember is still being told at somebody's dinner table. You will not get the report. You get to be faithful; God handles distribution.
Some of you are feeling the opposite today — that nobody is watching, that your faithfulness has been invisible, that you were never anybody's hero. I'd say this plainly: invisible to you is not invisible to God, and the Father who sees in secret has never once mislaid a seed.
So bring them by name. This Tuesday at 11am we gather to pray, and that is exactly the place for it — the kids, the grandkids, the coworker, the one who watches you and says nothing. Ask the Spirit to finish in them what He started through you.
And keep your own eyes where the Thessalonians kept theirs. They imitated Paul only because Paul was imitating Christ. Every human hero eventually shows a seam. Jesus never has. Follow Him closely enough, and the people behind you will end up looking past you — which was the point all along.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.