Zondervan - The Game Plan for Life Bible: Notes by Joe Gibbs

NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION

NOTES BY COACH JOE GIBBS

NIV Game Plan for Life Bible

Copyright 2012 by Zondervan

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The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV

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Portions of the ancillary content for this Bible have been taken from Game Plan for Life by Joe Gibbs. Copyright 2009. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Subject index is adapted from The NIV Student Bible by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford. Copyright 2002, 2011 by Zondervan. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9780310438823

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2012931794

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Game Plan for Life Articles

Game Plan Followers

Pit Pass

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself how in the world you got to where you are? In school, I was the guy who sat in the front row, pointed at my letter jacket and said I need a C. I need to be eligible. So how did I end up as coach of the Washington Redskins?

Searching for the Truth

While I was growing up in the hills of North Carolina, my mother and grandmother made certain that I was always in church. It helped shape my views, as I had to choose between the Bible and what it said of how I was created versus the view being taught in school, that I was formed when two amoebas happened to hit in a mud puddle a couple million years ago. At church, I was hearing that God looked down and loved me enough to make me and put me on earth with special abilities. I started searching for the truth. I wanted proof for what I believed. As I looked around, I came to believe one thing for suresince there was a world, there must be a world maker.

My pastor, grandmother and mother encouraged me to read the Bible. It provided me with added proof that God exists. Think about it. It was written by over 35 authors over a period of 1,500 years with a perfectly consistent theme from beginning to end. You know how hard that is to do?

While coaching, I had to call plays from the press box by telling an assistant coach, who told a player, who eventually told the quarterback. Its next to impossible to get the message right. But through the pages of the Bible, God has given mankind the truthplain and simple.

Gods Game Plan or the Worlds?

God created Adam and Eve, and you and me, for a purpose. He wants to have a relationship with us. So based on the truth of the Bible, at age nine I trusted Christ as my Lord and Savior.

As I grew older, I found there were other things the world wanted me to believe. You have one life to live and then you are gone, so you should do your own thing. Do whatever it takes to be happy and successful in life. I bought into the worlds game plan as my coaching career took off, thinking that were I to become a head football coach, I would have all the money and prestige I would ever need. My drive to become a head coach became an obsession. I wanted the position more than anything else in life.

After a number of assistant coaching jobs, in 1972, while coaching at Arkansas, God placed a small, unassuming Sunday school teacher named George Tharel in my path. I was intrigued by his life and his teaching, amazed to find someone so at peace with himself and with God. My nature is to drive hard, but I have always envied people who could relax and enjoy life. As I observed his life, I started to see that there was another game plan: Gods. Gods plan is not based on money, position and winning football games. God is only concerned with me having a right relationship with Him.