Every moment of resistance to temptation is a victory.
FREDERICK W. FABER
In the first years of my NFL career, I was strong mentally and physically. It allowed me to perform at a high level in one of the most competitive and demanding professions around. But I had a weakness, an area where I wasn’t strong. And the longer that went on, the more I struggled off the field.
I’m talking about my spiritual life.
As I’ve said, I put a barrier between God and myself when I started having sex in high school. It was something I knew He didn’t want for me. That distance continued all through college. I made little effort to spend time with God and close our spiritual gap. The way I lived also contributed to the barrier. I wasn’t a wild party guy. I never drank or did drugs. But girls? That was another matter. I was definitely more focused on girls than God.
A small part of me knew I was in spiritual trouble before I joined the Raiders. When I visited Pastor Whitley just before my first preseason, he knew better than to pronounce his blessing on my self-absorbed plans. But I wasn’t ready to hear his wisdom. Not yet.
When you take a guy who has just turned twenty-two and is crazy about girls, give him a lot of money for the first time in his life, make him something of a sports celebrity, surround him with new teammates and friends who are eager to introduce him to the NFL culture, and drop him into the middle of the L.A. party scene, you’ve got a recipe for trouble. It was a perfect storm of temptation, and when it came to girls I didn’t put up much of a fight.
I didn’t dive in right away, but by my third season with the Raiders, when I was twenty-four, I was indulging in some of the opportunities that came my way. I hung out with Magic Johnson and other celebrities on Friday nights. I also dated plenty of girls, including “Jocelyn,” one of the Raiders cheerleaders. It got so crazy that a friend of Jocelyn’s offered to hook me up with another beautiful friend of hers—but only if she could come over to my place after her friend left. As she put it, “You want to do breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Let’s do breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” I’m sorry to say it now, but at the time, juggling three girls at once sounded great to me.
The temptations were over the top, yet I had my limits. Whenever I was invited to the Playboy Mansion, I always said no. I’d heard about some of the things that went on there. Whenever I was on the plane ride home after a Raiders game and a flight attendant invited me to an orgy, I always told her, “Thank you, I appreciate it, but I’m going to pass on that.” Yes, L.A. is a freaky place.
Part of the reason for holding back was that I still had Pastor Whitley’s words in my head, even though I wasn’t consciously listening to them. The other part had to do with an incident at the end of my first season at Notre Dame. We’d been invited to the Aloha Bowl in Honolulu. As a brother who could swim, I was a bit of an anomaly. I’d grown up swimming in pools in Dallas and had just passed a college swim class, so I couldn’t wait to check out the clear, aqua water off the beaches of Waikiki. Right after we checked into our hotel, I was on the sand grabbing a boogie board.
I ran into the water, climbed on my board, and started paddling. A few minutes later I heard a couple of my teammates yelling, “Tim! Tim, you’re going out too far!” I laughed. These guys couldn’t swim. They were afraid of the water. I kept paddling.
The sun on my back and water on my hands and arms felt great. I decided I could get used to this. Finally, though, it was time to stop paddling and see how far I’d come.
Oh, man.
My friends on the beach looked an inch tall. I was hundreds of yards away. How was I going to get all the way back? How was I going to fight through the rough waves? Were there sharks in these waters? Right there on my boogie board, I started crying. No way was I going to make it back alive.
By the grace of God, the currents and my strong arms were enough for me to paddle back to shore. When I was close enough, my friends ran into the water and dragged me onto the beach. “We told you not to go in that water,” one said. “We told you!”
I was too exhausted to answer. I just lay on the sand, feeling thankful to be alive. That’s when a voice whispered inside my head, Just as you almost went too far in this water, you can go so far away spiritually that you’ll never get back to God.
Was my head trying to remind me of what Pastor Whitley had said? Was God Himself giving me a warning? I still don’t know for sure. But the message stuck with me, and it helped protect me during those crazy days in Los Angeles.
I tried to rationalize the women and the sex. I told myself, “The girls here are so beautiful and so nice. Why would I want to give this up? It must be right because it’s all happening so easily.”
But deep down, I knew that just wasn’t true. The Bible says, after all, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality” (1 Thess. 4:3). I eventually confessed my conflicted feelings to one of the girls I dated. Her solution was that we read the Bible together after we made love. I knew that wasn’t the answer.
I made the Pro Bowl in 1991, and again in 1993, which started a run of five consecutive Pro Bowl appearances. The Raiders won the division title in 1990 and also made the playoffs in 1991 and 1993. But I found it harder and harder to enjoy my football success. My smile was only a half smile. I wasn’t being the man I wanted to be or the man God had called me to be.
It got so bad that I started cutting myself while shaving my face in the morning. Not on purpose, mind you, and nothing requiring hospitalization. Just a little nick here, a little blood there. It wasn’t because the razor was too sharp or because I was in a hurry. It was because I shaved in the dark. I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror.
In fact, I often stood in the bathroom with the light off, down on myself, angry and full of self-doubt, hoping for a sign that it was time to change my life and stop giving in to temptation. Of course, the fact that I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror should have been the only sign I needed.
I sometimes felt as if I were losing my mind. Something was wrong with my soul. They say that you have to hit bottom before you can start to climb back up. I might not have been on the bottom, but I was close enough to see what it looked like. It was a scary view.
Sexual temptation is a big problem in America, especially for men. Let’s face it, we’re visual creatures. We’re wired to enjoy looking at beautiful women. There’s a reason why movies and TV and magazines and billboards and the Internet constantly bombard us with enticing female images. The directors, editors, and advertisers behind the media assault know how to get our attention.
Guys are tempted sexually not just every day, but every hour and seemingly every minute. That is part of the reason why premarital sex, affairs, divorce, and pornography are so prevalent today. And the temptation isn’t just from the media. It’s often the girls themselves, either in the way they dress or the way they walk and talk. As I discovered in L.A., it can be as direct, free, and easy as an offer for “breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
None of that is an excuse for giving in to temptation. But it sure makes it harder.
For me, once again, the answer to the problem is God. The Bible says that “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1 Cor. 10:13).
That verse both makes a lot of sense and gives me a lot of hope. Is sexual temptation “common to man”? In this world, absolutely! Yet God promises that it won’t be too much for us—that He will also offer an escape. The catch is that you need to be walking with Him in truth and light to see it. When you’re shaving in the dark, it’s tough to see anything, let alone a way out of temptation.
Despite my clearly wayward lifestyle, God tried to get through to me. I remember accepting an invitation to teach at a football camp for young kids hosted by a member of the Seattle Seahawks. The campsite was in a remote field somewhere in Arkansas. On the day of the camp, I piled into a car with Philadelphia Eagle Jerome Brown and other players for the two-and-a-half-hour trip from the hotel to the site. It was the ride of a lifetime.
Jerome drove, which was a terrible mistake. He obviously had no fear of dying. He sped into oncoming traffic, crossed the median multiple times, and accelerated to triple-digit speeds. I held on to my seat so tight that my hands hurt and I privately prayed for God to save me. Another player, meanwhile, threatened to beat up Jerome if he didn’t slow down.
Somehow we arrived safely. I was mortified to discover, however, that the “camp” was really a day-long party. After just an hour with the kids, the NFL players adjourned to a large tented area. Inside, alcohol flowed like rain, the scent of marijuana was in the wind, and men and women moved in and out of private tents.
This wasn’t what I’d signed up for.
For the next hour I walked in a circle, my head down, talking to myself and God. I felt the pressure to be one of the boys and join in the fun, but I wanted no part of it. Then another NFL player, someone I didn’t know, approached me.
“Tim,” he said, “I’ve been watching you. I’ll drive you back to the hotel if you want. This isn’t the place for you.”
Talk about a relief. I hadn’t said a word to anyone, yet this stranger understood that I was freaked out. I believe God told that man to help me. He drove me back to the hotel before returning to the “camp.”
If I’d been closer to God at the time, I think I would have seen that this day wasn’t an exception, that He always provided an escape from the temptations around me. But I missed the lesson.
About a year later, I had another opportunity to heed a warning, this time about the consequences of our actions. While speeding in his hometown of Brooksville, Florida, Jerome Brown crashed his Corvette. Both he and his twelve-year-old nephew were killed.
I missed that lesson too. I didn’t understand the significance of consequences. For Jerome, the consequences were his death and the death of his nephew. For me, it was the daily guilt and torment over the way I was living. The pain I caused other women when things got too serious and I had to cut them off. The memories I would bring into my marriage that couldn’t be erased. The separation from God. If I’d known then what I know now, I would have chosen a different path. I would have trusted God more and looked for the “way out” of temptation that He promises.
If you’re reading this and dealing with your own struggles over sexual temptation, here’s my advice: take charge of your eyes and your thoughts. Slam the door shut before even a hint of temptation can sneak in. This also comes from the Bible. Do as Job did, who “made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl” (Job 31:1). Be like Paul and “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).
How does that work? If a beautiful girl walks into your field of vision, you can’t help but notice. You’re a guy and you have eyes. But you can help what your eyes do next. This is the moment when you’ve got to look at anything else, even if it’s the cracks in the sidewalk. It’s simple—stop before you start. And if the girl begins talking and flirting with you? Again, don’t hesitate. Let her know where you stand. If you’re married, flash your wedding ring and start talking about your wife. If you’re single, make it clear as soon as possible that you’re interested in relationships that start with friendship, not sex.
Managing your mind can be a tougher proposition. When you least expect them, sexual thoughts and images can scramble your brain. It doesn’t help if you’re regularly around an attractive coworker or a friend’s beautiful wife. But the concept is the same. The moment your thoughts go astray, train your brain to focus on another, less dangerous topic. Maybe something like the Gross Domestic Product of Montana. Or better yet, the last Bible verse you read.
Sound impossible? Actually, it’s not. Like the time I made a crucial catch in my first game at Notre Dame, a single victory with your eyes or mind over sexual temptation can give you the confidence to do it again the next time. Behaviorists say that it takes humans six weeks to form a habit. It’s like a truck driving on the same dirt road. Keep going along the same sexually pure path for six weeks, and pretty soon you’ll find the ruts so deep that it will be hard to drive out of them. That’s the road to becoming a man.
My issue was sexual temptation. Yours might be something else: alcohol, drugs, gambling, pornography, even video games. Whatever it is, the same approach can succeed. Take control of your eyes and mind. Don’t even crack the door to temptation. Look for the way out that God provides.
These principles work whether you’re a man of faith or not. But when you have God in your life, you have extra ammunition for the battle. Sometimes the Holy Spirit—God in you—will even take charge and give you the words you need. That’s what I believe happened one time on a flight home from Los Angeles.
It didn’t take me long after I sat in my seat on the plane to notice a young flight attendant with a figure about as fine as it gets. I knew I’d better get my mind on something else, so I pulled out a newspaper and buried my head. But halfway through the flight, a pair of slender fingers appeared at the top of my newspaper and pulled it down. It was the same flight attendant, now sitting in the chair in front of me.
“You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are,” she said. “What are you doing once you leave here?”
The words that came out of my mouth were not what went through my mind. Tim Brown wasn’t speaking. It had to be God.
“Hey, look,” I said. “I met somebody six months ago. If not for meeting that person, there’s no doubt in my mind what we’d be doing forty-five minutes after this plane lands.”
“Oh, you have a girlfriend?” she said.
“I do have a girlfriend, and that’s part of where I’m coming from,” I said. “But the person I met is Jesus Christ.”
That surprised her and ended any plans she had for us that night. But the devil was after me. He doesn’t give up that easily.
About two weeks later, I joined my good friend and teammate Chester McGlockton at the Coliseum. He was hosting a program to get guns off the streets. People could exchange a gun for a game ticket. I was there to support the program and Chester.
The beautiful flight attendant was there, this time as a greeter on behalf of the Raiders. It turned she was also one of the team cheerleaders, a Raiderette. It wasn’t long before she grabbed my arm. “Tim, c’mere for a second,” she said. She pulled me into a corner with another attractive friend of hers.
“Look, we understand that you have a girlfriend and that you like God,” she said. “All we’re asking for is one night to party with you.”
Suddenly it wasn’t I. Now it was we. I was momentarily speechless.
But God didn’t desert me. He sent a rescuer in the form of a six-foot-three-inch, 335-pound buddy. Chester spotted me in the corner and yelled, “Brown! What you doing there? Get over here, boy!” He rushed over and practically dragged me away from those girls.
They got the message and didn’t bother me anymore. I got the message too. If I kept God at the forefront of my life, He would help me slam the door on temptation before it even had the chance to creep in.
For me, the answer to every problem and question has always been God. Many years went by without me understanding this truth. But in 1996, I was finally ready to figure it out.