Nebraska running back Roy Helu Jr., the player selected by the Washington Redskins in the fourth round of the 2011 NFL Draft, seems to be a religious young man. We located this video on YouTube of Helu speaking about how religion has affected his life. Warning: Roy seems to be all over the board here, so I tried my best to grab some highlights.
On his life before embracing Christ:
"Life before Christ could be best summed up by the Book of Ecclesiates by King Solomon and where it talked about delighting and all the works you have done and taking pride in everything that your hands have made. The type of person I was, was I never denied my heart anything, and everything that I had doine I had thought that is was for my benefit, whether it be things that werent so beneficial, like getting involved with the opposite sex, in the wrong view, or cheating on tests, and other sorts of stuff, prideful..."
The interviewer then asks "How would you describe your life before Christ?"
"Broken. The word that describes my life before coming to Christ was brokeness."
However, Helu came to Nebraska and all that changed:
"What happened to me was repentant, and that came through the experience of me coming to Nebraska, losing the comfort of my home and family, raised in for 18 years, losing my best friend while I was over, so I had no support system, I was seeking to become more whole, and through that and other people's prayer, I came to a point where I decided to repent one morning at the Village Inn, and had postured myself as a Christian before, but I wasn't really living the lifestyle. I put my faihth in Jesus, and sought to learn more what it meant to be a Christian and to lead that type of life."
His embracing his faith, obviously, had a profound effect on him:
"At Village Inn after putting my faith in the Lord I learned through discipleship that Jesus took my punishment for my sins, and I received his perfection, and that just let me know, it was evident through scripture and the Book of Romans, and after that the pressure is really taken off of you and pressure off of you, and you can trust in the Lord. And that can be evident in everything you do in the lord. Scripture talks doing everything enthusiastically in working for the Lord."
Somehow I think we will get to know a lot more about Helu and his faith in the days and weeks to come. Either way, it's a shame Joe Gibbs isn't around. He would love this guy.