You might know George Foreman as the Foreman Grill guy.
Or you might know him as the former world heavyweight boxing champion.
But now there is a new book that shows a very different side of George Foreman.
It’s called, “God In My Corner: A Spiritual Memoir.”
In it Foreman admits he was mean. He beat people up long before he was a boxer. Boxing simply made his violent streak lucrative. He used it to lift himself out of poverty. He was a self-made man who thought religion was for the poor and old ladies. The last thing he was interested in was God.
Of course it’s easy to say that…until you have your own encounter with God.
In 1977, Foreman lost a close fight to Jimmy Young in
Foreman said he was pacing back and forth in the locker room, still pumped up from the fight, when all of a sudden a voice interrupted his thoughts. It said, “If you believe in God, why are you afraid to die?”
Foreman said he continued to pace back and forth, but felt like death was staring him in the face. He said, “By now I was crying. I decided I wanted to make a deal with God. What does a mere human being own that he can use to barter with God? ‘I’m still George Foreman,’ I thought. ‘I can still box. I can give money to charities. I can…’”
The voice thundered, “I don’t want your money. I want YOU!”
Foreman collapsed to the floor.
“Instantly I was transported into a deep, dark void, like a bottomless pit. I knew I was dead, and this wasn’t heaven. Sorrow beyond description engulfed my soul. The place reeked with the putrid smell of death. It was utter darkness.”
“I truly thought this was the end of my life,” Foreman said, “And I saw – too late – that I had missed what life was meant to be about. I was furious that I had fallen for the devil’s lies. I screamed, “I don’t care if this is death. I still believe there’s a God.”
“Instantly, what seemed like a gigantic hand reached down and snatched me out of that terrifying place. Immediately I was back inside my body in the dressing room.”
The men in the locker room had lifted Foreman’s body onto a table and were gathered around him.
Next he saw something that amazed him - blood running down his forehead, and his own hands were bleeding. Foreman said, “He’s bleeding where they crucified Him.”
He said the others didn’t see the blood, and just looked at him like he was crazy. But he said that God was revealing to him that Jesus really did bleed and die for him.
Still lying on the training table, Foreman said, “I suddenly sat straight up and yelled at the top of my voice, “JESUS CHRIST IS COMING ALIVE IN ME!”
Everyone looked like they had seen a ghost. Foreman said something stirred deep inside him, and he couldn’t control what he was saying. He started reciting Bible verses, even though he had never learned them.
He said, “For most of my life, I had been ruled by anger and hatred. Now, every hostile emotion had been drained out of me, and a spigot of God’s love had been turned on inside me, filling me up, and overflowing out of me.”
“I jumped off the table and hugged everyone in the room, telling them that I loved them. In all those years together, I had never told any of my closest associates that I loved them. Now I couldn’t stop expressing how much I loved them.”
“Then I heard myself speaking words that I had never before used,” said Foreman. “I shouted, ‘Hallelujah, I’m clean! HALLUJAH, I’VE BEEN BORN AGAIN! I’ve got to tell the whole world about this!’”
Foreman said, “I wouldn’t stop talking about Jesus, and no one could shut me up. Now I was praising the name of Jesus, the name my acquaintances had only heard me use in profanity. As for me, I had never felt that wonderful in all my life! For the first time in my life, I could honestly say I was at peace.”
“All of my hate – and I had hated a lot of people – was gone. God’s love flowed through me to others. Every attitude and emotion in me had flip-flopped. It was nothing short of a miracle.”
In the book, Foreman explained how he contacted those he had hated and made amends. He also discussed his initial reluctance to be viewed as a religious nut, but then concluded this way.
“Finding Jesus Christ was the best thing that ever happened to me, and my life gets better every day. I’m not going to let anything destroy me testimony and the great relationship with God that I have experienced. I will keep telling my story until I’m unable to say it anymore.”
I had to leave parts of the story out for time’s sake, so I recommend you read it for yourself. You’ll find it in the new book, “God In My Corner: A Spiritual Memoir” by grill maker and former world heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman.
(As heard on Wave 94.1 FM)
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