“We win games, so I’m feeling good, I can talk to people. We lose, and I’m just like detached from the world,” he said.
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During his first year of college at Michigan, Reed said he wanted to try things he was not permitted to under his parents’ roof.
“I wanted to do everything,” he said. “I wanted to get involved in things I’ve never been involved in, wanted to go away from all the rules my mom and dad told me. So, I went off the wrong path.”
One day in the training room, a strength and conditioning coach asked Reed if he was a Christian and whether he read the Bible. It was in that moment Reed knew something was wrong.
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“In that moment, I felt something in my heart that just didn’t feel right. And I told him no,” Reed said. “He challenged me to read the first four books of the New Testament, which are the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”
He continued, “Later that night, I went home and I read the book of Matthew, about Jesus, my first time really learning about Jesus, who he was, how he walked, how he talked, who he helped.” Reed explained he was reading the Sermon on the Mount and it got to a “part where Jesus said, ‘If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off.’”
“And I kid you not, right then and there I closed my Bible. I said, ‘Yo, this Jesus dude is crazy, I’m done,’” he said. “How is he going to tell me to do something I felt I had a passion for that he blessed me with, he put me on Earth to do is play basketball, and now he’s telling me to cut off my hand? Telling me to cut my eye, my brother, [pluck] out your eye?”
He added, “I’m like, ‘Yo, this dude is crazy!’” But the following morning, Reed decided to open his Bible again.
“So, I go to sleep, I’m like, ‘Yo, this Jesus dude is over with, I’m gonna just do whatever I want.’ And then the next morning, I decided like, ‘Yo, let me give it another shot,’” he said. “So, I looked up what it meant, and it was talking about addressing the sin, addressing the sin at hand, addressing what’s causing you to sin—just cut it off there.”
When Reed came to where Jesus describes who will not enter the kingdom of heaven, he broke down in tears.
