What can happen when God shows up (book excerpt)
All my life, whenever I had faced a difficult decision or situation, God had always shown up. And then my son J.D. got sick. For 5 years, I prayed for God to intervene. I prayed that the doctors at Mayo would be able to help him. I prayed that the tau antibody would help him. I prayed that the healing ministries we participated in would help him. I prayed that the speech and physical therapists we brought in would help him. But not once during those long, horrible years did I ever see God show up. It was as though He just went quiet.
Or did He?
There is a section in Matthew right after the Crucifixion where the newly resurrected Christ calls His disciples together and tells them to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Then He says, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).
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That last part stuck out to me: Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
Now J.D.’s illness never made me question my faith in the Lord. I want to make that perfectly clear. But when all my prayers for healing went unanswered, it really shook me. It felt like God had abandoned me when I needed Him most. Yet the Bible promises us that God will always be with us. And the Bible isn’t just a book; it’s a direct message from God to us. So when Jesus says, “Surely I am with you always,” you can believe it — even if you can’t always see it.
So if God didn’t show up as I expected Him to, how did God show up in J.D.’s illness and death?
On February 16, 2019, a little over a month after J.D. went to be with the Lord, the NASCAR season kicked off with the biggest race of the year, the Daytona 500.
A few weeks before the race, Denny Hamlin, who drives our #11 FedEx car, came to us with a special request. All our drivers have their names printed right above the door of their cars. Denny wanted to know if he could put J.D.’s name next to his.
You see, Denny and J.D. had a special relationship. J.D. was the one who found Denny back when he was racing late models in Manassas, Virginia. Denny’s parents had sacrificed everything to help him get into racing, and they were just about to give up when J.D. came along and offered Denny an opportunity to participate in a manufacturer’s test drive. Denny absolutely killed it in that test drive, so J.D. put Denny in one of our Xfinity cars at Darlington, which is one of our hardest tracks — even veteran drivers will attest to that — and Denny finished in eighth place. J.D. looked at me and said, “Dad, I think we need to sign this guy.” And I agreed. So when Denny asked if he could add J.D.’s name next to his over the door, we said, “Definitely.”
As it happens, NASCAR had also reached out to us and said that they wanted to honor J.D. during one of the laps. That sounded great to me — J.D. would have loved that. When they asked which lap I wanted, I didn’t even have to think about it. “Let’s do 11.”
J.D. had worn #11 on his jersey all through high school. Plus, Denny would be driving the #11 car with J.D.’s name over the door, and J.D. had gone home to be with the Lord on January 11, so it just felt right.
I’ve already mentioned that the Daytona 500 is our biggest race. It’s kind of NASCAR’s equivalent to the Super Bowl. The fact that it comes first makes absolutely no sense, but that’s NASCAR. It’s also one of the hardest races to win, and the season before had been Denny’s worst year since joining the team. He didn’t win a single race. So the odds against him winning the 500 were astronomical. When the 11th lap started, everyone stood up along the pit wall, and the announcers talked about J.D. as the camera followed Denny’s car around the track. Our whole family was there. It was extremely emotional and a really wonderful moment.
The race continued, and like I said, the 500 is one of the most difficult races to win. For one thing, it’s a restrictor-plate race. I won’t get into all the engineering behind it, but it basically means that the cars usually end up circling the track in a tightly formed pack. And when cars travel in packs around an oval at high speeds, all it takes is one car to make a wrong move, and next thing you know, there’s a huge wreck. In racing, they call it “the big one.”
Well, true to form, there were several “big ones” during this race, and yet somehow, 3 of our drivers — Kyle Busch, Erik Jones, and Denny Hamlin — made it through all of them. And when the white flag came out signaling the final lap, all three of them were right up front. And wouldn’t you know, Denny won! Not only that, Kyle came in second, and Erik came in third. JGR had pulled off the hat trick. It was only the second time in the history of the 500 that that had ever happened.
As you can imagine, our whole team was in tears. It had been such an emotional year. Actually, it had been an emotional 5 years. But standing there in that winner’s circle, watching Denny surrounded by television cameras, talking to the media, telling them about J.D. and pointing to J.D.’s name above the door of his car, it suddenly hit me that nearly 10 million people were watching this race. That meant 10 million people were hearing J.D.’s story. 10 million people were hearing J.D.’s testimony. 10 million people.
God had shown up.
In the days following that race, we had letters and e-mails come in from people all over the country telling us that the race was one of the most emotional things they’d ever seen and that surely God had orchestrated all of it on J.D.’s behalf. And we referred everyone who reached out to us to the legacy page we’d set up for J.D., where they could watch J.D.’s memorial service, read his story, and hear about his love for the Lord.
As I mentioned earlier, as of the writing of this book, more than nine million people, via the website or social media, have watched that service, many of whom have written to tell us they have accepted the Lord as their Savior. Talk about making an impact!
Adapted from Game Plan for Loss: An Average Joe’s Guide to Dealing with Griefby Joe Gibbs. Copyright ©2022. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.
Joe Gibbs has earned positions in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NASCAR Hall of Fame, having achieved a remarkable level of success in both professional sports. Gibbs served as head coach of the Washington Redskins from 1981 to 1992 and again from 2004 to 2007, leading the team to 10 playoff appearances, 4 NFC Championship titles, and 3 Super Bowl Championships. Amazingly, Gibbs has found comparable success in NASCAR, helping to lead Joe Gibbs Racing to 5 NASCAR Cup Series titles since it started racing in 1992. Gibbs started JGR with his older son, J.D., who passed away in January of 2019 following a long battle with a degenerative neurological disease. His legacy continues through the J.D. Gibbs Legacy Fund's support of the Young Life ministry, as well as through the sharing of his story, which can be found at jdgibbslegacy.com. Joe and his wife, Pat, live in North Carolina near their 8 grandchildren.
