Your Setback Might Just Be God’s Setup for Something Greater, Tim Tebow Says

Published: July 21, 2025

By Mallory Mattingly

Tim Tebow knows about life not going according to plan, but he also believes that God has a purpose for everything.

“So I had the opportunity to sign with the Jacksonville Jaguars, and I was so excited to get the chance to go play for my college coach, and [I] just thought, ‘Hey, this is going to work out really well.’ It didn’t work out that way,” Tebow revealed in a clip on social media.

He explained that the Jaguars cut him after the first pre-season game.

“But do you know what was so hard about it? Running nonstop on SportsCenter, on social media, all over, is my worst plays from that pre-season game,” he revealed.

“I was thinking, ‘Man, is my last sporting activity out of everything that I’ve been fortunate to get to be a part of, all the highs and the lows, is that the last thing that I get to do? Is that it?’ You see, what I was really trying to deal with is my own pride, the disappointment of it,” Tebow continued.

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Soon after his football career ended, Tebow went to the Middle East where God gave him some perspective.

“After that, all this stuff started to go down in Afghanistan, and we have a lot of teams that serve in the Middle East and in those areas. And so instantly our teams are calling saying, ‘Hey, this is chaos.’ I got to get on a plane to the Middle East, and I land in a country in the Middle East and right into an evacuee camp, and when we walk in, instantly, many people that were right around us were fighting for their lives. Puts things into perspective a little bit,” Tebow revealed.

“We finished serving at this evacuee refugee camp, and we get on a plane, we fly to another location in the Middle East, and it was on that flight that was really the first time since I had gotten cut that I actually could say, ‘God, thank you for letting me get cut. If I wouldn’t have gotten cut, I wouldn’t have had the freedom to have been over there, to serve in those locations, to do what I believe is my biggest calling in life, to serve the most vulnerable,'” Tebow recalled praying.

“But you see, what was a setback to me — a setback to my pride, a setback to my goals — wasn’t actually a setback; it was actually a setup for what I was really supposed to be doing,” he concluded. “You have to build a mindset that is willing to look through the setbacks because maybe that setback is actually the greatest setup of your life.”

Leaving the NFL has given Tebow the chance to focus on the efforts of his foundation, which exists “to bring Faith, Hope and Love to those needing a brighter day in their darkest hour of need.”

He and his team do this by fighting for the Most Vulnerable People (MVPs) around the world as they combat human trafficking and child exploitation and support orphans, those with medical needs and people with special needs.

One of Tebow’s more recent efforts is working with legislators on The Renewed Hope Act of 2024, a petition to “combat child sexual exploitation is going to do just that: give hope to kids, to protect them, to love them, and to show them Faith, Hope and Love in their darkest hour of need.”