From the Grocery Aisle to the Greatest Show on Turf

In 1994, Kurt Warner went undrafted out of the University of Northern Iowa. No NFL team wanted him. To support his family, he stocked shelves at a Hy-Vee grocery store in Cedar Falls, Iowa, for five dollars and fifty cents an hour. He bagged groceries on the night shift and refused to let go of the dream God had planted in his heart.

Warner kept playing — first in the Arena Football League with the Iowa Barnstormers, then in NFL Europe. When the St. Louis Rams lost starting quarterback Trent Green to a knee injury in the 1999 preseason, Warner finally got his chance. That season, the man from the grocery aisle led the "Greatest Show on Turf" to a Super Bowl XXXIV victory and was named league MVP.

Nobody looking at Kurt Warner stocking shelves at midnight would have predicted a Super Bowl ring. But God has never been limited by where we start.

The Apostle Paul knew this. He wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here" (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Most High does not look at our current circumstances and see a finished story. He sees the transformation He is writing.

You may feel stuck on the night shift of your life right now. But the God who turned a grocery clerk into a champion is the same God who is at work in you — and He is nowhere near finished.