The Denver Broncos have won five of the six games they've played since Tim Tebow became their starting quarterback, turning their season around.  As I watch him play football, I remember the evening in April 2009, when we heard Pam Tebow, Tim's mother, tell her story at a fundraiser for a Crisis Pregnancy Center in Tennessee.

When she was pregnant with Tim, her fifth child, she was told that if she gave birth to that child she would risk her own life.

Pam and her husband Bob were missionaries in the Phillipines. Medication she had taken for an amoeba infection resulted in complications and, the doctors told them, she NEEDED to have an abortion.

"They didn't just recommend it; they didn't really give me a choice," Pam said. "That was the only option they gave me."

Instead of following the doctors’ advice, the family prayed. They prayed for Timmy by name.

“God spared him,” Pam told us that day in 2009. “We knew that God had His hand on Timmy’s life. And through the years we all told Timmy that.”

Pam shared that one of the values she and Bob instilled in their children was humility.  And that they relied on Scripture and faith.

She turned to those of us in her audience and said, “I have the same Bible and the same God that you do.  I’ve just chosen to count on it and I have staked my life - and the lives of my children - on it.

The Tebows told all five of their children that they were special and that God had a plan for their lives. Tim's situation, however, was more intense because of his more intense and miraculous birth.

The Tebow children were home-schooled. A Florida law passed in the 1990s allowed homeschoolers to play public school sports.  So Tim played football for Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, even though he did not attend classes there.

Tim has gone on mission trips every year since he turned 15.  He once spoke to a group of ten thousand students in the Phillipines on one such trip.  Pam attributed his ability to articulate his faith clearly to those summer mission trips.

Pam’s advice to us as parents was this:
- "You start teaching them values when they are five or younger -- you don't start when they are in college."

- She had two “secrets” for parenting. The first was scripture. “We spent a lot of time memorizing Scripture and studying the Bible -- a lot of time."

- Her second "secret" was faith. “Trust God who has given you your children. He is adequate. You can trust Him to enable you to do what He's called you to do."

- Prayer is also a "huge" part of the discipline of a parent, she reminded us.

Few of us will ever see our sons be Heisman Trophy winners, or watch our children play professional sports.  We are not likely to hear sportscasters discuss our children with the sort of superlatives they are using for Tim Tebow. Someone called him  "a winning winner who wins." Others refer to that "Tebow magic."