Read an Ole Miss Rebels Kids Excerpt

Read Romans 2:1-4, 16..

"One day, God will appoint Jesus to judge everyone’s secret thoughts."

The Ole Miss football program was in such bad shape in 1946 that the team didn’t even have any uniforms to play in. But the team had a big secret that would change everything.

World War II took the Rebels’ best players and left the program in a big mess. The new head coach in 1946 had to borrow some old uniforms from Alabama to begin the season against Kentucky. Most of the pants didn’t fit. Some of them were so small that they looked like shorts on the Ole Miss players.

The team limped to a pitiful 2-7 record, and the head coach left to take a job at Alabama.

But that coaching staff in 1946 had a secret. He was a little-known coach who had come to Ole Miss after serving in the U.S. Navy during the war. Everybody quickly came to call this big Texan “the backbone of the staff.” One player said, “At halftime . . . he could go to the blackboard and help. . . . The others just jumped up and down and cussed.”

That secret was Johnny Vaught, the greatest head football coach in Ole Miss history.

You probably have some secrets you keep from certain people. Do you tell your sisters and brothers everything? How about your mom and dad? Maybe there’s a girl or a boy at school or at church that you really like but you haven’t told anyone.

You can keep some secrets from the world. You must never think, though, that you can keep a secret from God. God knows everything: all your mistakes, all your sins, all the bad things you say or think.

But here’s something that’s not a secret: No matter what God knows about you, he still loves you. Enough to die for you on a cross.

Does it make you feel good or bad that God knows your secrets? Why?