Star outfielder Nehemiah Toles had multiple Division-I college baseball offers and MLB scouts watching him as he neared high school graduation, but he turned all of it down in pursuit of his purpose â preaching the Gospel to bring Americas youth to Jesus.
“It’s the scariest thing to be gifted at something that God did not call you to⦠Baseball was my passion, it wasn’t my purpose,” Toles told Fox News Digital.
“When I stand before God⦠and he looks at me, he’s gonna say well done, good and faithful servant. How did hitting home runs, how would that have served Him?” he continued.
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Toles, who now runs his own ministry traveling across the U.S. to preach the Gospel, grew up in a household with a pastor father transitioning to be an evangelist. Although surrounded by faith in his home, he admits to thinking religion and following God was “corny” during his youth.
The former baseball player revealed that he used the sport as a “coping mechanism” while dealing with anxiety and depression that peaked in school during the pandemic of 2020.
“From 13 years old to 16 years old⦠I felt like I struggled to connect with people, struggled to just articulate my thoughts. And so⦠I went back to church, [and] before I even started worshiping or anything like that, I felt the presence of God just hit me. All my anxiety, all my depression left, and I had tried everything else and nothing else was working,” Toles continued.
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Toles detailed one of his first experiences receiving college offers during a championship game while ranked the top outfielder in the state of Ohio, running to second base chalking up reddish brown dust in the air with the impact of each cleated step, seeing his coach on the phone from under the shadow of his baseball cap, rounding third base and finishing a home run before making it to the dugout.
“I’m in the dugout. And [my coach] he’s like⦠before [you] touched home plate, three Division-I coaches had just confirmed,” Toles continued.
He described the elation on his parents’ faces and recalled his fathers tears at the news of the offers from Yale and a handful of other universities, all right before he heard the voice of God later that night alone in his room.
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“[In] the hotel room that night and I felt like the Lord had spoke[n] to me, like, ‘Is that enough? Was that what you were looking for? Like, is this ever, is it going to be enough?'” he said.
Toles described serving at a community event helping children in need shortly after that game, wrestling between both destinies, finding that serving those kids was “something dee
