The former Florida legend Tim Tebow and his wife, Demi-Leigh, welcomed their first child, Daphne Reign Tebow, on July 6, 2025. As she turned one, Tebow just had one wish for her.
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“A wall of protection, by far a wall of protection over her mind, over her body, over her future, and ultimately so that she would grow up to know Jesus, make Jesus known, and always have the joy that she has now,” Tebow wrote on Instagram on August 27.
“I definitely pray the same thing every single day. And I also pray that the joy that she has will just, that that joy will just never be dimmed and that she will just never lose that because that joy is so contagious,” Demi-Leigh added.
Tim’s faith isn’t private; he views it as a calling to spread. Much of his convictions are derived from his own experiences or the values he inherited from his parents. Just days before their daughter, Daphne Reign, was born, Tim sat Demi-Leigh down. She initially thought it was a regular conversation. She joked that she initially panicked, thinking she had “gone overboard on the nursery.”
Instead, Tim was carrying a heavy spiritual conviction. He told her, “I just really have it on my heart that we have to give Daphne to the Lord BEFORE she’s ever even born.”
Demi-Leigh admitted this was initially very difficult and felt counterintuitive to her as a mother. Naturally, her instinct was to hold onto her daughter tightly and protect her herself. However, Tim’s core belief is that parents must actively surrender their children to Jesus. Demi-Leigh explained that this act of surrender wasn’t a one-time prayer. It was a daily process of giving Daphne back to God.
She described it as a difficult, “daily surrender,” where she constantly had to check her maternal anxiety and hand Daphne’s safety back to God. Tim Tebow’s extreme conviction about entrusting unborn children to God is deeply personal and stems from his own story. While his mother, Pam Tebow, was pregnant with him in the Philippines, she contracted a life-threatening case of amoebic dysentery.
Doctors advised her to abort the pregnancy. They claimed the fetus was merely a “mass of fetal tissue” or a “tumor” that would kill her. His parents chose to surrender the situation to God and refuse the abortion completely.
Tim Tebow was born healthy, a scenario his delivering doctor called a complete medical miracle. The placenta had been entirely detached during the pregnancy. Because Tim views his very existence as a result of his parents’ surrendering an unborn child to Jesus, he applied the same rigid spiritual boundary to his own daughter.
Tim Tebow and his faith
Throughout his collegiate and professional career, Tebow has been quite open about what his faith means to him and how it drives his daily life. His practice of dropping to one knee to pray on the sidelines during football games became a viral cultural phenomenon.
The memorable instances also include the former Florida QB writing Bible verses on his eye-black strips. In the 2009 BCS National Championship game, he wrote John 3:16. The verse drew 90 million Google searches during the broadcast. Ultimately, the NCAA had to step in to prohibit the use of eye-black for any messaging.
In his post-football life, Tebow has grown into the role of a college football broadcaster. He regularly features on SEC Nation. However, along with that, the QB works to preach his faith through the Tim Tebow Foundation.
This openness to discuss his religious beliefs is a quality that Tebow has inherited from his father, Robert Bob Tebow, a Baptist missionary and evangelist who dedicated his life to sharing the Gospel.