Carrie Underwood’s husband, Mike Fisher, asked the Lord into his heart as a 6-year-old boy.
He was raised with enough good sense to know that God was important for life’s journey.
But as he matured into a young man and seemed to achieve all his dreams, he made one huge mistake.
He confesses on video to “waking up the next morning feeling like the worst piece of crap that I could ever feel like.”
As Fisher begins to tell his story in a video recorded for I Am Second, it begins with a child’s dream.
He recalls the question everyone asks: What do you want to be when you grow up? And the only answer that ever made his heart sing: NHL hockey player.
God had even placed him in a quintessential hockey town, in Ontario, Canada.
He was raised in church, so God was also a part of his foundations, right alongside regular involvement with the sport.
Fisher even asked God into his heart at 6 years old. But looking back he says, “At 6 … I don’t know if you really understand everything. You definitely don’t, but it’s definitely a start.”
You see, while Fisher asked the Lord into his heart, he was living for himself and for his ambitions to become a pro-hockey player, not for his relationship with God.
He reflects now on how the stats and performance-based core of hockey really influenced his whole interaction with life. His goal was to just be a “good kid” and as a hockey player, this easily meshed into forms of perfectionism and legalism.
However, being drafted into a state hockey league at only 17 years of age meant that he was away from family and church for the first time in his life.
That, and being surrounded by mostly older 17 to 20-year-olds is a scary thing for the spiritual security of a person that isn’t yet fully gripped by the Holy Spirit.
He knew the “dos and don’ts” like a rule book, just as well as his hockey rules that had become his daily bread.
“I struggled … I was focusing for so long on what I can’t do, I can’t swear, I can’t drink, I can’t have sex, meanwhile inside I’m not focusing on that relationship. Hockey took over.”
Fisher confesses his relationship with God took second place to his hockey ambitions.
At 19, he signed his first NHL contract. “I had made it, I made my childhood dream and everything was great on the exterior, on the interior? Not good at all.”
While this should’ve been a highlight of his life, it began highlighting the inner turmoil he was experiencing between the God of his faith and what had become the true god of his heart.
“I remember going out that night, going out to a bar, getting drunk, making bad decisions, and waking up the next morning feeling like the worse piece of crap that I could ever feel like.”
“I was letting God down.”
Depression and confusion took over. He was unfulfilled even though he had finally achieved his greatest dreams in life. Something was deeply wrong.
“I’d still go to church, but maybe be hungover, not really into it but just putting up a kind of a facade.”
It wasn’t until a Bible study with his cousin that Fisher realized what was going so wrong in a life that seemed to be going so right. God spoke to him through His Word in Luke 9:23-25:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?”
“I remember that scripture just kind of hit me, that was for me. Because I’d reached my dreams, I had money and everything I thought was cool and it just wasn’t working.”
“I knew the answer, but I hadn’t been looking for it in the right places.”
“Through a process of just praying and getting in the word with my cousin, my life was changed. For the first time I remember thinking.. ‘Man, this is really … real’.”
“It wasn’t because of my parents, it wasn’t because I supposed to be in church. It became real to me. It didn’t happen overnight but slowly God changed me from the inside. I started to not worry about the ‘dont’s’ but just focus on pursuing Him and slowly God just started bringing stuff up, I confessed stuff things in my life that I wasn’t proud of, and slowly God just kind of released that.”
“It was religion anymore. It was a relationship. And it was awesome.”
From there, as God began to teach Fisher about His unconditional Love, Fisher continued on his goals with hockey. But now, hockey wasn’t driving his life. He was very much letting Jesus take the wheel, in the lyrics of his now wife Carrie Underwood.
Fisher shared his story with I Am Second, an organization whose vision is: “Restoration. The world as it was meant to be. People redeemed and lives transformed. Relationships rebuilt, communities revitalized, and culture restored. We seek a world where people become second, serving and loving each other as they put Jesus first.”
Fisher knew his story of struggling to submit to God’s Lordship could really reach people. And this was perfect material for I Am Second’s goals. “We [I Am Second] partner with athletes, entertainers, politicians and other public figures to tell their stories alongside our own.”
Through a type of media presentation called White Chair Films, these partners share their story on anything from anxiety to addiction to anger. Anything that God alone was able to help them overcome, as they turned to him in submission and faith—and the miraculous freedom that occurs as a result.
We’ve reported on powerful testimonies captured on video by I Am Second before at Christian Life Daily, such as how God’s faithfulness got Ainsley Earhardt through a heartbreaking miscarriage.
For more on this story or to experience the stories of many others, go to iamsecond.com
I Am Second also has a live chat and constant hotline, listed on their site.
If you have any questions about God or life, they want to speak with you and show you how God restores, always.
They will guide you through realizing that your greatest potential is only found by realigning with the One Who made us, and holds everything in His Perfect Hands.
