National Hockey League player Jacob Slavin says he keeps his focus on God “on and off the ice.” After his junior year of high school, Slavin moved away from his parents to play hockey in Chicago. He had dreams of playing in the NHL, and Chicago was his only shot, but during that time, he started struggling with his faith.

On Sports Spectrum’s “I Once Was,” Slavin revealed when his faith became his own. He said, “I was kind of challenged by one of my assistant coaches. We’re sitting in the locker room, and he looked at me and said, ‘Jacob, what kind of faith do you have?’ I kind of looked at him, puzzled by the question of like, ‘What are you talking about? I’m Christian.’ He’s like, ‘No, do you have your own personal relationship with Jesus?’ So I was just being challenged, left and right, to really not rely on my parents’ faith anymore.”

He continued, “I had to have my own personal relationship with Jesus at this point, and so from that moment, I really started understanding what it meant to be a follower of Christ. It wasn’t about works, it wasn’t about anything I do or do not do, but it was all about the work of Jesus on the cross.” Slavin previously shared that Titus 3:7 is his favorite Bible verse. It reads, “So that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

He said, “If you look at that verse, [it] talks about eternal life. He talks about hope, but it also talks about being justified by his grace and what Jesus did on the cross for us. It’s not because of anything we can do to earn eternal life. It’s not because of how good of people we are. It’s all because of what Jesus did on the cross. That’s why we’re justified.”

After making his relationship with Jesus a priority, Slavin and his sister came up with a hashtag to help others stand up for their faith. “My sister, she came up with this. #AGTG stands for “All Glory to God,” he said. “In anything that we do on and off the ice, we want to make sure we’re giving glory to God because He’s worthy of it. He sent his one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins, and so now we live for him.”

Slavin added, “Having that hashtag, that little background, and going into my NHL career, I remember sitting there before my first preseason game, and I was just 21 years old. I’m extremely nervous, and I open up the Bible and say, ‘God, speak to me.’ I opened it up to Galatians and then came down to verse 10 in chapter one, and it says, ‘Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.’”

He explained, “In that moment, I felt so much peace. There were no more nerves. God said, ‘Jake, you’re not here to impress management, you’re not here to impress the coaches, you’re not here to impress the other players, you’re here for me, you’re here to be my servant and here to be my child and just give me the glory and everything that you do.’”

After that moment, he put his identity in God, not hockey. “I’m not rooted in the game of hockey,” he said. “I know hockey will end one day, but God is forever. It puts me at peace knowing God’s in control of every aspect of my life.”