As a young Michigan Congressman, Gerald Ford met a gospel-film executive named Billy Zeoli who stopped by his office and gave him a Bible. Over the next few years, the two men became close—so close, in fact, that Ford came to call Zeoli "an alter ego, a second self."

Among their bonds was a love of sports: Ford had been an All-American football player, and Zeoli created a ministry for professional athletes. It was at a pregame "football chapel," Zeoli says, that Ford renewed his personal commitment to Christ. Zeoli was holding a service at a Washington-area Marriott hotel for the Dallas Cowboys, in town to play the Redskins. Ford went to hear his friend preach on "God's game plan."

Ford was especially moved by the sermon and hung around to talk with Zeoli privately afterward about Christ and forgiveness and what it meant. The inquiry felt real and raw; but was that the moment Ford committed himself to Christ? "It's hard to say when a man does that," Zeoli says plainly. "That's a God thing. But I think that day is the day he looked back to as an extremely important day of knowing Christ." Ford later affirmed in a published tribute to his chaplain that he and Zeoli "both put our trust in Christ, our Savior, and have relied on him for direction and guidance throughout our lives."

When Ford became vice president in the fall of 1973, Zeoli began sending him a weekly devotional memo that would be waiting on Ford's desk Monday mornings. It always had the same title—"God's Got a Better Idea"—and began with Scripture and ended with a prayer. Zeoli sent 146 devotionals in all, every week through Ford's presidency. Ford referred to those memos as "profound in their meaning and judicious in their selection."

Beyond the memos, Ford and Zeoli would meet privately every four or five weeks for prayer and Bible study. Their conversations took place in either the Oval Office or the family quarters upstairs.