A Football Life

For about five months out of most years, American culture is dominated by football. For the most part, football is a wonderful sport and a great pastime, enjoyed by a sizable portion of our fellow citizens, and growing in global popularity. What's not to love? It's a pretty accurate metaphor for life, containing lessons to be learned by all: you've got struggle and triumph, teamwork and individual contribution, blood and guts, falling and standing, winning and losing... 

Also, football season brings out something that our society thrives on: competition. Playing on local pride and long-standing rivalries, football moves us to choose a team and root for them. It's all in good fun, but, it’s easy to become seriously vested in our favorite team; that's because we will literally invest heavily in our team of choice. We buy jerseys, we learn players’ names and statistics, we plan our cheering for the game, we make preparations and provisions at home and in the parking lot for game time.

In this same vein, God is looking for some committed people for His team too; the thing is, though, supporting HIS team must come before support of our favorite football team or any other “team” we might root for. And, regardless of how much we feel that this doesn’t line up with the current “live and let live” mindset, God’s not flexible on this point.

As we each consider our own football life, we would present a serious challenge to the family of faith: for every jersey (or other team swag) you've invested in, invest in a good study bible or some biblical reference material; for every player's information you know or learn, develop your knowledge and understanding of someone found in the Word of God and their story; for every game-hour you commit to football, commit an hour to Sunday service and bible study (both personal AND collective). At the very least, make sure your spiritual prep time matches your football prep time, even though it really should exceed it hands down. The truth is we all owe God even more than these few things, but it might be a good start – after all, He’s more interested in our spiritual IQ than our football IQ. And while the original context is a little different, please be mindful of the Apostle Paul’s encouragement:

“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)