We see a football player score a touchdown and then kneel down and make the sign of the cross. A baseball player makes the sign of the cross before he steps into the batting box. A basketball player makes the sign of the cross before shooting a free throw. What are they actually doing by making the sign of the cross? This is not just a Roman Catholic thing. I have seen the sign of the cross done in Episcopal, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches. This video I have recently watched explains it all very well.

One hot summer day my brother, our next door neighbor and myself were discussing what we were going to do on this day. Someone said, “Let’s go to the dump.”

The county landfill was about four miles from our neighborhood and we all loved to go there. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure and when we went with our fathers on Saturdays we always took the junk and brought home something.

This was in the days before the landfills were fenced off. There wasn’t even a locked gate and you could go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and no one was ever working out at the landfill, when we would go.

So we rode our bicycles to the dump that summer day. When we got there, the first thing we saw in the dug out area of the dump, where the trash went, was a huge pile of cardboard boxes, with an even bigger pile of wooden pallets right beside the boxes.

We decided to ‘help’ the county, so we piled those wooden pallets on the pile of boxes. We then scrounged around until we found a book of matches and we started the boxes and pallets on fire. (The county in those days would burn everything before they buried the trash.)

After we got the fire going good, we noticed a big pile of car and truck tires on top of the hill over looking the area where the fire was burning. So we went up on the hill and started rolling tires down the hill into the fire. Now we really had a huge fire with great clouds of black smoke filling the sky.

The next thing we noticed, up on that hill, was a pickup coming from town on the dirt road. The pickup was traveling at a high rate of speed. Soon enough that pickup arrived right next to where we were rolling those tires into the fire. We noticed a county works sign on the pickup door as the man got out. The man immediately started yelling, cussing, swearing, screaming and I can still see his angry face in my minds eye. He wanted to know what we thought we were doing. We told him we were helping out the county by burning up all this trash. Our answer just gave him time to catch his breath and he started screaming, cussing and yelling at us to get out of his landfill and never come back!

So we got on our bikes and headed for town. We learned several things that day. Number one was don’t go to the dump without our fathers. Number two, we learned every cuss word known to man. Number three, we had a great story and adventure to tell our friends.

Everyone has a story to tell. Stories have been used throughout the history of mankind. In today’s world are you doing anything that will be a story someday to pass on to your wife, husband, kids and grandkids?

The Bible is a book that it is filled with stories that are fun, sad, inspiring, truthful and disappointing. They were stories told over and over until someone wrote them down on paper.

Why God is Losing to Youth Sports?

Travel Teams and Empty Pews

Youth Sports vs Children Ministry

Your Youth are in a Bad Place

I was getting ready to call a coach for his preseason team information for the Kansas Pregame magazine and was getting excited. This particular coach was coaching three sports at his high school and they had won multiple state championships. I wanted to hear his thoughts on how he did things at his school.

So after we had talked on the phone awhile and I had most of his team information, I asked him about those state championships. He totally surprised me with his answer. He said, “State championships are great, but what my players learned at church youth groups on Wednesday nights was far more important. I said back to the coach, “That sounds like a story, tell me more about this.”

The coach said when he was right out of college and became a head coach he worked his players hard, off season and in season. He said it took seven or eight years before they finally won a state championship.

He also said his wife and him had started a family right after college and it took a dozen years before his own kid was involved in middle school athletics. He then, for the first time, noticed that if the coaches of those middle school sports kept their teams late on Wednesday nights at practice, his own kid couldn’t get to youth group at the church.

So he started thinking about what he was doing as the head coach at his own practices. He was keeping kids late in practices on Wednesday nights causing the same problem for his own players.

He then went to his team and told them he was going to let the players go at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday nights from now on so they could get to youth group at their church. He also wanted the players that were going to youth group to invite their friends that didn’t go to church or youth group to go with them.

He said his players were very happy to get out of practice one day a week early and responded by asking their teammates, which were not church members, to go with them and they did. He then started hearing from parents and youth group leaders and they were all pleased about what he had done.

The coach then said to me, “We still continued to compete for state championships and won a few more.”

1 Timothy 4: 7-8 For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

A friend, who used to play football with us, back in the day, got himself into some trouble peddling drugs at college when he was eighteen years old. He ended up in prison for a few years. After he got out, we had a good visit one night. I asked him, “How was it being in prison?” He never would tell me anything specific, other than it was terrible. He did tell me though, “If I ever do something where the police come to get me, and I know that I will be going back to prison, that will be the day I die, because I am not going back to prison.”

Years later, we met by chance at a gas station up on Interstate 70. I asked him if he was a Christian and had he made peace with his creator, because someday in the future I would like to see him in heaven? My friend said to me, “Yes, I have made peace with my creator, but since I have chosen to live my life like I have, I will be dead a whole lot sooner than you. So when you die, and get to heaven, I will be waiting at the Pearly Gate to welcome you in.”

No matter what we have done, no matter how deep a problem we have ourselves in, God will take us back with open arms. We are the ones that must turn 180 degrees around and stop running from God. Turn and face him today and he will come to meet you.

All of us are in some way, the Prodigal Son or Daughter.

Luke 15: 11-24 A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me. So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living.

Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.

So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his slaves, quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found. And they began to celebrate.

A couple of weeks into my sophomore year of high school football, we went to the actual football field to practice special teams. I was assigned to the scout team kick off unit. We lined up and kicked off to the varsity kick return unit.

My position was right next to the kicker. As the return man caught the ball he ran to his right and I kept my eyes on him and closed in ready to make the tackle. Suddenly I was hit, but never saw who hit me and was knocked unconscious. When I came too, a senior was standing over me slapping me in the face saying, “Are you okay?”

I said to the senior, “Where’d you come from?” The senior answered, “I clipped you.” I said, “Why’d you do that?” He answered, “Coach said we had to knock down our assigned guy to block or we wouldn’t be starting Friday night, so screw you sophomore!”

I learned several things that day in practice:

1. There ain’t no referees at practice, so anything goes.
2. Keep your head on a swivel looking around and don’t focus exclusively on the ball carrier.
3. Sophomores were nothing but fresh meat for the varsity to chew up.

My feelings about getting even with this player were always confined to the football practice field during scrimmages. Some of our football players never felt that way. They wanted to get even immediately and then we had wrestling matches or fist fights at practice.

I knew an underclassman that waited four or five years and then found the guy he hated at football practice at the bar, challenged him to a fight and then beat the crap out of the guy.

Here is what the Bible has to say about revenge.

Romans 12:19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

For a young guy full of testosterone this one is hard to live by, but the God of the universe is telling us the best way to live. Which of course we ignore most of the time and do it our own way.

There are kids who love football and will never quit no matter how tough the practice or how tough the coaches are at demanding they work harder.

There are kids who like football and start out well, but eventually drop out and quit.

Then there are kids who pretend to be football players. Our coach used to tell us this story every year at the beginning of the season. The coaches noticed that one player never seemed to get through the Oklahoma drill very much or at all during practice. So the next time they ran the tackling drill they watched this particular kid to see what he was doing. The player was allowing other guys to go ahead of him in the drill and staying towards the back of the line. He also was counting kids in the other line to make sure when he went through the drill that he was against a guy who was younger and smaller than himself.

Just like Christians in Jesus day and even today, some Christians will never give up and quit. Ten of the Apostles died grisly deaths of beatings, crucifixions, beheadings etc. People today, around the world are still being martyred and dying in the name of Jesus.

When the going starts to get tough today in the church or outside the church some Christians walk away from the faith. Persecuted or made fun of for being a Christian at work, school or home some will simply walk away and leave the faith.

And today, we still have those who are like Judas in our midst at church. Those who pretend to be followers of Christ, they still go to church for whatever reason, but they are not Christians.

How about you? What type of football player and what type of Christian are you?

John 6: 48-66

The best high school football teams have a vision of their future season. They don’t just set goals. Look up vision in your dictionary. There are several definitions, but I like this one, “The ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom.”

Football players that have vision give lots of their time, during the off season, to lifting weights, to speed and agility drills, to studying the playbook, throwing and catching the football, etc. That vision motivates them.

The actual football season is very short. Most high school football players will be done playing football their senior year. The season of football in their lives is over quickly.

Life in general is very short also. Most men and women will live into their seventies. A teenager thinks seventy years of age is an eternity away. But the time will fly by just as quickly as your high school football career does. Do you have a vision for your life?

The founders of this country had a vision as they stepped on those small sailing ships in Europe. The people who left the confines of the east coast of this country and headed west had a vision. The individuals in this country today that start new businesses and want to provide a better life for their family have a vision.

Do you have a vision for the spirituality of your family’s future?

Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision (no redemptive revelation of God), the people perish; but he who keeps the law (of God, which includes that of man)—blessed (happy, fortunate, and enviable) is he.

The best thing about a high school football team is we have all kinds of people on that team. We are one team combined with all these different parts put together, pulling together in the same direction.

What is the most popular pregame or post-game prayer by most teams? My guess is the ‘Our Father’ or the ‘Lords Prayer’ is most likely the prayer most teams pray.

I want you to think about just the first two words of that prayer, ‘Our Father’. ‘Our’ means all of us, so when Jesus taught the disciples to pray he did not say, “My Father”, he said, “Our Father”. ‘Our Father’ means that he is the Father to all of us, Protestant, Catholic, rich, poor, Democrat, Republican, Independent, senior, freshman, black, brown, white, red, or yellow skinned, Christian or not-yet-a-Christian it includes us all.

What could we accomplish if all 2 billion Christians in this world acted like the local high school football team and pulled together as a team and tried to actually live this prayer?

Protestant version

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, (debts)
As we forgive those that trespass (debtor) against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
For ever.
Amen.

Roman Catholic version

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
Amen

My wife, years ago wanted to go to some major play in Denver at some opera house or theatre. We took our three daughters and one of their girlfriends. So we had five girls on the trip counting my wife.

We went out to eat before the play in a fancy restaurant in downtown near the theatre. After we had ordered our meals my wife and all the girls left the table to go to the powder room.

Our waitress came over to the table immediately after the girls were out of sight and said, “What’s it like at your house with five women?” I answered, “Our male dog just recently died and our male cat runs around scared and hides a lot when the screaming, crying and yelling begins.” The waitress eyes were getting bigger by the minute as I talked to her. I then said, “We also see children as a blessing from God, just like the Bible says.”

Later that evening, I thought about the waitress and my exchange with her. The waitress was an early twenty something year old woman. Who knows what she was thinking about and why she asked me what it was like at our house? In the world today of abortions, transgender, homosexuality and contraceptives advertised in the media and families looked at strangely if they have more than two kids; maybe she just needed to hear that we saw children as a blessing from God.

An old farmer told me years ago that the best thing we raise in Kansas isn’t cattle or row crops, it is children and we all should have had a couple more!

Psalm 127: 3-5 Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him. Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior’s hands. How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them!