The football locker room is a special place. I for sure found this out about a dozen years ago during the first year we had the Kansas Pregame magazine.

That fall, for the first game of the year, I called the opposing coach my hometown team would be playing against. I would be traveling to the opponent’s town and wanted to know if I could bring him twenty five magazines for his team. He said, “Yes, bring us some, because we have not seen them.” Now remember, this was the first year of the magazine and it was not online and we only covered hundred schools that first year.

So when I got to town that Friday night, about two hours before kickoff, I thought it would be okay for me to go into the hometown locker room. Was I ever wrong! A great big ex-lineman type of an assistant football coach was standing at the door to the hometown locker room. I told him I had twenty five of the Kansas Pregame magazines for the head football coach and would he let me in to give them to the coach? The assistant coach answered with one word, “No!”

Is the sanctuary of your church a special place? As a junior high kid, at youth group, if I had to walk through the sanctuary by myself, the hair on the back of my neck would always stand up. The sanctuary was a special place to me then and still is today.

When I go to church today and see people with coffee cups in their hands or looking at their cell phones, I wonder if the sanctuary is a special place for them?

Sometimes at our churches, we have so many announcements about fund raisers and such that it makes me think about Jesus turning over the tables and kicking those money changers out of the temple.

I pray that you see your church sanctuary as special as you see your football locker room.

Matthew 21:12-13 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.”