As a three sport athlete back in high school, I remember one of the local pastors or one of my teammates leading us in the Lords prayer or having a prayer said before every varsity football game I ever played in. What I don’t remember is ever saying a prayer before a basketball game or a track meet. Praying before a baseball game in the summer? Never did it. Football is different. The potential for injury is real. You cannot play the game of football without blood and bruises. That is the nature of the game, it is tough to play. That is why the game is not for everyone to play.

The pregame prayer was never about winning it was always about safety for the players on the field of play. Young men think they are invincible and it (the it being the big injury) is never going to happen to them. But sure as the sun comes up in the east, someone will never get to play the game again because of something that will happen during practice or in a game situation each and every year the game of football is played.

Old guys like coaches, parents and pastors know the big injury will happen to someone this year. That is why we should pray before each and every game. We should pray that our young men play the game as hard as they possibly can, but that they go major injury free.

Several years ago I was broadcasting a local high school football game on the radio and my radio partner could not be there until about half-time, so I asked the pastor who had married my wife and me if he would come and talk on the radio for the first half of the game. This pastor was a great fan of sports and especially of football. Early in our time during the broadcast he mentioned he had a grandson that had been playing football that year in another town, but had been injured during the first game of the year and was no longer able to play.

So I asked the pastor what happened to his grandson. The pastor said his grandson was returning the kickoff at the start of the game and severely broke a leg in several places and since this was his senior year he would never play the game of football again.

I asked the pastor if this injury to his grandson had changed his mind about the game of football and would he advise young men to no longer play the game anymore. The pastor said no he would still advise young men to play the game and injuries are part of the game, it was just unfortunate that his grandson was a senior and would never again get to play the game he loved.

There is much we can learn during our time playing football. Discipline, how to become a teammate, learning about how to work hard, sacrifice, honor, to lose, to win, to love, to be focused and on and on and on. We can also learn to pray and why to pray.

So let us celebrate our faith during the game of football. Send me your pictures where you capture your team or individuals praying. There will also be other pictures where great respect will be shown during other times of the game, send those also.

If you know where other great sermons about sports and or football are on the world wide web send me the link to the sermon and we can share the link with all the other football fans of Kansas and the other states that come to this website.

Do you like our website? If you do would you please send an email to someone today telling them about us?

The late days of August, the heat of summer and football practice means thirsty players. A long time ago, in what seems like another dimension, football coaches would only let us have so many water breaks. We had a single solitary garden hose attached to an outside faucet to get drinks of water. This was in the days before sports drinks were available for purchase. Nobody had even heard the term sports drink.

One hot afternoon at practice, the trainers mixed up this concoction in a 30 gallon galvanized trash can. (The trainers told us after practice what they put in the trash can.) A full box of lemon-lime Kool-aid, a large sack of sugar, several pounds of salt, several bags of ice and they filled the can with water from that garden hose and then stirred it with a wooden stick that looked like a broom handle.

We saw the trainers doing this as we practiced. Everyone was looking over and watching them wondering, “What are they doing?” We also wondered, what was coach up to, because he was always coming up with something new to try on us.

When water break time came the senior linemen were always the first guys in line. The trainers were handing out paper cups and telling everyone to get one cupful and then to step back to let someone else step up for a cupful. Well those senior linemen dipped one cupful and drank it and dipped in for another. All of a sudden it was a drinking frenzy. The guys loved the taste and were just going crazy trying to get more with different players crowding in to get their first cupful.

By the time the sophomores got to the trash can it was close to being empty. There was also grass clippings and dirt in the drink. We were so thirsty we didn’t care what was in it because it was wet and we wanted some. I dipped my cup in and drank it and never had I tasted anything so good in my entire life, up to that moment, on a blazing hot day in the summer.

Man was created by God for God. But all of us at times choose to live our lives independently of God. We choose to fill our cup with everything possible except God. So we continue to be thirsty and unsatisfied with everything on this earth.

Jesus said in John 4:14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

John 4:4-26

You have seen this player listed on the scouting report, he is 5’8” 150 pounds. You have watched film and the kid seems to be everywhere on the football field at the right place at the right time.

Over the years you have seen this kind of player on other teams. They have played in multiple positions, lineman, linebacker, cornerback, quarterback and you marvel at how does he do what he does? He gets away from blockers to make tackles. He outruns everyone to make a tackle, which seems impossible. He makes plays at quarterback or running back that you ask yourself, “Did he really just do that?”

When football coaches look at students walking down the street or hallways of the school they think, that kid looks like a linebacker or fullback or tight end etc. But when the coach looks at our, how does he do it football player, he doesn’t look like a football player, some of the time. We can underestimate what is on the inside of our young football players and it is a mystery.

The same is true of our Christian faith. You can have an individual, that does everything wrong in all areas of his life. They are the total screw up in our communities and always in trouble. Then one day they are introduced to Jesus and everything changes. They are the same when we look at them on the outside, but on the inside they are different. It is the mystery of faith and we wonder how did that happen?

Never underestimate God the Father Almighty and think again about that kid that doesn’t look like much of a football player.

1 Timothy 3:16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

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.”

I ran into an old friend from college at the state basketball tournament several years ago. He was coaching one of the teams in the tournament. When I went over to talk to him, he was sitting in amongst his players. As I approached my old friend he looked embarrassed to see me. The first thing practically out of his mouth was this comment, “Tim, I no longer do any of that stuff we used to do in college.” I guess he thought I might go into great detail about our past and in a loud voice try to embarrass him. Instead I said, “I don’t do any of that stuff either anymore. I grew up also.”

So my point is, don’t you ever come to this website and read these stories and then think that I must be a perfectly sinless man. Every day I must re-evangelize myself. I read my Bible everyday, early in the day. I pray and repeat the Bible verses I have memorized during my early morning activities.

And when I slack off and don’t do that Bible reading everyday, then it is easier to skip the next day and the day after that and so on. It is easy to fall away and lose the remembrance of God the Father in my life. The sinful life could then begin all over again.

I would rather stay with God the Father and serve Him. God has called you also. He has a job specifically for you at this time in history. No matter what you have done in your past, He wants you on His team. You are the only one that can fulfill that job He has for you at this present time.

Read the Book of Jonah. It is a very short book in the Bible. See how it worked out for Jonah to ignore God, and ignore the job He had for Jonah.

Sad story about Ben Heeney’s best friend from college

The link provided below is a story about the man. Not a story about wins and losses, but about the relationships he has built with the young men in his school.

KC Sports writer on Eric Driskell

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/high-school/article132377839.html

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