Are You Ready for Some Football?
Posted on September 21, 2009
The heat is beginning to break. The humidity is starting to wane. The grass is slowing in its growth. The pine straw is thickening on the ground. Leaves are beginning to dry.
School is back in the swing of things. Vacations have come to an end. People are getting back into their highly segmented lives. Weekends are never in higher demand than now. With the weather changing and a renewed love for the weekend a desire for watching football is renewed in our culture.
I must confess this is my favorite time of year. I love the cooler weather, the beginning of football, and not to mention the baseball playoffs. I am looking forward to Thursday Nights, Friday Nights, Saturdays, Sundays, and Monday Nights filled with football. It is hard to beat time on the couch with my wife and family cheering for one of our favorite teams. I must admit I take football season pretty serious. But, I am also concerned for what I know is going to happen this fall as football gets kicked off. There will be a certain number of saints that will place the idol of football between them and their assembling with the saints.
Let me just tell you something about my own shortcomings in this regard. I personally am a bigger NFL fan than I am a college football fan so when I first got saved I missed A LOT of Sunday Night services at my church because of the 4 o’clock NFL games. In fact the first Super Bowl I missed was the first Super Bowl Sunday I was a pastor of a church. I almost canceled church that night so people could “spend time with their families”. That was code for the preacher wanted desperately to watch the game. The next year I thought I would solve the problem by watching the game at church while having a fellowship. Needless to stay I was stressed out about not letting the commercials be seen by the congregation I don’t even remember who played.
I understand the love that someone has for watching sports. I also understand that my eternal relationship with Jesus Christ and my temporal relationship with my church on earth are far more important than me seeing who wins a ball game. I can see all the important stuff on Sports Center and believe it or not, my watching the game will not determine the team that wins and neither will yours.
I hope that my brothers and sisters in Christ will not forsake the assembly for something as pathetically weak as football. In fact I am so concerned about your spiritual health that I am going to pray for your team. I have committed to pray that God will make your team’s success relative to your faithfulness to your local church. Let me boil this down for you. If you lay out of church in order to watch your favorite team I pray they lose. If you overcome the temptation to lay out of church to watch your favorite team I pray they win.
May God bless the teams who have the most faithful fans and may God curse the teams whose members love football more than their church family.
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