Prayer for athletes - Champions for God!

Last night the various small groups of our church (Eastside Community Church) got together as we are going through a 40 day journey at present and the theme for this week was prayer. At a point Riaan (our Senior Pastor) challenged us all to prayer big because God’s word says we can do so and we can ask him. We were challenged to prayer for something big in our own lives, our families, our church, our communities and our country. But the key was to ask BIG! I could not help but feel that I needed to pray for our athletes. Many have just returned from Beijing Olympics, where according to the press, the public and the individuals whom think they are in the know, the SA team did poorly. Why, well we only received one medal.

Our athletes are being purely measured on medals. They are not being measured on whether they did their best, improved their times, met the objectives they had for the games. No it was all about medals. This is truly sad for me. We as South Africans are such a critical nation. We only want to win, we are not prepared to be “losers”. It just feels as though we are not spending all this energy on the right places. The place where it matters. In a previous posts I referred to various scriptures and I want to highlight a few again.

In Ecclesiates 9 verse 11 it reads “I also saw something else here on earth: The fastest runner does not always win the race, the strongest soldier does not always win the battle, the wisest does not always have food, the smartest does not always become wealthy, and the talented ones does not always receive praise. Tim and chance happen to everyone.”

In 1 Corinthians 9 from verse 24-27 it reads “You know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize. So run to win! All those who compete in the games use self-control so they can win a crown. That crown is an earthly thing that lasts only a short time, but our crown will never be destroyed. So I do not run without a goal. I fight like a boxer who is hitting something – not just air. I treat my body hard and make it a slave so that I myself will not be disqualified after I have preached to others.”

My prayer for our athletes and all athletes around the world is that they can become Champions for Christ. That they can learn to love him and learn to fight for the right crown. I know there are many Christian athletes out there, but my prayer is that their faith can shine through. That it can be that sweet smelling aroma that God wants it to be. And that they are not judged on how many medals they won but rather on were they champions for Christ, did they ‘fight’ with a plan or did they just hit the air. Did they use self control and worked hard to achieve the results they did and finally did they do their best, their best for God.

God Bless

SB