30 Daily Football Devotionals

Product Information

If we want to win the World Cup, we need to get more young people playing football on the streets, then playing football on the pitch, then playing football up the levels,” he said. “And the only way of doing that is actually working with communities because they have a great organising power. Looking to start you season on the right foot? Searching for a way to coach your athletes in the faith? So Jesus sets down the basics for them. The thing they must remember. The central thing. Jesus’ version of “This is a football.” Here is our job. The basic thing he wants us to do. Our mission: Each week theme park designer Nate Naversen and dozens of other men and women come together to play flag football at a church near Orlando, Florida. When the church began and a man named Paul traveled around to help churches get started, he worked with a variety of people to share the message of Jesus. Paul describes one person, Titus, not just as another person on the team, but as someone he could trust: “As for Titus, he is my partner and co-worker among you; as for our brothers, they are representatives of the churches and an honor to Christ” ( 2 Corinthians 8:23).

Competitive greatness is learning to rise to every occasion and to push yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to reach your God-given potential. Coach Wooden defines competitive greatness as a real love for the hard battle, knowing it offers the opportunity to be at your best when your best is required. Okay, you might be thinking, but what’s war have to do with football? Well, actually, war and football (sports in general) have some deep connections. David used opportunities as a shepherd—a low-level job—to prepare himself for bigger moments, like when he faced Goliath in battle. He knew God had equipped him to do things that were not normal. David didn’t know the battle with Goliath was upcoming, but he focused on being excellent where he was day by day. 2. Fundamentals build the foundation. I found that something like a quarter of all clubs that have played in English football over the past five years have a close connection with the church.”Following Jesus often feels the same way. Some next steps — like salvationor marriage — are like the big play that makes it to the highlight reel on SportsCenter. But other next steps feel more like first downs—not sexy but still moving us closer to the goal of becoming more like Jesus. Two Practical Lessons a Christian Can Learn From Football 1. Small choices now can lead to highlight moments later. Football is also a team game that demands individual practice. Every player has a specific role that, when executed properly, leads to team achievement. And that proper execution is the result of extreme training. Behind every move of every player is hours of work — of drills and sweat and pain — that ultimately targets one thing: team wins. Seriously. Make no mistake about it. Integral to football is real, tangible moments when personal comfort yields to a greater cause. The team wins because the team members sacrifice. They wear out their bodies for something bigger than their pain. The More Perfect Display Matt Baker has been chaplain at Charlton Athletic since 2000 and is national director for England at Sports Chaplaincy UK. While footballing has a reputation as a glamorous career path, players often struggle to cope with the transition to life in the spotlight, he said. So we’re all going to have hard moments in life. And we’re all going to feel like we came one yard short of achieving the unattainable or the dream. It’s Jesus and the atonement that will give us strength. Those difficult times will make our rushing-the-field moments even better,” said Sitake. “It is through these moments that we will be able to enjoy the highlights of life but also find the meaning behind pain and struggle. And we will come with love because of Christ and that we will find a way to be Christ tough.” Legendary Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant was reported to tell his teams, “It is not the will to win the matters—everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that matters.” I have heard another coach say that growth comes from making yourself do what you need to do when you do not want to do it, and to do so consistently enough that you want to do it. Walking in line with the gospel does not come to us naturally or intuitively. Rather, we are involved in the daily process of becoming who we are in Christ. Jesus is Lord! Our natural desires are not Lord. In Ephesians, Paul exhorts the believer, “put off the old self” and “put on the new self” (Eph. 4:22, 24). This process of learning to live in accordance to our new identity in Christ is a daily and progressive struggle. I heard a sports psychologist say, “We don’t rise to the occasion, we sink to the level of our daily habits.” That is good counsel for athletes and Christians who want to grow.

It is often said that football is like a religion in Britain, inspiring passion, belief and devotion that most spiritual leaders could only dream of. BYU officially joins the conference on July 1, 2023, and all of the festivities leading up to Saturday’s big day are deemed “Big Week.” It started Sunday night with players and coaches from BYU’s athletic department speaking inside the Marriott Center for a devotional.He believes that “Christianity and football align perfectly” and “come together in a wonderful way” through his work. “I feel very fortunate and privileged,” he said. “My faith, my belief, my values underpin what I do.” This eye on eternity becomes important, then, no matter what we’re doing—playing football or watching it, or driving the kids to practice. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” (Colossians 3:23-24). This is the real game. This is the real goal.

As a young assistant football coach this scene made a powerful impression on me, not just as a coach, but as a man following Christ. Like Paul, I cannot think about my Christian walk without noting the obvious parallels to lessons learned from athletic competition. Here, I hope to point to some lessons from sports that I have been able to leverage for spiritual growth. My hope is that these examples will help you to think more intentionally and profitably as a Christian about your interaction with sports and doing so will be a catalyst toward sanctification. Other Christian footballers who harness their faith as a power for good include poverty campaigner and Manchester United star Marcus Rashford, according to Hannah Rich, senior researcher at Theos think tank. The FA’s Faith and Football programme will see special events take place with other faith communities in the coming months. As part of the initiative, it held an online webinar with the Religion Media Centre to discuss the links between football and Christianity. Sanctification is the process by which believers are set apart to Christ and grow in likeness to Christ. Sanctification is a primary and daily battleground in spiritual war. The biblical story begins with serpent-inspired conflict in the garden and ends with a glorious celebration of triumphant victory over the serpent in a new heavens and new earth. Growing in likeness to Christ is not simply a matter of a few big spiritual moments. As some sports teams like to say, it is a matter of being all in, all the time. Comparing that with religious belief, she added: “When you have religious belief, you’re a participant in something, you have those beliefs. Christianity calls upon you to act on those beliefs and, as a football fan, I’m called upon to not just watch but to really get behind the team.”

Competitive Greatness

Why? Because while “warrior culture” is dangerous, warrior instinct is endangered, and football stands as one of the last bastions of its enduring good. What Is Warrior Instinct? do ask for God’s help. With pre-game prayers and the “Tebowing” some players do, we might assume that both sides are angling for divine favor. With God on your side, how can you lose? As a Psalm says, “With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies” (Psalms 108:13). But you might be correct in wondering whether God really stands on one side or the other. Does he really care whether the Saints or the Lions come out ahead? (Maybe that’s a bad example.) In “Any Given Sunday”, Al Pacino plays an aging NFL coach. Toward the end of the movie, he gives a monologue about how football, like life, is a game of inches: The following attachments are devotionals created by Sportsfaith writer Shawn Leibegott to help coaches teach athletes not only about Christ but about important characteristics all athletes should develop. He added: “The Corinthians refused to take penalties because they believed that if you take a penalty, you accept that cheating is part of football.”