The Lord's Prayer (For Sportspeople)Sample

“This, then, is how you should pray … Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

In heaven the will of God is always perfectly applied. God wants us, as we go into today’s game, to pray that his perfect will is present in our lives. We are to pray that his will be done on the pitch, track, changing room, and after our sport in the clubhouse or bar. God wants our sporting lives to reflect his will.

Let’s consider how this can happen by reflecting on the truth about God our Father, the joy that can result from knowing this truth, and how we then express our delight in the way we speak.

Truth: our Father in heaven.

We have a Father in heaven who loves us and is entirely committed to our welfare as we play sports today. We are safe in his love, regardless of what happens on the field of play.

Joy: God is our definitive source of joy.

God our Father gave us our athletic abilities and our relationships with others at our club. He gave us all this so that we might enjoy his gift of sport. It can’t always be the right result or performance. This is why it is so critical to realize where the most consistent and deep joy is to be sought. This is not in our sport. Instead, it is in our personal relationship with our Father in heaven.

When we ask our Father in heaven that, “your will be done,” we are asking him that he might give us joy in our relationship with him that is deeper than our emotion in sporting victory or defeat. Indeed, if our search for joy is restricted to doing well in today’s game, our quest is misguided. As C.S. Lewis puts it in ‘The Weight of Glory’:

“Our desires aren’t too strong; they are too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition [and we might add, sporting success and reputation] when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

The point here is that we are far too easily pleased in looking for definitive joy in sport. However brilliant it can feel when we play well, the created activity of sport cannot compete with the joy available in relishing in our personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Praise: the natural outcome of truth and joy is praise.

When we pray “your will be done” we are asking that our athletic lives might be founded on the truth of God as our Father in heaven. We are praying that our heavenly Father might help us find our deepest joy in God, not our sport. The result of these two steps will be an inevitable desire to express praise for God.

Have you noticed that, in life, we can’t help but praise what we most enjoy? Here’s CS Lewis again, in ‘Reflections on the Psalms’:

"I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise … readers praise their favorite poet, walkers praise the countryside, players praise their favorite game — [the] praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, children, flowers . . .”

There is no doubt that if today’s game goes well, the joyous changing room conversation will naturally overflow into praise. It’s intuitive to say things like, “Wasn’t it a brilliant performance?” or “Didn’t Jane play ever so well?”

It is frustrating to enjoy a great performance and not be able to praise it. Maybe because you must rush off or for some reason are not allowed to stay and praise together. It is intuitive for us to praise our Father in heaven out of joy for who he is and what he has done for us, regardless of victory or defeat. Go play.

Prayer

Lord, please help me to be so enamoured by your love for me today that I will find joy in you regardless of my performance or the result. And, Lord, can I go all the way and ask you to work in me so that, whatever happens today, I will have an unstoppable yearning to express my praise for you to others.

Amen.