For His Glory, we have it on athletic uniforms, t-shirts, locker room walls, and our website. We say that we want everything we do to be done for His glory. But what is the glory of God? The glory of God is the fullness of who He is, as revealed in Jesus. For an amazing message about this, I highly recommend this message from Liberty University’s chapel service: Watch here (message starts at 19:45).
So what does it look like to participate in Ridgeview athletics for His glory? I have realized that one of the necessary things to understand is that while we primarily play Christian schools, each has a different mission and philosophy. Here’s where this is important: everyone playing on our teams has gone through an admissions process that has verified that the student comes from a home with shared beliefs of the Christian Faith and the school’s values. Families have also verified that they are actively involved in a local church. That is the standard we have set for ourselves as a school based on the mission we believe God has given us here at Ridgeview Christian School. But that’s not necessarily the mission that each of the other Christian schools we play against has. Some of the schools that we play against are evangelistic in nature. This means their schools include students and families with no shared belief in Jesus. They do this to share Christ with those students and, hopefully, their families.
So why is this important? This means that we will play against teams with students who have potentially little Christian influence within their home and possibly no church involvement. We will play against students who have not entered into a relationship with Jesus. I wish I could say that everybody we play against will have a good attitude, not use foul language, and not play dirty. We often falter from holding to our own expectations for ourselves. Our students have to understand and even expect that we’re going to play against other students who are not going to hold up to the standards that we expect our students to hold up to.
If God’s glory is the representation of the fullness of who is as revealed through Jesus, and we are called to live for his glory, then we see a bigger picture of what success looks like for us in our athletic program. While we want to win, that is not our ultimate goal. Our ultimate goal is to represent Christ to the opposing team, the referees, the spectators, and everyone who comes into contact with our teams. Both on and off the court.
God does not owe us a win. But I believe that playing sports to the glory of God has the potential to set us up for better performance on the court. Here’s what I mean:
- Diligence vs. laziness – Hustle
- Living for others vs. living for self – Teamwork
- Respecting referees vs. Disrespecting referees – Respect for Authority
- Listening to coaches vs. ignoring coaches – Wisdom and Authority
- Love others, even your “enemies” – Sportsmanship
Whether we end up with more points than the other team by the end of the game or not, matters less than representing Jesus and the Glory of God to the world around us. And learning to extend grace to each other when we inevitably fall short. For His Glory.