I have always been an avid football fan. I come from the state of Nebraska where football is a way of life.
When I was little, I would watch all the games with my dad as we both cheered for the Cornhuskers. I then determined that I wanted to grow up to be a professional football player. Well, back in the 60’s that didn’t fare well with being a girl. So the only way to get on a football field was to be a majorette. In high school, we stood out there in the cold twirling our fire batons and half freezing to death in our scantily clad, sequined outfits. I even wrote a paper for one of my classes on how football was like the game of life. It was deeply embedded in my culture.
Becoming an Adventist in 1992 and recognizing the need to keep the Sabbath, I knew I needed to put an end to my Saturday football watching habit. I was still very anxious to check the scores and highlights after Sabbath, and, of course, watch the professional games on Sunday. When my boys were little, I took them to Kansas City to attend their first professional football game – the Kansas City Chiefs versus the Oakland Raiders. So my love for football was being passed on to another generation.
As time went on and my walk with the Lord became stronger, I realized how much time I was really wasting watching these games. If it was a double-header on Sundays and each game was about three hours long, I spent most of the day in front of the television. I also realized how emotionally distraught I became with the ebb and flow of the game. My blood pressure would go up; I would become upset at the way the game was progressing or at the calls made by the referees. And, if my team lost, I would be depressed for the rest of the day or days. I knew something had to change.
My prayer to God began to be, “Show me my sin.” I didn’t want there to be anything between me and my Savior. Was watching football a sin? I began to prayer about this more and didn’t like what the Lord was revealing to me. If one really takes a deeper look at the game, you realize just how violent it is. Someone described it as the football players being involved in a car wreck each game with the jarring tackles they make and the hits they incur. Then there is the money spent on the players and coaches salaries, the huge football venues being built, the team apparel that is sold, the tailgate parties, and the ticket and concession costs. I began to see more clearly what a waste of God’s resources these games truly are.
Ellen White writes in CT 274.3,
“The public feeling is that manual labor is degrading, yet men may exert themselves as much as they choose at cricket, baseball, or in pugilistic (boxing) contests, without being regarded as degraded. Satan is delighted when he sees human beings using their physical and mental powers in that which does not educate, which is not useful, which does not help them to be a blessing to those who need their help. While the youth are becoming expert in games that are of no real value to themselves or to others, Satan is playing the game of life for their souls, taking from them talents that God has given them, and placing in their stead his own evil attributes. It is his effort to lead men to ignore God. He seeks to engross and absorb the mind so completely that God will find no place in the thoughts. He does not wish people to have a knowledge of their Maker, and he is well please if he can set in operation games and theatrical performances that will so confuse the senses of the youth that God and heaven will be forgotten.”
For many years I have been reading the daily devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. He is always stressing that we need to be “broken bread and poured out wine” before the Lord. He has a term he uses called “internal martyrdom,” to die to self. Here is a quote from his December 23rd devotional:
“Do I want to be identified with His death, to be killed right out to all interest in sin, in worldliness, in self – to be so identified with Jesus that I am spoilt for everything else but Him?...Get alone with Jesus and either tell Him that you do not want sin to die out in you; or else tell Him that at all costs you want to be identified with His death.”
The entire sports world watched as Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills Football team collapsed on the field during the first quarter of the Monday Night Football game on January 9, 2023. People who weren’t even sports fans were praying for him to fully recover from what appeared to be a cardiac arrest. When he woke up in the hospital, his first words were, “Who won?” The Bills and the Bengals were in a tight divisional game to determine who would move up in the playoffs. The doctor told him, “You won the game of life!” As I watched all this enfold, I told the Lord that I wanted that to be me on the field – to die to football and have the desire to watch it be wrenched from my heart. To identify with His death and to wake up to the life the Lord wanted me to live. I didn’t want it to control my thoughts and actions any more. I wanted to be free from its addictive trance.
In Desire of Ages p. 69 Ellen White writes,
So we may resist temptation and the force of Satan to depart from us. Jesus gained the victory through submission and faith in God, and by the apostle He says to us, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you” (James 4:7, 8).
So here I am today still pleading with the Lord to take the desire to watch football from me. With cell phones so easily accessible, the temptation is real. One can simply go to the NFL page and view the scores and watch the highlights of the games. I’m praying that He will help me to win the victory over this compulsion and not even have the thought of it. I want not one sin to separate me from me and my Savior.
I realize that this may not be relevant to many of you. But we all have worldly things in our lives which Satan has cultivated in our minds to trap and deceive us. With the end times approaching so quickly, let us all take a serious look at ourselves and see what needs to be removed from our hearts and minds. Let us all draw nigh unto Him and be ready. Jesus is coming soon!
****
Karen Phillips is happily married to her husband, John, and they are enjoying their new home in eastern Kentucky, USA. She enjoys spending time with their four children and three grandchildren. Along with additional staff, they operate an international ministry called HeReturns. Her passion is to serve the Lord in any capacity and to be a conduit to save lost and suffering souls.