“We talk a lot about glorifying God
with the way we play, but what does that mean?”
This question came up during a captains meeting. It was the question we focused on last week. It is a question we should continue to focus
on every day.
I am blessed to coach a basketball
team of players that understands that praising and glorifying God is our
purpose in life. We know that that
purpose to bring glory to God encompasses every thing we do including
basketball. So it was at basketball
practice, where we request in prayer that we could glorify God, that we talked
as a team about what that actually means.
The guys were given a few days to
think, research, or ask a faith mentor what they thought it means to glorify
God, or what it means to praise God. Our
team’s discussion allowed each player a chance to say what they thought.
We had a lot recognizing that they
can praise and glorify God by following his commands…Just like honoring our
father and mother would mean to obey, we bring glory and honor to God by
obeying him.
We had a few others answering that
to glorify God is to not accept glory for ourselves, but to recognize God’s
hand in all that we are blessed to achieve.
One answer that stuck with me, and
led to further discussion was that God is already glorious. Everything in His creation reveals his
glory. To glorify God we just need to be
like nature.
Putting these thoughts together
helps us all have a better understanding of what it means to glorify God. We talked more about who God created us to
be, how through obedience we could truly be who God created us to be, and how
it is important to react with appropriate praise when our obedience leads to
blessings.
After thinking about the
definition, we talked of course about how we can glorify God through
basketball. I challenged the boys to
recognize that God created them to be more than basketball players, but they
were also created to be (and therefore able to glorify God in their roles of),
sons, brothers, teammates, classmates, and students. Coach Dugener talked about
how he was created to be a father, and guys continued to talk about being
leaders, followers, servants, helpers, and encouragers.
SIBLINGS PRACTICE---
I hope that basketball gives guys
another avenue for glorifying God (as basketball players, teammates, etc.), and
I hope that it can also prepare these young men to glorify God in who they will
be called to be later in life (husbands, fathers, bosses, workers,
church-leaders, etc.). I hope that
basketball enhances who these guys are as they are called to now be (brothers,
classmates, students, etc.) I fear that sometimes
our role on a basketball team can take us away from some of these other roles,
so in wanting to enjoy how God called us to be brothers, helpers, and leaders,
last Tuesday night we had a siblings practice.
We invited younger siblings and friends from 1st-8th
grades and the 30 of us enjoyed a night together.
