“All I know most surely about morality and obligation I owe to football”,
Do not boast
Do not boast about tomorrow for you do not know what a day may bring. Proverbs 27:1If there is one lesson for life that sport teaches us, it is the uncertainty of tomorrow. The fact that you won the race last year, means nothing this year. One of the abiding joys of sport is seeing the underdog pull off a great victory. OK, it is not a great joy for you if you happen to be the “over-dog” who has lost!
In a performance-based world when you are only as good as your last performance, there can be real tensions for the Christian. Believing in yourself is essential as a motivation for training and to help you perform at your best in the competition. At the same time, you must never lose sight of the fact that your ultimate value is not in your sporting achievements but in the fact that God created you and Jesus died to redeem you.
Boasting is not a positive human trait. Paul writes twice: Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17). And again in Galatians 6:14 he writes, May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’. Remember too that love excludes boasting: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
Let us strive to live today as people who know who we are – people created and saved by God. Focus on that, not on what you have achieved.