Disagreements remain on what place prayer has in sport

The weird thing for me about prayers in sports is that, constitutional or not, they make very little sense.

What are these folks praying for? Are they praying for their team to win (and, necessarily, for the other team to lose)? How do they know whether God wants them to beat the other team? What hotline do they have that I don't know about?

God might want them to lose. The sport itself, for all we know, might be vile in his sight.

Seems to me that it makes sense, just about, to pray that the game is played fairly and that the best players win; but to pray for God to support the Cowboys over the Broncos seems like a species of insanity. Doesn't he have better things to worry about?

Similarly, it kind of ticks me off when contestants on TV shows suggest that they won because God wanted them to (which happens a surprising amount). When you come across anyone who says that they know what God's thinking, you should use extreme caution!

When Jesus talked about what we should pray for, he says nothing about these kinds of prayers - quite the reverse - he talks about not praying where everyone can see you, about praying that God's will be done on earth, and about praying for your enemies and those that persecute you. I don't see where all these mass public prayers for victory fit in with that.

The prayers prayed at sporting events that I am talking about or in the locker room are prayers for the safety of the players. If you have ever been to a game where this is done, both sides are involved in the prayer. Its not done to show off. When Jesus is talking about praying out loud he is speaking about doing it to get attention of those around you to show how Godly you are. Daniel prayed out loud and broke the law doing it, was sentenced to death by lions, but God saved him and killed his accusers.

That said I would clearly ask God to support the Cowboys over the Broncos if the Cowboys were my team. That doesn't mean he would answer me but I wouldn't be ashamed to do it. I pray for the Seahawks to win and do well, I don't spend all day on it but I have no problem praying it. Some might say God answered my prayers last week against the Giants.

I would rather be hot than warm in Gods eyes. If I follow the word of God, seek his will in my life then he is obligated to be with me. If not that would make him a liar. If the Bible is not true, at least I went for something and didn't wallow around in indecision. I think God will deal properly with me.

I think that folks that get onto the news and on the radio and talk about how God wants there to be prayers at these events ARE doing it to get attention and show how Godly they are." I have no problem with people praying out loud for whatever religion, and they can spend 24 hours a day doing that if they want to. What I'm saying is that some of the things these folks pray for make no sense to me, even if they are constitutional to do.

If God answered your prayers against the Giants, does that mean that he consciously chose to answer No to all the folks who were praying for the Giants? Were they better people or their prayers better prayers? Does he go by quantity? What's the logic? Praying for something that doesn't make much sense one way or the other is not high on my mental scale of sins, but it still baffles me. Like the banner mentioned above says, if you're on "Team Jesus Christ", what does that mean you're saying about the other team?

Or is it simply that the Seahawks outplayed the Giants and that God chose not to have much to do with the outcome?

If God answered your prayers against the Giants, does that mean that he consciously chose to answer No to all the folks who were praying for the Giants? Were they better people or their prayers better prayers? Does he go by quantity? What's the logic? Praying for something that doesn't make much sense one way or the other is not high on my mental scale of sins, but it still baffles me. Like the banner mentioned above says, if you're on "Team Jesus Christ", what does that mean you're saying about the other team? Or is it simply that the Seahawks outplayed the Giants and that God chose not to have much to do with the outcome?

If I were the only person on Earth, God would have sent Jesus to be a sacrifice for me. That said, God answers my prayers and sometimes he doesn't.

I expect God to be for me, I expect to win in all things I do whether work or play and I expect God to be for me. I bless all my customers, my competitors everyone involved in my business because the Bible says so, forget what my mind might think.

As far as the Giants/ Seahawks game goes, when the kicker misses the game winning field goal and then misses two more in overtime. When the Giants out gain the Hawks in most offensive and defensive categories and miss the game winning field goal plus two more in OT and the Hawks hit theirs to win, I choose to thank God for the win. I wont say we got lucky.

I will pray for victory in Iraq and victory for America in whatever we do and I expect God to hear my prayer. I will acknowledge him if he answers it and ask him what happened when he doesn't. Sometimes he answers back sometimes he doesn't and thats his business.

I believe all religion is worthless. Christianity should not be religion, it should be the way it is. I believe there is a God, he sent his son to be a sacrifice for all humanity, to clean all men of their sins toward God. Jesus said there was none righteous, so that tells me I am not righteous because God decides who is righteous, not man. "Good deeds" do not make me righteous, nor does it make Jimmy Carter righteous.The only way to be righteous is to have a cloak of righteousness placed on you when you have faith in Jesus and what was done on the cross.

The reason I mention this is because in your post you were writing about a person being better than the other and sins and those sort of things. I can't consider myself better than another except that I have some faith and that doesn't make me better. I know this though, God definitely chooses sides.

I think the thing is that while God chooses sides, we as humans have no way of knowing what side he chooses. We can presume, using ethics as we understand them, that if God is good he must be on the side that we perceive as being good, but we may be wrong.

What I'm saying is that there is no particular reason to attribute a sports victory to God rather than to the relative efforts and skills of the players. Making God a kind of tribal mascot demeans him.

Iraq is different in scale to a Giants versus Seahawks matchup. But even there, we have no way of knowing for sure what God wants to happen. We can maybe presume from the Bible that he wants peace to happen, but we have no idea how he wants us to get there. Maybe an American victory will make the world more peaceful. Maybe it won't. Can either you or I be sure of the answer?

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