Team USA Athletes: 10 Christian Olympic Medal Winners Glorifying God

"I am of mixed minds about this....There is a subtle difference between honoring God because He made you a person of faith who can win, and honoring God because He made you win."

When you pull off a major success in your profession, do you recognize God's hand in it, and render Him praise and gratitude for the talents he blessed you with, the timing, the idea, etc. that made it all possible?

IMHO, that's all these people are doing.

To be sure, Christians don’t blame God after they came in 4th and lower.

If you are ignorant what Christians athletes pray for, it is not to “win”. They pray to God to keep them healthy, to keep them focused during practice and competition, to keep them being lazy and not practicing hard, to let their practices be fruitful, and so on.

They pray to God for him to help them fulfill their potential, not to “defeat” their competitors, per se. They don’t pray “please injure my competitor” or “please have them screw up”.

Christian athletes pray to God to help them be their personal best, and if that personal best is only 4th place, then so be it.

So when a Christian athlete places 1st overall, they give thanks to God for helping them to train hard and have the courage to perform, so that by their winning they give Glory to God, saying “, by God’s grace He kept me focused and training long and hard, so that in competition my body could do what was necessary to perform better than all my competitors.”

Christian athletes don’t pray to win directly. They pray to be the best that they can and when they achieve the zenith of their sport, they show that their remarkable physical performance is yet another of God’s acts to show his Glory.

Here is an example. An Olympic swimmer is not going to pray “please let me win.” They are going to pray “please Lord let me ignore the savage burning pain in my lungs as I finish out the race. Please Lord, let me execute my kick turn fluidly as I have trained thousands of times, and not allow doubts to cloud my mind at a critical time. Please Lord, grant me the mental fortitude to fight through the anguish of muscle fatigue with the very last of my strokes as I approach the wall and my muscle cells are bursting with pain oxygen depletion.”

That is the kind of thing that is stated or implied in a Christian athletes typical prayer to God. Not a banal “please let my competitor choke and lose so I can have an easy certain win at their expense.”

It just doesn’t work that way.

i think those 10 athletes are wonderful! but, so are the Christian athletes from countries where is is sometimes harder to be a Christian:

You are so right! Anyone watching this morning's distance could not help but be moved by ...

REFUGEE Guor Marial ran in the marathon today for a country that is not at the Olympics and a family he has not seen for 20 years. Marial began life in Sudan, a country debilitated by civil war. At eight, lured by the promise of a cow and a goat, he was kidnapped. He spent a year in slave labour. With another boy, he escaped, hiding in a cave. ''I was not scared of snakes or lions or anything. I would rather something kill me than a human come and take me.'' Marial says he lost 28 relatives in the war, including 7 of 10 brothers. He was captured and his jaw broken with the butt of a rifle. Marial is a christian who fled Muslim persecution during the Sudanese civil war.

and then there is ...

Stephen Kiprotich has won Uganda’s first-ever medal in the Olympic marathon, taking the gold Sunday morning in London. Kiprotich, 23, crossed the line in 2:08:01, the third-fastest marathon time in the history of the Olympic Games. When he crossed the finish line, he dropped to his knees, blessed himself and kissed the ground.

Azerbaijan's Aliya Garayeva reacts after competing using the ribbon in the individual all-around rhythmic gymnastics final at Wembley Arena during the London 2012 Olympic Games August 11, 2012. Upon completing her gymnastic exercise, she also blessed herself. Around 95 percent of the population of Azerbaijan are Muslims.

It has been so heartwarming and encouraging to see so many of these athletes acknowledge their Creator for the gifts they have been given, and not the government.

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