Basketball + The Kingdom Gospel = HIBA

By HA Media
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Updated: May 13, 2022

HOW SPORT AND FAITH FIT TOGETHER?

The ability to play sport is an aspect of God’s creation that can be enjoyed for his glory.

It is so important to emphasize this because many Christian sportspeople withdraw from sport due to misunderstood theology as well as the daily pressures of study, work, family and social commitments. If we are to serve the world of sport best it’s worth asking if Christians should stay in their sports clubs and be equipped to follow Christ in an environment where God has given them talents and where so many people who don’t know about Jesus Christ spend their time.

Being a disciple of Jesus means worshipping him in every single aspect of our lives, every minute of the day. For those who spend a significant amount of time training and playing, this raises the question how we work out our discipleship in sport.

We work particularly hard on this principle that we are “born to play” with sportspeople from their teens to early twenties in order to establish a life-long habit.

We will consider this by reflecting on how God made us in his own image (Genesis 1 and 2), then (Genesis 3) seeing how the human race spoilt God’s gifts of talent and community, before finally (Romans 12:1) considering how God started the process of fixing the mess we’d made in these areas of our lives.

Genesis 1-2: Born To Play

The Bible is clear that God made us “in his image” (Genesis 1:26-28) and this is explained further in Genesis 2:15 and 2:18. In the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15) Adam and Eve are instructed “to work (the garden) and take care of it”. God has put us in the world with the mandate to use the creative skills, the talents he has given us to make the world a great place to live.

Further (Genesis 2:18) Adam and Eve are told that relationships are a crucial part of life “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him”. Adam and Eve are to combine their talents to build community, as they look after God’s world.

If God gave you the talent to run, jump and shoot you use that to play basketball, He made you to do this in community, alongside others who share those skills to make his world a wonderful place. We could say that you were Born to Play.