sport on TV then the last few weeks have been great. The football World Cup still has a few days left to go, we've had two weeks of Wimbledon, there has been the cricket between England and Australia. Just a few days ago the Tour de France started. And next year is the London Olympics.Of course there are those who hate having their regular TV schedules messed around with in order to accommodate '22 grown men kicking a bag of air around!' Maybe you're one of those people. (There are other channels).
If you'd lived in the first century in the world influenced by the Roman or Greek Empires then sport of a different nature would have been a big part of city life. Chariot racing, the Gladiators, the Olympics...all played a big role in life.
And last Sunday we looked at a few verses in the New Testament where the writers pulled out some of the similarities between what is required to be successful in sport and what is required to live the Christian life.
One example is 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. Just as the top athlete goes into strict training - watching what they eat, making sure they get enough sleep, following a carefully worked out training schedule etc - as a Christian I need to realise that growth and maturity will not just happen. There need to be disciplines (such as Bible reading, prayer, coming to church, learning Bible verses) that I need to be developing. This will not come naturally, it will require sacrifice and will at times seem like hard work.
An athlete makes these sacrifices for the hope of an Olympic gold medal. But for the Christian there is a much greater prize.
