"God answers my prayers everywhere except on the golf-course."
An Audience of One
Who are you trying to please? There are so many possibilities. Is it the coach, the crowd (if you are lucky enough to have one!), your boss, yourself? Of course it is right to want to please the boss, that is what you are employed to do.
Dirk Heinen has played football for several top German clubs, currently Stuttgart. He summed it up like this: "My motivation is to live my life in a way that pleased God. So when I play in a stadium and there are 80,000 spectators, I still think, there is actually only one that I would like to please. His name is Jesus". In ancient Babylon three Jewish boys were given a terrible choice - they had either to worship the king or be thrown alive into a great fire. This is what they said:
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. The Bible Daniel 3:16-18
Here was a situation where they knew that God was King and that he demanded obedience. They knew they must remain loyal to him however great the pressure to compromise. That loyalty and obedience involved doing both what God had said - remaining faithful to him, and not doing what God had told them not to - worshipping the image of God.
As we live for Christ in the world of sport, the challenge is the same. We are to live by God's standards of love, integrity, honesty. On the field we are to play with fairness, not trying to con the officials, not shouting "my ball" when we know it isn't, not pulling the opponent's shirt on the blind side of the officials. Off the field we will treat people with integrity and respect.
This story shows us how we, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, can refuse to compromise in the face of extreme pressure because we know that God is King.