Your Influence as an Athlete

As an eighth-grader and junior varsity player, I was invited to practice with the varsity girls’ basketball team at my high school. While I was grateful for the opportunity to elevate my game, I was fearful of making a mistake and not fitting in with the older girls. I had never considered how God had strategically placed me on this team, at this time, for a specific purpose.

I couldn’t help being the youngest one on the court, and I decided it would be my personal mission to boldly live out my influence as an athlete and ask God to help my words, actions and attitudes glorify Him.

Let’s dive deeper into how we can use our own words, actions and attitudes to glorify God as athletes.

Words

As we scroll through social media, stream live games or match up against hometown rivals, we unfortunately hear a lot of coaches and athletes saying things and speaking in tones that are not pleasing to the Lord. But what if we spoke words of encouragement to our teammates? Let’s look to be the example in what we say.

Actions

Making an impact as athletes goes far beyond what we say; we must follow through with our actions in the way we live. Everyone is watching during the game, but it’s often the seemingly unnoticeable things that matter the most to God. The little things we do have a big impact on our lives. Do we complete every rep and touch every line even when our coach’s back is turned?

Attitude

The reason we say and do things reveals a lot about the posture of our hearts. The greatest example of a loving attitude comes from God who loved us and gave us His Son (John 3:16). Because of His love for us, we have the opportunity to shine the light of His love in the sports world.

Live in such a way that you’ll have a teammate notice something different in your words, actions and attitudes. This will be your opportunity to live out your influence as an athlete and share the hope found in Jesus Christ.