Why God invented the game: Five faith‑filled reasons sport matters to your family

If you’re reading this, I guess you are parenting a child who loves sport—possibly to the point of obsession. Maybe you love it too. Whether your weekends are spent on muddy sidelines or at early‑morning training sessions, you’re probably asking deeper questions about how all this sporting enthusiasm connects with your Christian faith.

So, let me start by asking: which of these three views on sport best describes you?

1. You feel a bit guilty about how much your child loves sport. It seems like a distraction—shouldn’t “proper Christians” be doing “proper Christian things”?

2. You see sport as useful—for fitness, teamwork, maybe even evangelism—but you’re uneasy about some of its darker sides: hyper‑competitiveness, the drama on the sidelines, the obsession with winning.

3. You think sport is great, full stop—but you’ve never really considered how it might connect with your faith.

In my experience, most Christian parents land in one of those three camps. But what if there’s another way?

In this short series, over the next few weeks, I want to offer a fourth approach—one that starts not with sport, but with God. We’ll take some of the ideas explored in the book I co‑authored, Spiritual Game Plan: Competing with Joy and Godliness, and ask: Why would God create something like sport in the first place?

As we explore that question, we’ll uncover a deeper, more joyful, and more purposeful way of thinking about sport—not just for our children but for ourselves.

Here are five reasons why God made sport.