Loving God as Much as the Super Bowl

I love football. I loved to play it. I love to read about it. I love to watch it. So when the Super Bowl came along years ago, I loved it. The first Super Bowl was played when I was a college freshman, January 15, 1967. I clearly remember this game between the AFL and the NFL league champions as they bashed one another for bragging rights. I watched the game on a 21-inch black and white television located in the lounge of the men’s dorm of Philadelphia College of Bible. The room was packed with guys sitting on discarded couches and chairs and munching cheeseburgers and fries from a “greasy spoon” called St. George’s. The food wasn’t great, but it was functional – the heart burn you got from the food could keep you awake all night so you could study. I remember little about that game, but I remember that it was a great evening!

From that humble beginning, the Super Bowl has morphed into a world all of its own. The game has become an unofficial national holiday gathering family and friends around all sorts and sizes of screens. Most years it is the most-watched television broadcast in the USA. Last year 106.5 million viewers made it the largest TV audience in history. People watch football teams play a game and half-watch a half-time show – often of dubious interest. They laugh at commercials funded by corporations that pay millions of dollars for fleeting seconds of opportunity, hoping to capture the nation’s attention and hawk their products.

Consumption of food has become a key ingredient to watching the game, becoming second in the USA only to Thanksgiving as the largest day for food consumption. The cost of the food, estimated at about $55 million, including among others things: 15,000 tons of chips, 4,000 tons of popcorn, and 8 million pounds of guacamole! It is no coincidence that the Monday after Super Bowl, 7-Eleven claims their sales of antacid increases 20 percent and there is a 6 percent increase of all working Americans who call in sick. I suppose you could say, “Americans love their Super Bowl… no matter what it costs them.”

What would happen if people loved God as much as they loved the Super Bowl? First, people would give a lot of attention to God. He would not be a casual interest. He would be a compelling reason to adjust schedules and make sure that nothing would interrupt time with Him. People would hardly be able to wait for Super Sunday to get to church to focus upon God. Each day there would be discussions about God’s strategies and daily opportunities would be taken to read the Bible and to learn about how God operates.

If people loved God like the Super Bowl, then they would gather family and friends together to focus upon God. There would be no fear that someone might not be interested in God. In fact, the love they had for God would have them thinking it would only be natural that their associates would want to love God too. Invitations to encounter God would be so natural that people who loved God would look at their invitation as a reasonable act of friendship, not an invasion into a person’s private world. There would be lots of enthusiasm and little embarrassment.

Loving God like people love the Super Bowl would bring joy into the lives of those who loved God. Being with God would be seen as a wonderful time of celebration, not a mere obligation or something to be tolerated and endured. They would think of all the victories God had won and reflect on the exciting prospect of what God was going to do. Cheers of praise would flow out of their lips. Being in God’s presence is where they wanted to be, and they rejoiced that they had the opportunity to do so. After all, God the Son is the champion over sin and death! He has already won the game over our soul’s opponent, Satan.

If one loved God like they do the Super Bowl, one would not think about the cost and fret about the sacrifice of being with God. You would just be glad to be able to be there and experience Him. After all, you would think, “Isn’t He worth it?”

Loving God is more important than the Super Bowl. The 45th Super Bowl will be over in a few days and few will even remember much about the game. On the other hand, God and His love for you will last for forever and it impacts your eternal soul. Why not love God more than the Super Bowl?