Super Bowl Sunday Prayer
This Super Bowl Sunday Prayer helps us enjoy the day of the US National Football League championship game with an eye on more than who wins or loses. It reminds us to embrace the best qualities of sportsmanship and endurance.
Super Bowl Sunday Prayer
Dear God, Today as we gather with family and friends to enjoy the NFL championship game,
May we recall the truths and qualities that make sports wholesome and good.
May the virtues of preparation, experience, teamwork and determination be on display
Not only on the field but within our lives.
Enable discernment, trust, good conduct and sportsmanship.
Establish grace in both winning and losing
And fill us with hope and anticipation for the new season yet to come.
Amen.
About this Super Bowl Sunday Prayer
I wrote this prayer because in the U.S. Super Bowl Sunday is an unofficial holiday. Like other holidays, family and friends often gather in their homes to watch the game. And one source says that Super Bowl Sunday is only second to Thanksgiving in the amount of special food consumed during the game!
Unfortunately, Super Bowl Sunday can also be connected with excessive alcohol drinking, gambling and bad behavior.
Sports were a part of life in Bible times and Paul in particular used sports analogies to urge us on to apply the same energy to our spiritual lives. Here are some examples:
Hebrews 12:1,2 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross…” (NIV)
I Corinthians 9:24-27, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the game goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I bet my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”
In this Scripture, the “crown that will not last” refers to the ancient Olympic winner’s wreath made of olive leaves from a “sacred” tree in Olympia that was placed on the athlete’s head. Paul is pointing out the superiority of an eternal achievement which is a life spent following Christ and doing his work here on earth.
The same holds true today. Each year, there’s another Super Bowl, often with a new and different winner. Use this as a reminder of spending our time and energies developing spiritual strengths with the same commitment and determination displayed on the football field.
Other articles of interest
What is Prayer? Five Dynamic Ways Prayer Moves Between God and Us
Copyright Karen Barber 2023. All rights reserved. 
