Don't Play Soccer on Sundays

In Nehemiah 13 the Israelites were marrying pagan women and adopting their worship practices. So in Nehemiah 13: 24 God describes the problem this way... "As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah..."

God has commanded us this - "Remember the sabbath to keep it holy"...or don't trade the sabbath for a soccer game.

I disagree with the Seventh Day Adventist on the subject of the sabbath. I admire them in principle but disagree with them in particulars. Oh that we would honor the principle of the sabbath the way they honor the law of the sabbath.

Because we don't honor God enough to give him our attention for a day or at least a morning, we are teaching a pagan language to our children. They don't speak the language of Judah...the language of worship, the language of the church, the language of scripture.

Instead they speak the language of soccer, softball, water polo, and other club sports that flagrantly, unabashedly and shamelessly lay claim to Sunday morning.

When I was growing up no sport team dared to practice or play on Sunday morning....That belonged to God whether you believed in God or not; whether you were waking up early for church or waking up late from a hang over...Sunday was OPEN SPACE.

There is no OPEN SPACE in our lives anymore. No quiet time to pull up to the stop sign and just sit there for a couple of hours and let LIFE get quiet again. And because there is not this time, the language of Judah is becoming extinct.

Parents want their kids to grow up and love God and the church, but then they make gods of sports and activities and academics, then they wonder why their kids are growing up without an appetite for God or his church. Wake up and smell the spiritual coffee...kids learn what they SEE not what they HEAR!

We must stop marrying the pagan practices of the world and carve out a weekly time of modeling "God attention time" and then prioritize that in a way that our children learn again the language of Judah!