You’re watching the Olympics and notice two athletes pray before their race. Only one wins. Did God answer one prayer but ignore the other?

Thousands of prayers will be offered this summer in Paris, but how should sportspeople pray?

A wealthy widow called Proba asked a similar question to one of the greatest theologians of the first millennium, Augustine. Like any good coach, Augustine responded with a few clear principles.

Pray humbly

Cleverly, Augustine’s first rule is not what to pray for, but who we are to be.

“Remember that you are desolate, however much you may abound in the good fortune of worldly wealth.”

In prayer, we don’t need to perform certain rituals or say things in a certain order. We don’t need to put on our ‘game face’ for God to answer our prayers.

We can pray to God only because of His grace and forgiveness. Unlike our coach, from whom we may want to hide our true emotions, we can and need to come before God with all our doubts, fears, and emptiness.

Prayer both requires and produces this humility.

Pray for happiness!

I imagine you assumed this blog would give you some guidance on how to pray, but I guess you didn’t expect that advice to be:

“Pray for happiness.”

But Augustine, again, like a good coach, doesn’t just tell us what to do; he makes us think. Here, he tells us if we have grasped his first principle, we have realised that all success and pleasures in this world only offer short-term happiness.

Sportspeople know this well.

Tom Brady, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, was interviewed during an undefeated season. He was dating a supermodel and making millions of dollars. Even then, he said:

"Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there’s something greater out there for me?"

The interviewer asked him, “What’s the answer?” Brady responded, “I wish I knew. I wish I knew."

Augustine knew. Psalm 27 is to be our prayer:

One thing have I desired of the Lord, one thing will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord to behold the beauty of the Lord.

We lack the ability to believe or know that we have all we need in Jesus so we need to pray that we would know this. This doesn’t mean we cannot pray for anything else other than to love God like this, but the more we are like the Psalmist, it will shape all our prayers for both us and others.

Pray as Jesus taught us

Jesus told us how to pray, so we should let the words of the Lord’s Prayer shape ours.

For example, Augustine writes:

“He who says in prayer… ‘Give me as much wealth as you have given to this or that man’ or ‘Increase my honours; make me eminent in power and fame in the world,’ and who asks merely from a desire for these things, and not in order through them to benefit men agreeably to God’s will, I do not think he will find any part of the Lord’s Prayer in connection with which he could fit in these requests. Therefore, let us be ashamed to ask these things.”

Next time you pray for something in your sport, consider whether it would fit within the shape of the Lord’s Prayer (to reflect more on this, you can go through our 8-day devotion here).

Pray always, even when sport sucks

Augustine says that even after following the first three rules, we still don’t know how to pray when it comes to difficulties.

When your ACL snaps weeks before competition or when you lose by 0.1 seconds in an Olympic final, how do you pray?

Look at Jesus in Gethsemane. Jesus prays for “the cup to pass”, and he also submits himself to God: “Not my will but yours be done.” In these situations of despair and failure, Augustine says, pour out your heart to God but remember His overarching wisdom and goodness as you do.

The whole purpose of life, the victories and defeats, is to teach us how to pray, because the purpose of life is that we would be with God.

Proba was a widow in her thirties and had to flee Rome when it was sacked in 410AD. She knew suffering, and yet Augustine concludes by pointing to how these tragedies can drive her to prayer and ultimately to finding all her joy not in earthly wealth or comfort but in God.

Augustine calls her to embrace her situation and let it teach her how to pray.

Will we accept his invitation too, and let our sporting lives, with their highs and inevitable lows, draw us to God in prayer?

Jonny Reid

Jonny is the Director of Engagement at Oak Hill College and also writes for Christians in Sport. He plays cricket at Cumnor Cricket Club and is one of the leaders of Town Church Bicester.

Make the most of this summer of sport with the Sports Mission Pack