If you put in the right prompt and images, AI can give you some pretty great cover art for your articles. I’m very proud of this one. But that’s not why you came.

You want to know if God plays favorites in sports outcomes. It’s an interesting concept. Does the all-knowing, omniscient God select who wins and who loses? Does he care about sports? After much thought and contemplation….Yes, he does. But probably not in the ways that you think.

Let me be clear, God caring about the actual box score at the end of games just for ending’s sake is not what I mean. What He cares about is us, humankind. He cares about our creativity, the things we create, our thought process, and ultimately, what we do with this ability to create and choose. It’s what makes us different than every created thing in the universe. For example, in the book of Genesis, after God created Adam, He let him name all the animals:

 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. (Genesis 2:19-20 ESV)

We are unique. It’s no wonder that when He began to create humankind, He said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Sports are a byproduct of that creativity. It allows us to express ourselves physically and emotionally. It offers us a chance to connect in real, meaningful ways. This is why we call sports the great equalizer. Everyone, no matter where you come from, can compete. But do the endings matter to God? Yes, but in a much deeper way.

I mentioned that God ultimately cares about what we do with our freedom of choice and creativity. Simply put, will we choose to honor Him in our successes as well as in our defeats? Ultimately, this question of whether the Creator of the universe is invested in a scoreboard is secondary to whether the athlete is invested in the Creator. If we believe, as most sports fans do, that sports are a microcosm of life, it makes every play, every process and every outcome an opportunity to honor Him. Therefore, the focus shifts from God’s intervention in the results to His presence in the process, challenging us to consider if our sports are a pursuit of personal glory or a reflection of a much larger, divine narrative. You can see how this can impact our real-life wins and losses as well.

A biblical example of this is a man named Job. Job had everything. Riches, family, servants. He had it all, and with everything, he chose to honor God daily, recognizing that all that he had came from God. But Job soon lost everything. His crops burned, his children died, and he became deathly ill. Job had done nothing wrong and could have blamed God. But Job does something peculiar, he said this:

“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21 ESV)

In the wreckage of his losses, Job didn’t just offer a prayer; he offered his heart, choosing to honor God when he had nothing left. Every athlete, every fan, and every person faces that same choice. When we stand at the 50-yard line of our own lives, do we credit ourselves for the success, or do we blame God for the misfortune? At the end of the day, the stadium lights will fade and the grass will wither. God cares about the outcome because He cares about the image-bearer in the jersey and in the stands. He isn't watching the score; He's watching the heart.