 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Unfiltered. Yeah. Pastor, a question was asked to me in regards to children or children being in sports. And it seems that recently that travel ball or travel sports has become a big thing within families and families at attend church. And the question was, is there a balance between our kids or kids being in sports that are on Sundays versus coming to church on Sundays or and or on Wednesdays? What's your thoughts about that? That's a good question. Obviously, we want our children to find recreation. If they have athletic ability or enjoy athletics, obviously we want them to participate and enjoy themselves. You played a lot of all yourself. You were on traveling teams. I played a lot of sports even up into the military. I played on our company baseball team or softball team. I played a lot of sports in the church. I see the value of it because it's not so much that it forms your character. It exposes it. So you have a lot of opportunity to see what you're really made up of and see what you're able to do physically as well as becoming aware of your values and sportsmanship and things of that nature. So on the one hand, I enjoy sports. I don't play it obviously anymore. My kids did and to some degree. So on the one hand, I see it as valuable because of the physical fitness and the various other things pertaining to that. On the other hand, not every child is going to become a professional soccer player or baseball player, basketball player or whatever. Not every child has the capacity to and we know that in a world that likes to give trophies to people for participating. The fact of the world is that not everybody gets a trophy for first place. You have to earn it. And so not every person who plays in a competitive sport will rise to start them. Not everyone is going to be the best ball player. Not everyone is going to be in college the best ball player and not everyone of those in college are going to end up in the professional leagues and all of that for whatever sport it may be. And so I think that we have to be very careful that we don't implant within our children in part to them a false sense of what is valuable. You see, we all get the same amount of time a week, 168 hours. All of us do. The world gets our children overwhelmingly more time than we're able to invest in them in terms of Bible studies and church attendance. It's just if you bring them on a Wednesday night, they're going to be with us for an hour and a half. You bring them on a Sunday, about the same. And so if you are neglecting devotions, if you're neglecting in service, if you're neglecting your walk, if you're not helping your children to see the value of serving the Lord and the value of being one who gives the value of serving people and all of that, they're not going to learn it from the world because the world will teach them everything you're trying not to teach them, if you will. The world will teach them values that you as a believer don't own. They will. You know, one of these days I'm going to have these cars, I'm going to have all these rings, I'm going to have this jewelry, I'm going to have all of these. No, that's not true. What you're doing is you're chasing after something that doesn't, it isn't going to fulfill, even if you obtained it. And that's what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes. He said, I had everything a man could imagine from money, from wine, women, buildings, you name it. He said, it's all vanity. So he said, the only thing that matters is to fear God, to know his commandments and obey him. That was a summation of all things in Ecclesiastes chapter 12. So I would say to parents, if you do not teach your children to love the Lord, the world will teach them not to. If you don't teach them the importance of the word of God, the world will teach you that the word is not important. If you don't teach them that fellowship in church with like-minded believers is important, the world will explain to them why it's not important. The world is after our kids, the games that they play on PlayStation or whatever, the movies that are made that are revisionist of even children's stories, Disney's real big on changing things. I'm telling you, if a parent doesn't become more aware that they're to train up the child, then they're going to actually forfeit the training of the child to a world that rejects God. And so how do I feel about sports? I think sports are great. I think they should be played when possible, but never to the point where I travel on a Sunday and think that by giving my kid a five-minute devotion before a game or pray with them at night, that that is going to impact his soul forever. That is taking a big chance with your child. They need the word, they need prayer, they need it modeled, faith modeled by their parents. They need to be around a believing community and they need to have the values that the word of God teaches. They need to learn sportsmanship when they lose. They need to learn all of those things. And that comes, I think, through a proper understanding of the standing in the Lord. Times have changed because I remember growing up, you never played sports on Sundays. No. It was always on Saturdays. And so it's another thing, another distraction that's vying for our children's time. I read this statistic, Pastor, and it said, .00098 will make any major league or professional ball in all of the population, but it's 100% that they'll stand before Jesus. Amen. And that's a statistic that I have actually in our house. And so I just wanted to get your feedback on that because you see more and more people pulling their children away to play sports on Sundays and it seems like it's a common thing and is there a balance to that? They need to get to church. The children's eternity is at stake. And if a parent doesn't value their walk with the Lord, the child never will. I was just speaking to somebody and I'll close with this briefly. I was just speaking with someone this morning who was telling me that they knew a fellow who had been lax in his walk with the Lord. And at one time his child had an interest in Jesus. But because this person was lax in their walk, the child no longer has a desire or hunger for the Lord, but is actually modeling himself after what he saw his father doing. And his father had walked away from the Lord for a while. He returned, but his son has it. And there was a guy I knew very well. One of the saddest things that I can remember his son ever telling me concerning his father is this. He said to me, I never want to be anything like my father. So think about that for a moment. So the fathers and mothers, we need to be in the Word of God. We need to pray with our kids. We need to bring them to fellowship. We need to encourage them in their walk. And we need to be strong ourselves, especially in these last days. Amen. Well, thank you, Pastor David. And thank you for sharing that with us. And we do want to invite you to our service, our Sunday morning service at 8.30 and 10.45. Great opportunity to bring our children, bring our loved ones, our families to hear God's Word, to be involved in worship. So we look forward to having you come out and join us. And thank you for joining us today. God bless you. We'll see you soon.