I recently had the dubious pleasure of a trip across the water to Old Trafford football ground to watch Manchester United play Everton. I was travelling with a United fan and a neutral but I, alas, am an Everton man.
Yes, Roger, the Sage-on-the-Hill and myself made use of someone else's season tickets and found ourselves in the largest stand of the largest club stadium in England, just us and 75, 297 others. Roger was wearing a lovely red number, the Sage was in pastel shades and I was proudly sporting a 1996 Everton home top, all was well. All was not well.
While sitting in our seats as the crowd started to filter in we were approached by a little jobsworth steward in a fluorescent jacket who pointed at my shirt and said, 'You can't wear that here.' I was flabbergasted. In this day and age, in a time where everyone sits during a match, in a time when prawn sandwiches and G&T have replaced pies and beer, in an enlightened era of cosmopolitan footballers and their A-list wag's, in this time a little ginger man can't sit alone with a different coloured shirt to the 75, 299 around him without fear of being beaten to a pulp if his team scores first! It's a disgrace I tells ya - a disgrace.
I put a jumper on. Problem solved.
As in football, so too in life. I am in enemy territory. This world belongs to the devil but I don't. I have a different coloured shirt on. The problem is that the world fears those in God's team but we must stand strong, we must declare our allegiance and suffer the consequences, we must be prepared for a battle.
Unfortunately we (Christians) have a tendency to, metaphorically speaking, put our jumpers on over our shirts. We still are on the Lord's side but we just don't shout about it. We still want our enemy beaten but just as long as we don't get a beating along the way.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes
Romans 1:16
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