It's a football game, or better stated, it's a gladiatorial demonstration of muscle and guts. The goal: one of the teams to walk off the field of combat in disgrace and defeat. Broken bones are always happening. Blood frequently flows. Curses fly. Men are often crippled for life either physically or emotionally.

Look at the sidelines. One man —I think called the coach—rants and raves, walking feverishly from one end to the other. The “nobody” man negotiating the coach's microphone cord is a clown act in himself. The coach shouts, demands, berates, and pats fannies.

But cast your eye to the concrete embankments which insure anyone attending has to pay to see the raw display of strength. How much? You pay as much as $50 for a hard piece of concrete designed especially for another piece of concrete, hardly for your “what you've got left” back there.

Before the fans, or should we say fanatics, enter the great embankment, they party around their cars. Police often look the other way as fans scarf down three or four cool ones to insure a joyful, inebriated mood for the game. I you didn't know, inebriation facilitates school spirit which, they say, help you to win.

The fanatics—filled with the spirits—yell to the top of their lungs for their team. They stand up and roar vulgarities to the opposing team. They get sick and throw up on the fanatics in front of them. Oh, it's a wonderful time!

They say the football game is what's best about America. Baloney! As the fourth quarter ticks on and your team is losing, guess what you and most others do? Leave. Since the boys of fall are not going to win, we might as well leave. That's loyalty! It happens, however, every weekend.

They make a mad dash to their cars and dare anyone to get in their way getting home. It's wonderful school spirit, isn't it?

Now! How dare someone write a newspaper article that subtly, if not out right, ridicules followers of Jesus Christ because some of us are excited about our faith! They want to pick on the revival movement across America. They want to cast suspicion and doubt on people getting caught up in the love and wonder of the Lord. They want to suggest that some of the stuff going on in our churches could be the work of the devil. Shame on them!

Spirit-filled faith does not produce football widows. It creates a new, powerful link between husband and wife. The revival across the land is simply sobering up the drunks often created by sports. The revival is drying up the thirst for drugs, doing that which various “step” programs failed to do. The Holy-Spirit powered revivals are healing people on Sunday morning, not maiming them on Saturday afternoon.

Bottom line: there' a God thing happening all around the world. It's bigger than all the football games. It's bigger than Brazilian soccer. It's bigger than English cricket. It's bigger than the Philips Arena sign. And it is he—God. He's happening in new, dynamic ways called revival. It's refreshing for us veteran church men and woman to see people standing in line for hours to get into a church, not a football game. Now put that in your bottle and drink it!

The Rev. Dr. John Hatcher is pastor of River's Edge Community Church in Fayetteville.

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