Scroll through any Christian athlete’s social media and you’ll likely see #AO1. Whether playing in front of 5 or 50,000, Christian athletes have been encouraged for decades to play for an “Audience of One.” The phrase began with Athletes in Action. A recent article quotes them when it explains the phrase is intended “to help Christian players remember that everywhere in life—even in a stadium full of people—‘we live and move and have our being in Him,’ so ‘it’s His pleasure we should pursue above all else.’”

Learning to play sports for God’s glory, for an “Audience of One,” was revolutionary for me in my young faith. I was 17 years old when, at a summer camp, the Christians in Sport leaders helped me connect my love of sports with my faith. I’d never before considered what my discipleship could look like on the field or in the locker room. Ever since, I’ve used the phrase like a mantra to center my athletic training and performance on God.

But there’s a problem: This practice is only helpful if we understand who the One we train and compete before is.

Is God a Fickle Fan?

Fans are odd creatures—fiercely loyal and incredibly fickle at the same time. Players feel and fear this volatile love. Manchester United star Eric Cantona once said, “I’m so proud the fans still sing my name, but I fear tomorrow they will stop.”

Learning to play sports for God’s glory, for an ‘Audience of One,’ was revolutionary for me in my young faith.

Fans are also distant. They sit in the stands behind the barriers. They think they know the players, but they only see the athletes’ performance once a week on the field. Do we think of God the same way? If we do, we’ll live as though a good performance once per week in church is what counts, even if the rest of our lives are half-hearted and compromised.

Is God a Hard-to-Please Coach?

From a young age, athletes are asked to perform to impress authority figures. Coaches decide your fate as you progress from high school to college and even in professional sports. Every metric is measured, every performance judged. It’s easy to think of God merely as another authority figure who rates our performance and rewards or cuts us accordingly.

Ashley Null, an academic and a sports chaplain who has discipled elite athletes over six Olympic Games, points out a danger Christian athletes face when they think of God this way: “[Audience of One] is so helpful in getting athletes to stop thinking about using sport to earn the approval of parents, coaches, fans, countries and even of themselves. However, it still suggests that athletes are doing something for God instead of with him.”

If God is merely a coach, you have no security. Your worth is in what you’ve won. World-record-holding 400-meter hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone narrated a story common for athletes: “If I won, that was my worth, my value.”

Is God a Demanding Dad?

Pressured by his dad, Andre Agassi achieved tennis greatness, but he never found happiness in tennis—and, sadly, he never felt love from his father. “I’m seven years old, talking to myself. [It would feel great] to never play tennis again,” Agassi writes. “But I can’t. . . . My father [would] chase me around the house with my racket. . . . Nothing sends my father into a rage like hitting a ball into the net. . . . He foams at the mouth.”

What would the 7-year-old, or even 17-year-old, Agassi have understood if he’d heard a Christian tell him “God is your Father”? Surely he’d have imagined a looming, frowning, cosmic presence: Run faster. Work harder. You’ve let me down. What are you doing!

God Is Your Loving Father

A 2012 interview with Olympic swimmer Chad le Clos’s father went viral when he yelled delightedly into the camera about his “beautiful” boy. His words came after Le Clos won a gold medal, but they should remind us of the words heard from heaven at Jesus’s baptism: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Christian athlete, because you’re in Christ, you’re beloved, win or lose.

If God is merely a coach, you have no security. Your worth is in what you’ve won.

God isn’t a fickle fan, distant and brittle in his love. God isn’t a hard-to-please coach, cutting us if we don’t perform. God isn’t a demanding dad, frowning at our inadequacies and shouting at us to try harder. No, our Audience of One is our loving Father. The good news of the gospel is that the Father loved us enough to send his Son to die for our sins. Jesus didn’t stay up there “in the stands” but came down to dwell among us, and now he comes to live within us by his Spirit. This makes every part of life, including sports, a means by which we can encounter God, worship God, and please him.

The triune God needs nothing from us. He didn’t create us because he was deficient but out of an overflow of his love. He saved us not because of our performance but because of his grace. He walks with us not to berate us but to guide and strengthen us. Christian athletes may know all this, but we only find freedom as we learn to live these truths in the locker room, on the field, and after the game.

As long as we think of God as fickle, hard-to-please, and demanding, sports will hinder our ability to build a solid Christian identity. We’ll always be striving, and we’ll always be insecure. Our successes will go to our heads, and our failures will crush our hearts. Thankfully, our identity as God’s children is received, not achieved. This is wonderfully good news for everyone, but for the athlete living in a performative sporting world, it’s essential.