For almost 2 months now, I’ve been training in Mixed Martial Arts –specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai— at a local gym here in Atlanta. No; I’m not looking to become a professional cage fighter or anything (although if I were offered a chance to have one good real fight, I doubt I’d turn it down), but I’ve always liked martial arts and thought it’d be a fun way to work out.
It has been a learning experience to say the least. Not only have I learned more about the fighting styles themselves, but I’ve also learned some things about myself as well. I’ve learned that I can actually take a hit (we’re not sparring at 100% of course, but still). I’ve also experienced the whole “fight or flight” concept first hand. I’ve realized that despite my unaggressive nature, when pushed enough, I actually will fight back. The unwillingness to allow pain and weakness to get the best of me seems to kick in from somewhere whenever I’m sparring and I’m getting my butt kicked. I may not come out on top all the time, but I’ve realized that when the pressure is on, I won’t just curl up into a little ball and die.
What’s interesting, though, is that I’ve been able to make a lot of connections between what I’ve experienced in fighting and fighting the spiritual battle we all face as disciples. It all started when James 4:7 was read at Midweek a few weeks ago. The scripture talks about resisting the devil, and that if you do so, he will flee from you. I took a moment to think about what it meant to “resist” something or someone. At first, I thought about what resisting is not. I thought back to a sparring session I had in Muay Thai class one Thursday. I noticed a difference between when I would spar with guys who were obviously better than me as opposed to the guys who were only slightly better or evenly matched. When I sparred with a guy who was an instructor at the gym, I fought back just enough to not be a doormat to him, but I didn’t do much else. I would attack, but very tentatively. I imagine I was too afraid of getting hit. Whenever he would attack, I wouldn’t try to parry or dodge his attacks; I would just cover up and back off as quickly as possible to give myself room and time to regroup. However, when sparring with the guys who were more or less on my level, I felt alot more confident and actually went at them just as much as they did me. Even if they did get the best of me, I didn’t feel a sense of defeat when the match was over because I knew I gave them my best.
Bringing it back to the topic at hand, I realized that resisting is more like the latter example. The former example, in which I barely made a stand at all, was definitely not resisting. When you fight someone, you have to make your opponent fear –or respect, at the very least—your attacks. If I hit my opponent, but it has no force behind it, he has no reason to be concerned about any of my future attacks because I have shown him that I can’t hurt him; therefore, he’ll continue to come at me knowing that he can have his way with me. However, if I hit him and he feels it, he knows that he now has to be careful in how he attacks, because he is in just as much danger of being defeated. Resisting also means having an active defense. I can’t just turn my head and cover up the way that I did when I sparred w/ the instructor; I have to keep my eyes on him and watch for his attacks. I have to block, parry, and dodge his attacks; or even better, counter his attacks. The same instructor taught us to always strike back when attacked. These counter attacks may not always result in knockouts, but they send the message to your opponent that he cannot attack you without having to watch out for your own attack (this also scores points w/ the judges in a real match). Keeping with the whole “active defense” concept, if you watch any MMA fights, you’ll notice that if one fighter has the other on the ground and is attacking (what is referred to as “ground ‘n pound”), the referee will eventually stop the fight if the defender is doing nothing but covering up. In the referee’s eyes, the defender is not “intelligently defending himself” and is making no effort to fight back. He figures that the fighter is hurt so much that he cannot do anything else, and stops the fight in an effort to protect the fighter from being seriously hurt. With that said, when we are in our spiritual battle w/ Satan, we can’t just sit back and let him attack us. We have to have in mind that he will attack us, so we must take the fight to him. When we intelligently fight back with considerable effort, Satan will see that we are not an easy target and move on. We also have to be proactive in fighting him, preparing ourselves for the upcoming fight, just like an MMA fighter would prepare himself for a match.
When I think of resisting the devil so that he’ll flee, I’m also reminded of Matthew 4:1-2. This is when Jesus was tempted by Satan during his 40 days of fasting in the desert. It wasn’t until recently that I really sat and thought about that situation. I know how I feel when I’ve gone a whole day at work without eating anything. I feel fatigued and drained. Mind you, this isn’t after doing any physical work; this is only after sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours in a chair w/ a reclining back and in comfortable air conditioning. Imagine going forty whole days without eating, all while having to endure the intense heat of a desert. Keep in mind that Jesus endured all this as a human, refraining from using his supernatural powers as the Son of Man to sustain him. Satan decides to tempt Jesus here, believing that he is vulnerable in his hungry, weakened state.
This reminds me of another Thursday of Muay Thai training. We were doing an exercise in which we had to do 25 kicks quickly, back to back, on each leg. It would be one thing if this was a the beginning of class, but this was in the last 20 minutes or so, after we had already warmed up, done several sets of stomach crunches, push ups, jump squats, and various other exercises. Needless to say, we were all tired. Our instructor made a statement that really stood out to me: “When you’re tired, that’s when the fight begins.” This made sense on so many levels. When you’re well rested and full of energy; yes, you’re fighting in the sense that you’re performing the action of fighting, but you’re not fighting in the sense of having to push yourself past your limits. When you’re tired, fatigued, sore, out of breath and in pain, that’s when you’re really fighting. Not only are you fighting your opponent, but you’re fighting against yourself as well. You’re fighting against the temptation to give up, the temptation to give in to your own weakness. It’s not until then that you’re really putting your will and discipline to the test. It makes sense to me now that whenever we spar in class, the majority of the time it is towards the end of class when we’re already tired; to simulate what a real fight is going to be like. You have to get used to pushing yourself past your limits.
It’s the same when you’re in the spiritual fight. Satan is going to wait until the times where you’re tired and hungry, or had the worst day ever to try to hit you with something. You have to dig deep down, denying yourself and relying on God to help you fight him off. One interesting thing I noticed is that God doesn’t give us more than we can bear, but we often don’t realize in our own minds how much we really can endure until we’re pushed to do so. Just like I didn’t know how well I would stand up in a fight (a controlled, civil one anyway) until I put myself in one, we don’t know how much we can really handle spiritually until we decide we’re not going to give in to what Satan is throwing at us. God knows how much we can handle, but we won’t truly know until we decide to not give up as soon as things get difficult.
So yeah… All of this and a few other things came to me all at the same time; an epiphany of sorts. I think God allowed me to have the desire to go and do such a thing in order to teach me some things about myself. Now I just have to put it all into practice; in sparring (maybe in the cage one day) and on the spiritual battlefield as well. I hope that reading this will help you guys in your daily walks with God and fights with Satan. And thank you to everyone who read the whole thing; I know I can be long winded when I write ;-)
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