Wrestling with God Submitting the Devil
Before I was saved, I definitely was living for the world. I was trying to make as much as I could so I could get as much stuff as I could. The more I got the more I wanted and but I never was truly satisfied. I spent a lot years living for me but with no real purpose or direction. Then things got out of control or at least out of my control. When I finally hit bottom and surrendered my life to Jesus is when my life took a whole new direction. When I started down the path that God wanted for my life, some things had to change God needed to work on some things in me. When he was doing this it was a process and sometimes I definitely fought against him. But I needed to go thru the struggle with God to make me strong enough to face the Devil because he was not going to be happy that I have turned against the path he had me on, and now I’m trying to do things God’s way the devil is going try to distract me to trip me up. So what I wanted to talk to you today about is, wrestling with God, submitting the Devil.
In my house my wife is completely out numbered. It is a very male filled household with a lot of boy stuff going on which grosses her out constantly. It’s also filled with a lot of testosterone so there is always a test of wills between all of the boys and a test of patience with us as parents to the boys. A few years ago our 12 year old Aiden wanted to do MMA because I watched it all the time. So after looking at all the different Martial arts that I could get him involved in I decided to enroll him in Jiu-Jitsu. For those of you that do not know what that is, it is a form of martial arts that involves the wrestling that takes place on the mat once a fight goes to the ground, it’s about controlling your opponent to inflict damage or preventing him from inflicting damage to you, hopefully leading to a submission. A submission is when you put your opponent it a hold or lock that makes them tap out due to the pain that your inflicting or you make them go to sleep due the choke that you have placed them in. After about a year of my son participating in this at 35 years old, I decided to get involved and participate myself and I lost a bunch of weight in doing so and also became somewhat obsessed in a healthy way with getting better and better at Jiu-Jitsu. Now why I’m talking about this and how I want to use what I have learned through this sport and apply it to our everyday life and the struggles that we face wrestling with God as believers and how we can overcome the Devil by submitting him.
I have 3 things that I want to cover with you today. I hope helps when you’re wrestling with God and trying to choke the devil out of your life. The first thing that I want to cover is;
1. Preparation –
In Jiu-Jitsu there are several tournaments that I get ready for throughout the year and when I start preparing for one of these I have to start changing a few things, that I don’t normally do to get ready to compete. The first thing that I have to do is change what I eat, if I am going to compete in the weight class that is optimum to my size then I need to cut a few pounds so I can maximize my strength in the class that I am competing in. Now I compete at 205 and I normally walk around at 215 or so. This doesn’t sound like a lot to cut but it is very hard for me, so I have to eat very clean to get there. No more white carbs like potato, white rice or flour based products. I also have to cut back on the amount that I eat no more large portions I have to eat several small meals a day to keep my metabolism up to have energy but still lose weight.
We need to change a few things in our lives to be properly prepared as Christians. The first big change that happened after I was saved was what I watched, what I listen to and what I read. I am not going to tell you what you watch is wrong and the music that you listen to is wrong and if you’re not reading your bible only, that you’re not saved or not a good Christian, that’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is what you spend the majority of you time putting into your body whether it’s your ears, eyes or mouth, it will affect you.
Matthew 6:33 says ‘But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well’
So I started listening to Christian music, now before I listened to a lot of music that was very good and from very talented people, but I found that the content of what it was saying was something that I no longer desired. I stopped watching a lot of TV programs that again I felt that they just no longer had anything to offer. Don’t get me wrong I love well-made TV shows and movies but I stopped watching a lot of stuff that just no longer was appealing to me. Now, reading I used to love to read when I was younger about your ages or most of you at least but then for some reason I stopped there was just too many things in this world that would get my attention and prevent me from taking the time to sit down with a book and just read. Now I read my bible as much as I can, I read other books as well but the main source of my reading is the bible because the more time I spend in it the more I learn and grow.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
What that means to me is the time I spend in the word is spending time with Jesus himself.
So we have to prepare ourselves first by what we consume or invite into our bodies.
2. Training –
When I am preparing for a tournament I have to increase the level of my training, I have to push my cardio, I have to build up my strength. The most important thing when it comes to my training though is consistency. I need to be at the gym every time we have Jiu-Jitsu class to practice my techniques over and over and over and over till they just become natural to how I move my body just reacts to things and situations because I have done the technique 1000 times. Bruce Lee once said
‘I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
So consistency is very important not only just showing up but doing it again and again until it just becomes natural to me.
Consistency is very important if we are going to stay on the path that God has set for us. If we are going to truly depend on God to be the provider in our lives in everything that we do we have to be consistent in our walk with him.
The first thing that I feel is important in being consistent is
1. Dependency- in order to be consistent we have to depend on god for all of our needs daily
Psalms 68:19 David says
Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
who daily bears our burdens.
He also said in Psalms 61:8
So I will sing praise to Your name forever, That I may daily perform my vows.
We should develop the same mindset that is talked about in
Isaiah 58:2 Yet they seek Me daily,
And delight to know My ways,
As a nation that did righteousness,
And did not forsake the ordinance of their God.
They ask of Me the ordinances of justice;
They take delight in approaching God.
Anything that we do DAILY is consistent and if we depend on God daily then we will train our hearts and our minds to lean into him when things get hard or just aren’t going our way. I have days in my training where I just don’t have it, I just feel like I’m not doing good enough, but the longer I train, the more consistent I am. Those days are fewer and when the do happen, I get through them a lot easier because I can rely on the techniques I have drilled over and over.
The second thing that I feel is very important when it comes to consistency is
2. Prayer - We think that if we pray over our food when we eat, and if we pray before we go to sleep and the prayer that we do in our church services, if we pray along with the preacher; is all the prayer we need. Let me tell you that if that’s all the prayer you are getting it’s not enough.
1 Thessalonians 5:17-18
17 Never stop praying. 18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
We need to pray constantly without ceasing like David, we need to daily perform our vows. We need to have a daily time and place to pray and then don’t allow anything to stop us from having a consistency in our prayer life. You pick the time of day, the place and the posture in prayer. Maybe it’s on the way to work every morning in your car, or on your way home in the evening. Maybe it’s in the wee hours of the morning or the late hours of the night, or at noon during your lunch-break. Whenever it is, it should be consistent and when it is consistent it will strengthen your spirit, it will become a part of you and the way you move, how you react to things and situations.
3. Submitting the Devil –
Now that we have properly prepared our lives and gotten consistent in our daily activities how do we submit the devil? In Jiu-Jitsu while preparing for the competitions and training that I go thru, once it is time for me to step on that mat and compete, I have to be confident that my preparation and training will kick in and that I will be able to go out there and perform. That my techniques that I have been drilling are on point so when I am facing my competitor I won’t get tired cause I trained myself to endure all that he has to throw at me. I know I won’t get tired because of the endurance I built up from the hours I put in the Gym for the all the sweat and blood I poured out getting ready. It’s just me verses him and I’m going to go out there and do all I can to win.
The key to submitting the Devil in our lives every day is being submitted to God in everything we do, submitting to the fact that Jesus poured out his blood so that we can stand in victory. If we submit our hearts and our minds to Jesus then we will win every time. It’s not easy the world is full of sin and distraction and stuff that we feel the need to possess, we work our entire lives for stuff that we cannot take with us. I know I did it I tried for 38 years to make myself happy with things of this world and none of it filled that void. I never knew what true happiness and peace and fulfillment was until I knew Jesus, not just knowing him but being submitted to him, he is my strength, my provider, my healer, I can talk to him when things get tough, he is there for me in my every need.
I want to leave you with this, what do you need to submit in your life? what do you need to choke out of your life? what do you need to make it tap and make it give in to God cause it’s got a hold of you and you have been wrestling with it for way to long. Start preparing mind, start training your heart, submit it all to God and he will give you victory.
Lets Pray
