Growing up, I loved action movies. And growing up in the 80’s, there were only a handful of big names in action movies. Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis and Van Damme. Unlike Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Willis who used caveman like brute force to beat the bad guys, Jean-Claude Van Damme used style. He used real martial arts, not just guns, booby traps and catch phrases.
One of my favorite Van Damme movies was Blood Sport, supposedly based on the real life of Frank Dux being the first westerner to win the Kumite, which was (supposedly) a real life, no holds barred fight in Hong Kong where fighters could be crippled or killed by the brutality of the fighting. Dux (Van Damme) meets the films antagonist, Chong Li, who is the most brutal of all of the fighters in that year’s tournament. Chong Li eventually almost kills Dux’s new friend that he met earlier in the movie and Dux is out for revenge. Dux and Chong Li get to fight in the final match and it’s a heck of a fight. Dux wants to pulverize Chong Li, but at the end of the fight, he chooses instead to make him submit.
In the fighting world, it’s more honorable to be knocked out. The ref stopping the fight because of injuries is a little less manly. And tapping out is the most humiliating way to lose a fight. Forcing Chong Li to submit and tap out was the most humiliating way that Dux could have beat him.
If it’s so humiliating to “tap out” and submit, why does Jesus tell us that we need to submit ourselves and our hearts to Him?
“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because it’s foundation was on the rock.” (Matt. 7:24-25)
Here, Jesus is telling everyone that His teaching will lead them to the Father. Following Him and doing everything that He is trying to pass on to the crowds in attendance everywhere that He goes, THAT is how you show God that you love Him. Not just hearing the scriptures and being able to recite them. Not just publicly doing everything that the Law has taught, but having the law in your heart and knowing that the foundation of it was to love everyone, even the people you don’t care too much for. The foundation of His teaching was to see what the Law was truly trying to get at, the spirit of the law as we would say today. It was about following in His path, not following what society had perverted and twisted into the norm.
I had to ask myself a question this week. And I mean I really had to ask. It’s a simple question, but it brought up an answer that I hadn’t quite expected initially. Am I truly submitting myself, all of myself…body, mind, heart and soul…to Jesus? Of course I want to say yes, Lord, look at all that I have tried to do to grow closer to you and more like who you want me to be!!! But that just wasn’t really the truth.
As I thought about it, I pray for God to take my stress and provide for myself and my family. I ask God to heal me and make me healthy again. I tell Jesus “I’m giving this to you because I trust you.” I honestly put in the effort to surrender the negative things. I put as much energy as I can into trusting. I fight to keep my faith towards the front of my mind and actions. When the enemy comes whispering about how I’m going to fail because I’m not strong enough, I remind myself to whisper “I love your eggs” to take the sting out of his words and show him that I’m not scared because I have God on my side!
But really thinking about it, Jesus isn’t the first person I turn to when things start to go sour. When life is kicking me the groin, I’m trying to plan how I can get myself out of it. When the Spring never seems to come after a long winter, I looks for ways to try and force the season to change. I’m not truly submitting. I may be trying, but I still lean on myself and on my understanding.
I don’t think that this makes me be a “bad person” or a “bad Christian,” but rather it makes me an imperfect human who still has much to learn about faith and following Christ. I have a lot of trust issues with my faith. I trust that God will handle things for the first couple of days, but when life hasn’t smoothed over, when money hasn’t fallen into my lap and deadlines are getting close, when the pressure starts to really build, I fall back to trusting myself.
And really, I don’t know why. I’m the one that’s messed up most of the things in my life! God has been there to help see me through those consequences of my life choices. Each time that I’ve gone a different way than He would have me go, He’s there to help me keep things together and to steer me back towards the right path.
I don’t have things figured out, I can only see as far as my aging eyes can see. I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I don’t know why my path has lead me to where I am and I sure don’t know where that path will lead me in the years to come. Heck, I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night or that I have some chores to do around the house on my day off!
But God knows. He knows what tomorrow holds. He knows why my path has lead me to this very spot. He knows where my path is leading. He remembers that I had a mediterranean stew for dinner last night.
I would be crazy NOT to submit to Jesus. He’s literally the only guy who has ever lived who did so perfectly in the eyes of God, He lived a life with no sin! I can barely live a day without it, and I’m sure that if I really examined things, that it would be more like 10 minutes!
Jesus is King and as such, I need to submit to Him and surrender my heart. I need to reach out to Him for His compassion and love and trust that He is leading me, caring for me, and preparing me for something greater. There is no one who would be more perfect to surrender to than King Jesus.
This week, take some time to ask yourself “Am I submitting to Jesus?” Really focus on that thought and on where you need to ask Jesus to touch you to lead you to a place where you can truly submit to Him.
Journey Through Faith 