Don't Drop Your Gloves

Just the smallest drop and you are left vulnerable, not ready for the opponents next move, not in the right stance for your own move...

I haven't been training long so it has been hard for me to make my muscles remember to make my gloves stay up in the proper stance. Immediately after you throw a jab, a punch, a hook, the arm must return to its original position, blocking your face. I keep them up I get in my stance but once I throw a few punches they are dropping. Luckily I have a coach straight ahead reminding me everytime I drop the gloves, and i was pretty much dropping them after almost every one or two...or three punches.

Now it wasn't that I was exhausted by keeping my gloves up... perhaps it is only that my muscles simply haven't learned to get back in position, so they end up hanging low. But I also wonder, why do I keep forgetting to return them? It is like in the excitement of every movement my brain cannot consciously make my arms do what I want them to do. Certainly in a fight this will not be a good thing. So as I work on that for boxing I can't help but wonder how I can work on that in life?

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the power of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)

How many times in the movements of life- daily tasks, relationships, goals, do we forget this very truth. Is it possible that even in the intention for living a holy life, the point is missed entirely once we are confronted with even the smallest of struggles. I think of how I want to bless my teenager with words of encouragement, but day after day after day the struggle of nothing seeming to motivate him, at that weakest moment of the gazilllionth lie, the baziliionth ignoring my instructions is the moment I drop my gloves. And that is the moment I lose patience and all the encouragement suddenly became about the end goal rather than the holy purpose encouragement is intended to serve.

Even this morning I woke up so tired! Tired enough to not want to do anything that I usually do in a day, I mean it-anything! Which is not possible when you have two kids and you are commited to your workout routine and you have a house call with the social worker and have to teach an art class in waianae. I had to get out of bed but my first thought was, I don't want to do this anymore.
Funny how just the day before I was being followed with a video camera for a part of a story that will be featured for a sermon...a day in the life hahaha a day in the life I don't want to be living just now- after all the shooting is done, I am not done and I wished I was. This thought too is the gloves dropping.

The reason all of this is so important to reflect on is because this is where we become most vulnerable to our opponent. The main opponent. The one who does not want us to reflect God's love, the one that wants us to create dissention, the one that wants us to become jealous and envious, the one that wants us to doubt ourselves, to give into temptation, to allow foolishness into our hearts, to depend on the man rather than on Jesus.

He knows he can't tap into our love for God but he also know when our gloves our down making it harder for us to fight for God's intention and stay in His Will.

Don't get me wrong, it is not about being perfect. No that is not at all what all of this is about. It is not our aim to be perfect in or for this world but rather to prepare ourselves for the perfection of God's Kingdom.

For me I realize that loving God does not make me any more holier than I was yesterday, that is not what will help me to grow spiritually. But to allow that growth to happen--- I believe that my job is to be on my toes ready for battle at ALL times with gloves up chin down :)