Archive for category: Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was emailing with a friend of mine recently and we were discussing the importance of keeping our families a priority in our lives, and one of my thoughts was that “Way too often the discipline we have as martial artists only keeps us training and at the dojo, instead of causing us to be more disciplined in the most important areas of life.” He said that would make a good blog – so here we go!

Martial Arts training is intended to do so much more than simply teach you to defend yourself, and sadly a lot of people miss the most important part. Like I was telling my classes a couple weeks ago, “We don’t want to train students to only be better fighters, we want to train them to be better people.” Through the rigors of training we learn all the disciplines like self-control, courtesy, respect and on and on, and those things are intended to help you live in such a way outside of class that hopefully you’ll never need to fight at all.

But as I emailed to my friend, way too often those most important parts of our martial arts stay in the dojo. And when that happens we, and those around us really miss out. Because when tough times come, and they do – we need so much more than just a good back stance to get us through. We need our families, our faith and all those disciplines.

And really, all those disciplines that we train so hard to develop should help us in every other area of our lives too. So for example, we should never be neglectful to our families, because we have the discipline and self control to manage our time wisely and make good choices that allow us the time to spend with them. At our jobs we should be the best employees on the payroll because our training instills in us the benefits of striving for excellence. We should be the most generous givers at church because God is always first in that important area and all those same disciplines help us manage our finances properly.

You get the idea – my point is that our training should help us with so much more than just the physical parts of martial arts. Those important personal disciplines should make us true champions at everything we do as we follow God’s leading and use our skills to be the very best we can be.

Do you remember the excitement of starting something new? We’ve been blessed here at Whole Armor Martial Arts to have some new students join our school the last couple of months, and what a blessing it is to see them get started. Nervous, intimidated, overwhelmed, maybe even a little scared but also totally and super excited!

If you’ve been with us for a while, do you remember how that felt? It’s really easy after you’ve been doing anything for a while to get pretty comfortable and lose that initial wonder and excitement of being a part something so completely new and seemingly amazing. Think about it – you have a new group of people to get know and train with, in a new place and surroundings, and a new uniform to wear too. There’s a bunch of new terms to learn, seemingly endless new techniques and movements to try and figure out and a completely different set of rules and etiquette to follow – kinda like going to Mars or something! But all really thrilling too!

Sad truth is that after you’ve been around for a while and you have a pretty good handle on all that stuff, it can seem to lose the wonder and fascination that you found at the start. Sound familiar?

Now has anything changed about the classes or the environment? No…. Has the uniform or the training changed? No….. so what happened? Well, we just get too comfortable and forget what got us all excited about it in the first place.

In the Bible that’s talked about as “Losing your first love”. And sadly it happens in faith too. Once we’ve been around for a while we get kinda comfortable with the lingo and the people and it becomes real easy to forget that amazing, wonder-filled experience that we had when Jesus first saved us.

And that’s why it’s so important to remember.

That’s one of the reasons we have our students keep a notebook and write down the things they learn at each class. It’s not only a valuable resource to help you remember all the techniques, tips and lessons that happen during your martial arts journey, but it also helps you to remember the way you felt as you learned them. In that sense, to remember your first love.

And that’s also why its so important to stay close to God in all the ways He’s provided for us. Reading His Word every day, plugging in to our local church for growth, fellowship and all the other things it provides, spending precious time in prayer, and – remembering. Recounting all the things that God has done for us so that we never forget how amazing and wonderful He truly is.

Maybe for you that’s your own “Faith notebook” where you write those things down. Or maybe it’s just spending time alone and un-distracted, recounting God’s blessings in your life. However you do it, my prayer is that none of us will ever forget His amazing grace, and the true joy of living with Him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s amazing all the hoops you have to jump through to keep a website going and make it “findable.” There’s Google of course, which somehow became the intergalactic ruler of the world wide web, so everything has to be geared so that it works best with their search engine stuff. Then there’s dozens of others search engines that you need to keep feeding and make happy too. And of course we can’t forget social media. Yikes, you could spend all day every day just trying to keep up with all the different sites and their various likes, posts or whatever everything is called. All to try and make your website “findable.” So that in our case when someone types in ”Martial Arts”, our school will be somewhere on that first page of results that pop up on their computer screen, phone, pad, tablet or whatever their device of choice. I spend hours working on this stuff, and it really makes me crazy sometimes, having to jump through everyone’s hoops in order to “market” our school. Too bad we just can’t teach Christian Martial Arts and call it good!

A lot of martial arts schools have hoops you need to jump through too. Of course every dojo including ours, has rules and etiquette as we have discussed in other blogs, but sometimes it goes beyond all that. Often there’s different equipment you need to buy at each new level, new uniforms with different colors to purchase as you progress, added programs and clubs to join that keep you paying more and more.

Aren’t you glad God doesn’t do any of that? He doesn’t require a green light on your SEO analysis. He doesn’t make you have enough photos in your text, or meet a bunch of criteria before you’ll show up on His page. There’s no new equipment or uniforms required, in fact He doesn’t ask you to buy anything ever!

Romans 6:23 says it best: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Notice it says the “Gift” of God is eternal life. If there’s one thing we all know (and love) about gifts, it’s that they’re FREE. If you want to have eternal life, you don’t need to do anything but receive it. No hoops to jump through, nothing.

Isn’t it funny that we all strive and stress over all kinds of things that don’t last and don’t amount to anything, and the very most important, lasting and marvelous thing we could ever want doesn’t require anything – except to say “Yes!”

Have you said “Yes” to Jesus? If not, it’s the most important thing you’ll ever do, and will change your life in amazing ways that you can’t even imagine. If you have, you know the joy of life as a Believer in Christ. If you haven’t, if you’re really honest with yourself you know that something’s missing. Well that something is a relationship with Jesus that starts the moment you say “Yes” and receive His gift of eternal life. Still have questions, not sure what to do? Ask away – we’d love to help.

But for me – time to get back to work on the website…..   🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few years ago a mom was talking to me about classes and while she really loved our Christian centered program, she wanted something closer and easier for her to get to – so she enrolled her son in another program that cost twice as much, was not Christ centered, but was 10 minutes closer. That lasted a few months and they quit – which was no surprise at all.

One of our new brown belts is also a Pastor at a church in Sandy Oregon. Sandy Oregon! You guessed it – that means that each week he drives almost an hour each way to train with us at Whole Armor Martial Arts! Wow…..

Do you see the difference in those two examples? One was only concerned with convenience and the other sacrifices for something more valuable. One didn’t last, and one is still growing and learning amazing things and I have no doubt will be one of our Black Belts one day.

Now don’t get me wrong – location and convenience can be very important considerations. But they’re not the only considerations either.

My wife has MS. It’s a nasty disease that really plays tricks with you from day to day. Sometimes she has real difficulties, but she always gives it her best. Especially when it comes to ministry, which for her is playing piano at church. She walks with some effort using a cane, or a walker on bad days, and sometimes it’s a real struggle just to make it to the car, let alone to church and then up on stage to play. But she makes what sometimes is a heroic effort, blesses a lot of folks with her talent, and I’m pretty sure God is real proud of her too. And she is always blessed immeasurably.

So when I hear people say that they were just too tired to get up to go to church, or just didn’t feel like coming to Karate class – I think of my wife and our brown belt from Sandy. And I remember that the greatest blessings often come as a result of our greatest efforts and sacrifice.

Matthew 7:13-14 tells us: “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

As Christian Martial Artists, lets be one of those few – willing to drive the extra miles, make the extra effort, or do whatever it takes to live lives that experience all the amazing things that God has in store for us!

Isn’t it a great feeling to earn your next rank?? Once you have that new belt in your hands and are walking back to your spot in line to put it on it seems like you’re on top of the world!

We’ve talked in other articles about the time and effort it takes to earn that new rank, but there’s another aspect of getting there that we often overlook. And that’s simply “trying”.

Sometimes students won’t get that next rank all because they just don’t go for it! Maybe they’re not very confident in that last kata, or they don’t feel like they’re ready. And ya know, that brings up another good point – “are you ready?” Many times across the years a student will decline to participate in Exams because they don’t think they are ready. That always strikes me as funny because in reality, how would “they” know? As students, their job is simply to train – our job as teachers is to determine when they are ready!

With that in mind I’ve often thought that we should throw the entire Exam process out the window and simply award new ranks when we see that a student has reached that next level. That would be great, but we would miss some of the important aspects of Exams. One is reading the written reports and getting to see how students are thinking about all this stuff, and another is the fear factor and seeing how students handle themselves under pressure.

All that said, a student will never get a new rank if they never try for it. It’s kinda like that slogan for the lottery that goes something like, “the odds of winning are a kajillion to one if you play, zero if you don’t!”

Many times I’ve awarded ranks to students who were not scheduled to test, but just showed up, did their best, and looked really good! (And I just love to see the shocked look on their face when their name is unexpectedly called!)

Colossians 3:23-24 tells us: “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” God obviously wants us to do our best for Him too, no matter what it is we’re doing!

So whether its in your Karate class, Exams, at school, on your job, whatever it is, always TRY, do your best and God will be pleased. And you just never know where that will lead!