Ever had someone hand it to you? I have, many times. One of my most memorable was in a sparring match in Indiana where I spent a couple years in an MMA gym. That day, Brian was my sparring partner, we were in the cage going a few rounds—he was preparing for an upcoming fight so we were fighting at about 80-90%. In my mind, things felt pretty even…I had put in a few good licks on him and taken the same back.
But come round three, he unleashed a fury of punches on my face and I made the cardinal fighting error—I dropped my hands. He hit me with a hard left hook to my exposed cheek and then a straight right to my nose. I remember the sound of my nose breaking, it felt like he completely flattened it out on my face! I was gushing everywhere when my trainer came into the ring, grabbed my nose and popped it back into place without saying a word. For three weeks, I looked like a racoon with my two black eyes. To this day, my nose is a bit crooked.
I remember telling my wife that I loved every bit of it, including my broken nose. That sounds like a stupid thing to say, but years later, I don’t really feel any different about it. I absolutely loved it. Why? Beat downs only happen in the ring and I want to be someone who steps into the ring.
I’m not advocating for fight club, not only because that would violate the first rule of fight club, but because fighting is so much broader than the physical domain. Paul’s summation of the Christian journey to his disciple Timothy leveraged cage match language: “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim 6:12). The battles we wage as spouses, parents, families, friends, and employees are just as real and sometimes more rigorous than a cage fight. The relational, emotional, and spiritual wounds from these bouts run deeper in my soul than any broken bone.
So, the old-fashioned fist fight is a prism through which to see faith. How so? What God says and what we see and feel often do not line up. God’s word says you are clean and forgiven, you see guilt and feel dirty. God’s word says you are chosen and accepted, you feel lonely and rejected. The fight of faith refuses to take what is seen and felt as fact and wrestles to hold onto what God says as the final word on reality. This doesn’t just happen; we have to fight for it.
The fight of faith is a war on our greatest enemies—Satan, sin, death, and hell. These eternal enemies threaten to unravel us and our only hope to conquer them lies outside ourselves in Jesus Christ. We battle to believe what Jesus has done for us; this is how we overcome (1 Jn 5:5, Rev 12:11). To put on the armor of God is to be clothed and hidden in the work of Christ (Eph 6:10-20, Is 59:16-17), it is to rest in his victory for us. The gospel is how we fight—we press into it, trust it, believe it, hope in it, return to it, cling to it, and strive to never let it go.
Any good fighter maintains a warrior mindset, values discipline, and is strategic about their skillset. When every night is fight night, we have to be ready to go. Here are five training tips for the fight of faith.
1. Condition, Condition, Condition- Fighting takes training, practice and rigor. Step into the ring with no conditioning, your downfall is certain. The fight of faith requires mastering the mechanics of hearing God’s Word, pressing his promises into our souls, and holding onto them with all our might (Rom 10:17, Heb 10:23, 1 Cor 15:2). Doing this intentionally, repeatedly, and strategically conditions us for the cage (1 Cor 9:26).
2. No Matter What, Keep Your Hands Up- One author said that “life is war, that’s not all it is, but it is always that.” The battle is always on for the Christian. A punch in the face is always just around the corner and the enemy’s “opportune time” (Lk 4:13) is the moment we put our hands down. Peter’s call to vigilance is a call to remember life is a cage match (1 Pet 5:8). The moment our hands come down is the moment we are getting dominated. Keep your hands up.
3. Get Up Again and Again and Again- You’re going to get your nose broken, take heart—it means you are in the fight! Paul pointed to the marks he bore for following Jesus as signs of his battle worn faith (Gal 6:17), it’s no different for you. When you get smoked, get back up, keep swinging, don’t lay down! Internalize Micah’s fighting spirit: “though I fall, I will rise” (Mic 7:8) and realize that it has nothing to do with how many times you get dropped, it’s all about how much you get back up (Prov 24:16). The grit of getting on your feet over and over again develops the muscles of faith, it engages the discipline of repentance, and it pushes us back to the gospel. Always get up, always.
4. Trust Your Corner Team- While it may appear that someone is in the cage alone, in reality there is an entire community surrounding them and a corner team coaching them. “Don’t drop your hands!” “Move, Move, Move!” “Go for the body!” Listen to their guidance and heed their instruction, they see things you don’t and they bring perspective that’s needed to weather every round. Further, they are there to pick you up, wipe your sweat and blood, heal up your wounds, and tell you to keep swinging (Eccl 4:9-10, Heb 3:12-14). Winning a fight is never a solo endeavor, trust your corner team.
5. Fight Like Hell- The stakes are high; we are fighting for our lives. The only way to fight hell is to fight like hell. Hell doesn’t quit, darkness never let ups, it’s ever-vigilant, always growing stronger, always getting more strategic…always coming. That’s how we have to fight—with rage like the evil one, perseverance like our sin, tenacity like our conscience, and unquenchable fire like hell. There’s too much on the line to enter the arena in any other way. Christ’s battle rigor won our salvation, ours is the fight to continue believing, trusting, and obeying him at any cost. My dear friends, fight like hell.