UFC, Lessons for the Christian

Our next lesson to learn is fighting for the long haul. A man who trains for the 200 meter sprint will be in big trouble when he gets to the track and finds out that the race is actually a marathon.
In the same way a fighter needs to train for those ‘last’ minutes of the fight in mind. If he thinks that he is going to knock the other guy out in the first round so he doesn’t need to have stamina and endurance he very well could be in for a huge disappointment once the third, fourth and even fifth round comes around.

I have watched fights where the bigger man, and even stronger man lost the fight because he didn’t train for the long haul. Once he lost his wind, his fuel tanks hit empty, and all of his earlier strength suddenly disappeared. Now his earlier size advantage becomes a disadvantage. All of that extra mass is now only added weight he has to try to maneuver around the octagon, while running on fumes. In the end he gets knocked out or submitted because of lack of concentration, strength and the will to go on.

In the Christian’s fight he too needs to have long term goals in mind. Some Christians have withdrawn from the fight for bringing Christianity into the public realm because they have been taught that Jesus is coming back real soon. They think that the Lord is coming again in 2, 3, maybe 10 years so they set their minds on this short term goal. In essence they are making the same mistake as the runner who trains for the 200 meter when in reality the race is the marathon.

Jesus said that no one knows the time of His exact return. The Bible teaches that the nations will be brought to the Lord, that all of Christ’s enemies [except death] will be made His foot stool prior to His second coming [teaching us that it will be Christ working through His church to accomplish this goal]. At His second coming Jesus will call all men, and all will hear His voice and rise from the grave [general resurrection], putting an end to the last enemy, death.

If Christian’s are thinking that Jesus is coming soon and the end of history [as we know it now] is coming to an end in the next few years, then they will not be training for those last important rounds. It could be that Jesus doesn’t return for 80,000 years and that the church needs to begin to train and fight with these long term goals in mind.