Description
THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER
Week 1
Bil Cornelius
We’re starting a brand new series today, and this whole series is built around MMA Fighting, which stands for Mixed Marshall Arts Fighting. And if you’ve ever watched any of this stuff, you would know, especially the guys in here would understand it’s pretty addictive to start watching. So this kind of fighting, you know this MMA type fighting, whether it’s a UFC league, or whether it’s WEC, which is a World Extreme Cage Fighting, or whether, you know TapouT; there are so many different leagues and there are a lot of minor leagues as well. It’s become very, very popular. A number of years ago, my wife came home and she caught me watching these shows. She’d walked in and you’d of thought I was watching something else. She’s like what are you watching? I was like nothing, I wasn’t watching anything. She’s like what were you watching. I was like, guys fighting each other. She’s like you’re kidding me, you’re into that? I was like, I can’t stop watching. And now they’ve got _____, I record all of them. So I record all these shows and it’s just, I’m so addicted to this. And I feel bad cause I’m a pastor, you know pastors aren’t supposed to be into this, right you know? So I’m, I’m looking for some kind of pastor UFC anonymous that I can go to, some kind of course you know: Hi, my names Bil, and I preach God’s word, and I also like to watch guys you know, beat up on other guys. I don’t know. And it’s amazing to watch, and then they go from wrestling, to boxing, to a combination of all the things in between. It is incredible to watch this kind of fighting going on. Now I thought about that, I thought you know there’s a lot of scripture in the Bible that has violence in it. There are a lot of verses that have conflicts in fighting, and I don’t believe God put scripture in there, because he just needs some gratuitous violence in his book. I don’t think that’s what that’s about. God wasn’t just trying to get a _____ rating on his book. It’s in there because he knew you and I would be in a fight one day. He knew you and I would have to know how to spiritually fight. See I believe every physical fight is really a manifestation of a spiritual issue anyways. When people will say to me about wars: oh this war is really just a holy war, it’s about religion. Yeah, all wars are holy wars. All wars stem from a spiritual problem. In the same way, if you’re in that middle of a conflict right now, there’s a spiritual fight going on in the realm that you can’t see. That, that’s what we want to talk about in this series, is how to learn to fight. Join me if you would in looking at some scripture. We’re going to start off with Ephesians chapter 6 verse 12, which is our, our key component of the entire series is built around this scripture. It says: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” But see we forget that we’re in a fight.
Maybe you’ve taken some hits lately, maybe you’re going through some difficulties and you’re trying to figure out what’s going on, what’s wrong, why is it, the moment I start serving God, bam, all these bad things happen to me. Why is it that the moment I start to honor God, my marriage falls apart, things fall apart in my career, things start going bad financially, everything seems to crumble the moment I try to get serious about following God, it seems like things don’t get better, they get worse. But you see the funny thing about that to me is that would be the equivalent of someone stepping into the cage. And here they are, they’re in the middle of this cage, and while they’re here, they get hit by an opponent. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous for that person in the middle of the octagon, to take a hit and then jump off and look at the referee and go, he hit me. (Laughter) You would think yeah, you’re in an octagon; you’re in a cage, that’s going to happen. See we forget that according to God’s word, when we begin to follow the Lord, we entered into a battle. We forget that the reason why the pressures on and things seem to crumble at times; is because your taking spiritual hits. And so rather than playing victim, let’s just recognize that God’s called us to become ultimate fighters; so welcome to your fighting lesson, welcome to ultimate fighter. (Crowd noise and applause) As we take a look, as we take a look at some scripture, my prayers are that you will discover that God does not want us to play victim, he wants us to step up and learn what it is to fight and to fight spiritually. Because I’ve got news for you, according to scripture, there is an enemy out to hurt you, out to get you. Could it be Satan? Yes, it could be. (Laughter) There is a spiritual enemy trying to hurt you. The Bible actually says that Satan came to steal, to kill and to destroy. And so he wants to hurt you and Satan doesn’t fight fair. In fact his favorite kind of fighting is to make your life seem unfair. That’s one of his best techniques he has, is to make you think that your life is just worse than everyone else’s. He wants you to feel like you got the raw end of the deal, you got the bad end of the stick, he wants to make sure you feel that way in your life, so you’ll play victim. Cause the only reason you’re playing victim, cause you haven’t recognized that you’re in a ring, that you’re in a cage, and that you are now an ultimate fighter. And the next time something goes wrong in your life, instead of saying: oh poor me, say get up and recognize it’s time to ground and pound. It’s time to realize that I am in a battle for my very soul, for my walk with the Lord, to honor God; we are fighting for our lives, we are fighting for our families, we are fighting in a battle, a spiritual realm that we don’t even see, but it does exist. As Bishop TD Jakes said, next time you go to the next level, you get introduced to the next devil. (Laughter) I can’t say it as good as he does, but it’s true, isn’t it? At the end of the day, whenever you begin to get attacked in the spiritual realm, that’s an obvious sign that the enemy is intimidated, and threatened by the fact that you’re honoring God now, and he doesn’t want to watch that happen.
See the fighters that have the X on their back, are the ones that have already beat some chomps, and now they’re ready to take some champs on. And so whenever you seem, whenever it seems like your battles intensify, that’s a sign you’re doing the right thing, not the wrong thing. That’s sign you’re becoming a champion. And so if you are in a battle right now, just learn to fight, just recognize the opportunity you have to become a champion and that’s what this series is all about, is how you can become the ultimate fighter, how you can become a champion in your life. And so let’s study that, let’s learn the first of these moves I call ground and pound. It’s one of the number one moves that is used in UFC, or in WEC, or any of the MMA Fighting. One of the number one moves in Mixed Martial Arts is ground and pound. I’m going to demonstrate it in just few moments with a fighter, but before we get to that, let’s look at some scripture for our first point in learning how to ground and pound. So here’s the deal; either you’re going to ground and pound someone, or they’re going to ground and pound you. You got a realize that the enemy is trying to hurt you, and either he’s going to be pounding on you, or you’re going to pound on him, but there’s really no in between. And because of that, we got to learn what we can do to take, to take our opponent on and recognize where our fight is. And so look at Proverbs 23 verse 23, this is the Living Bible. It says: “Get the facts at any price.” Very simple scripture. It says you need to get the facts. The first thing you have to do is recognize the fight you’re in and where you are. See one of the things that, that I’ve noticed about a lot of fighters that do ground and pound on another person, is that many times they’re the ones underneath, and they have to first do an escape, they have to get out from underneath the person ground and pounding them, before they can get on top of them, and ground and pound them. And so now in a few weeks, we’re going to be talking about escapes. We’re going to be looking at how to escape temptation and have an escape in your life whenever you’re getting trapped, how to get out from under the trap. Before getting into that, let’s just talk about going on the offense and being into the ground and pound. But the first step with ground and pound is to recognize where you are, is to get the facts. How’s it going, what’s going on in your life, what is it that’s punching you down, what is it that’s ground and pounding on you? You have to admit the truth on yourself. And so you’ve got a get the facts. What is it in the last few years that this world’s just been beating you down? What is it that you can’t take control of? What do you feel like has got you discouraged? What do you feel like is putting a beat down on you? You’ve got a get the facts, and get the facts at any price. Proverbs 13:12 says this, it says: “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is the tree of life. I love this scripture. Hope deferred does make the heart sick. “
Maybe you were married for a number of years now, and maybe if you’re the husband; every time you make an advance on your wife, but she continually refuses you night, after night, after night. Eventually your heart becomes sickened towards her, you just getting frustrated. Or maybe as the wife, you’re frustrated because he used to be so romantic, and caring, and nice, and now he’s become rude and short with you, and this and that. And you just putting hope, oh maybe it’ll be different tonight. Maybe it’ll be different this week. Maybe it’ll be different next month, next year, and night, after night, after night; eventually I see couples that literally looking at each other, just seeing their spouse makes them sick in their gut. Just the appearance, even looking at each other makes them sick. That doesn’t happen overnight. That happens when hope keeps getting deferred: not tonight again, not tonight again, not tonight again. You know there’s no romance, he just doesn’t care for me, he’s just not nice anymore. And just night, after night, after night of being disappointed, it makes your heart sick. Maybe you’re in a work environment and you keep looking for this promotion. And it seems like every time another round of promotions comes up; everyone around you gets, gets the promotion, everyone around you gets the raise, but you’re not getting it. And eventually after 3 or 4 times, where people keep getting the job, position that you want; it eventually makes you sick and you think I don’t even want to work here anymore. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. What is it for you? Maybe you’re just tired of looking at your debt. Every time the credit card bill comes in, the creditors call, it just sickens you and you literally can’t stand the sight of money. To think about investing is a joke to you. You think: are you kidding me, investments, I don’t even want to think about money, I want nothing to do with money, because all it does is make me sick. It’s created more problems in my life than it’s helped me. What is it that’s making you sick? Get the facts. You got to know what’s really going on. You got a take a hard look at your life and really examine it. Maybe for you, really sickness is the problem. Maybe you’re so unhealthy, you’ve become so unhealthy in your eating patterns and a sedentary lifestyle that you just lay around, and then you feel so depressed because you look bad and feel bad, so you go eat some more; and it’s become a cycle until you literally eat yourself sick and you feel sick all the time. And you’ve got aches and pains, and literally hope deferred; the hope, the dream, the thought of being healthy, of running again, of being active, of being in shape again. It literally just makes you sick; you’re so far from it. What is it for you? See ground and pound is about recognizing where you are, and then going on the attack. First thing I want to tell you, number one: is to get out from under your attacker and realize you’re in a cage. To recognize the battle for your health, for your attitude, for your faith, for your finances, for your future, for your relationships, for your marriage, the battle for your children; we’ve got to go on the attack and recognize what’s going on and realize there’s a spiritual battle going on here.
And until you recognize it, you’re going to continue to play the victim. So we have to recognize the spiritual attack that’s going on all around us. Look at Luke chapter 19 verse 17, God says this, he’s speaking to one of his servants, cause he gave the master, this is a parable that Jesus used is the master gave his servant some money. “And he said now go invest this money, do something with it and multiply it.” So that’s what they did, and the one servant that, that invested well and multiplied it, God said this to him, he said: “well done my good servant, his master replied. Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities. He said because you’ve taken charge in a small amount, I’ll let you take charge of more.” It’s funny how God works that when you do well, God gives you more; when you do worse, he takes it away. It’s the exact opposite of our welfare system. Cause you know when someone does really bad, we give them stuff, and someone does really well, we take stuff away, the exact opposite. God says go out, invest like that; if you do well with what you have, I’ll give you more. If you do worse with it, I’ll even take that away to get your attention. And so he’s teaching us here to take charge of our finances, but really, I want to broaden this, to take charge of your life. To whatever God’s given you, you got a take charge of that and do well with it. Proverbs 21:5 says: “Plan carefully and you will have plenty. If you act too quickly, you will never have enough.” Plan carefully is the key part of this verse. When was the last time you made a plan to succeed? So many times, we make plans on the defense. Ground and pound is not about defense, it’s about offense, it’s about making plans to go on the attack. Ecclesiastes 5:7 in the Living Bible says: “Dreaming instead of doing is foolishness.” This doesn’t say dreaming is foolishness, it says dreaming without doing anything behind that dream. In other words are you acting on it, are you making action plans to fulfill those dreams that you have? I want to challenge you, number two: to go on the offense. This is where you begin to make plans, you begin to plan ahead. We should be able to look at what you’re doing today, and know where you, where you will be tomorrow. Well you say well I didn’t do anything today. Well then that’s where you’ll be tomorrow. You’ll be nowhere ahead. I should be able to look at your plans, and know where you are going. What kind of plans are you making? Do you have plans? Are they concrete, are they, are they, are they nailed down or do you have classified plans? You know what classified plans are? It means they’re classified; I’m the only one that knows about them. (Crowd noise) And you’re the only one that every will, because you’re not going to do anything on it. When are you going to declare your plans? When are you going to tell people this is what I’m doing, this is my action plan? When you going to calendar, when you going to put it on the calendar and say this is where I am headed. You got a make clear plans, lay them out clearly. And know this, you’re in a fight; it’s going to be bloody. The fighter, _____ _____, one time said: blood is just red sweat. You see when you realize you’re in a fight; from a spiritual standpoint, there will be some bloodshed. Even Jesus, the only way he could give his life for us is to have his bloodshed for us. And so great victories are won when blood is shed. I’ve just, I want to encourage you to know that you got to learn to fight. I’m not just talking about the guys in here; I’m talking about the ladies too. Every one of us has a fighter within us. These ladies say oh, I’m not a fighter. Yeah, let me just watch someone mess with your kids, (Laughter) we’ll see who’s suddenly a fighter. See, you fight for what you care about. One of the ways you know you really care about something is that you fight for it. And so I just want to encourage you, what is it that you’re facing right now, that it’s time to quit laying down and just letting, you’re letting yourself get pounded, and get up and fight. It’s time to go to the cage. Let’s learn to fight. I want to invite now a world class fighter to join me on stage. Come on out. Pray for me, this guy can really do some damage to me, so just be praying it all goes well, my son, Mason, okay. (Laughter) (Applause) You ready? Alright, come on out. We’re going to show you some fighting moves. This is my 11 year old son, Mason, and he’s a spitting image of his dad, which means the poor kids not going to have any dates. That’s okay, just kidding. Alright, here we go. You ready?
>> Okay, obey my instructions at all times. No hitting below the belt.
>> That’s important, very important.
>> No head butting. Pastor Bil, don’t hit the kid.
>> Don’t hit the kid, alright, I got it, alright here we go. Alright, so here we go. So the way they’ve normally, we’d start off in a UFC Fight, or a WEC or TapouT, whatever you’re watching, okay. Is they come in the middle of the ring, right, and they touch gloves. Okay, you got your bounce on, come on give me your bounce now. Get your bounce going, alright there, alright. And so they, they would come at each other, okay. And as they come at you, give me a UFC kick man; give me one of those kicks. Alright, there you go. See it’s one of the low kicks for the knees, right? Got a get that, okay. And so then they start punching each other, okay. So as they’re going at each other, while they’re doing this; at some point one of the fighters gets the advantage by hitting him just hard enough to knock him back. The moment they knock him back, if you watch this you know this. As soon as they knock him back, when they start to fall back, they immediately pound on; they jump on him as they fall to the ground. And at this point, you got ground and pound, you’re going to try to defend me right, you got to defend my hits, and so this we’re trying to do. Now ultimately what you want to do with ground and pound, this is so much fun. This is for all those times you didn’t clean your room buddy, all those times, alright? (Laughter) No, I’m kidding.
So as, as you’re trying to block it, eventually what you want to do if, if you’re the guy on the top; ground and pound, you want to try to hole at least one of their arms back, cause it makes it easier to hit him. Ultimately and of course, you know this rarely happens cause it’d be pretty bad if I really did this, but ultimately what they want to do is pin both their arms down, and they could literally just within a few hits, take them out. Now obviously, that’d be a pretty bad fighter if they just let their arms get pinned, okay. And so it’s very rare, but you do see it occasionally. When that happens, one or two hits, boom, boom, it’s over and lights out. They, they knock him out, okay. You guys give Mason a hand, he’s doing good huh? (Applause) Alright, want to move it back here. Alright, so another part, go ahead and lay it back down. Now the other part of the ground and pound you’ll see a lot of fighters do, is that when they take them down, they often times try to take them down into a corner. And the reason you want to do this, this is a great technique, because if you can do this, even if you got hands flailing at ya, he can’t move his head. And so it traps him, and so again, I want to try and tie his arms down, but even it I can’t, he is so isolated, now he can’t go anywhere. And the best way as a fighter to overcome whatever you’re facing is to isolate it. See if we just talk about, oh I just have a bad marriage. That’s too general, what’s going on in your marriage; isolate the problem. This, this, and this behavior is, are what’s giving you the fights. Remove those behaviors and you just fixed your marriage. Does that make sense? So we’ve got to isolate the problem, and when you got it pinned down, then it’s just a matter of knocking out the problem directly. Mason, thanks bro, you did good. You guys give him a hand. (Applause) Good job buddy, love ya man, appreciate it. I want to encourage you; when it comes to fighting spiritually, you’ve got to learn to isolate the problem. You go on the offensive, you plan ahead, you plan out your future, and you plan out where you’re going. And at that point, it’s just a matter of knocking it out. Psalms 3 verses 7 through 8, it’s a great scripture. Check this one out. It says: “Arise O Lord, deliver me O my God.” And then look what, look what David says here in this next scripture. He says: “strike all my enemies on the jaw.” This is, this is a psalms, this, this is a song of praise to God, strike all my enemies on the jaw. Punch them out for me God. That’s a praise song? I don’t really sing that one in church a lot. Pop them in the mouth? I mean that’s kind of a crazy praise song, right? David was a worshipper, but he was also a warrior. And I believe the reason why God allowed one of the greatest warriors in the entire Bible to also be one of the greatest worshipper, is because worshipping God is war. It is a violent attack on the kingdoms of this world, because when you worship God, you usher in the kingdom of heaven. There are some situations that are so bad in your life, the only way out of them, you’re going to have to worship your way out. You’re going to have to choose to become a worshipper right where you are. David said this: “Arise O Lord, deliver me, O my God. Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.” Ouch, that would hurt wouldn’t it? Broken teeth. From the Lord comes deliverance, may your blessings be on your people. And the reason I want to point this out is because here David is singing, he’s a warrior, but he sings to God, but he’s singing about his problem. He is using his problem as an opportunity to worship. He’s worshipping God through his difficulty. See, real worship is not the absence of problems. Oh Lord, my life is just so good, so I worship you. No, my life is falling apart, so I worship you. Things are crumbling, so I worship you. My spouse just left me, and I’ll honor you through this. My kids are disobeying me and I’m going to worship you. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this money problem I have, but I’m going to honor you through it. See, when you can worship God when things are falling apart, that’s a real worshipper. Anyone can worship God when things are going well. Do you worship God when things are not going well? That is true worship. Also, it’s interesting to me that David says here: Strike my enemies on the jaw. We know this in Psalms, he writes these praises to God, but we see that his history of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, where often times David would write his songs to God: “O God, strike my enemy in the face,” but then how did God strike his enemy in his, in the face? With David’s own fists. So God used David to fight his opponents. Now David, when he fought Goliath, he could have dropped to his knees and said O God, just take out this giant, and God could of went poof, and just killed the giant for him. God didn’t do that. God had David get up and actually fight the battle himself, cause that way David could experience the victory personally, and it could change David. The reason why God does not just remove your problems, remove your battles from you, is because if he did, you would not become all you can be. You would not develop into who God wants to make you into, unless you go through some challenges, through some trials, through some tribulations. And so that problem grows you, that problem develops you. Look at Proverbs 14 verse 30, it says: “A heart at peace gives life to the body.” A heart at peace gives life to the body. I want to encourage you that you need to know, the only way sometimes you can get peace is through a battle. There are seasons of our lives, there are situations where the only way to have peace in your heart is through a battle.
What is your battle? You got to isolate. Do you know what your battle is? What are you facing? What is it that you say I’m never going to have peace in my heart, until I face this problem head on and knock it out? You got a knock it out. Number three: knock them out. You’ve got to isolate and punch the problem out of your life. And the reason why I want to bring this up is because we forget that this book is full of battles. So listen, no more Mr. or Mrs. Christian Nice Guy.
There are times when you don’t be nice. And I want to encourage you, the way that you get victory; victories don’t happen slowly, they happen fast. You jump on it, and you pounce on it, and you say oh no, that’s not going to happen to my family. We are not going to watch this happen.
You know why kids don’t get messed up when they’re teenagers? Cause when they’re about ten and they start pushing the boundaries; you jump all over them and say oh no, it’s not going to go like that in this home. That’s how that works. You’ve got to ground and pound it out and say uh-uh, that’s not going to happen to my life. The moment you start to see some moral lapses in your life, you immediately jump on it, get accountable with some friends and say oh no, I’m not going to let my life be thrown away because of these problems. You ground and pound on it, you got a jump right on it. I want to challenge you; it’s time to quit being soft. It’s time to quit tippie-toeing around your problems holding you back, and recognize that you have an enemy, and they’re knocking you out, and it’s time for you to get on top of it and punch their lights out. It is time for us to ground and pound, it is time for us to get on top of the things that hold us back. What would happen in the next 30 days if that struggle you’re having in your marriage; why don’t you cancel the attorneys, and why don’t you just say for the next 30 days, all I’m going to do is focus on loving and honoring my spouse. See if that ground and pound doesn’t change everything. See, we’ve learned to fight our spouses, have we learned to fight for them. Have we learned to fight for them by, by blocking our schedule from other things that get in the way of our relationship? Have we learned to fight, instead of fighting our kids, fight for our children? So we say I refuse to give them up, I refuse to let them wallow in this struggle, I refuse to not spend enough time; I’m going to get in their world, and I’m not going to leave until they realize I love them, and they will change because they realize I am here for them. Would you bow your heads with me? With your head bowed and your eyes closed: Listen warrior, it’s time to recognize the battle that you’re in. It’s time to realize the opportunity you have in front of you and to step up and to put some ground and pound on that problem holding you back. It is time to recognize you’re in a cage; you’re in a fight, for your marriage, for your faith, for your finances, for your future, for your relationships. It’s time to get in the fight and say: they’re worth it, my futures worth it, God’s worth it, I need to get in this fight. With your head bowed and your eyes closed; the ultimate fight happened when Jesus did not TapouT. He went to the cross. He didn’t back off, he didn’t TapouT, say enough is enough; I can’t take anymore of this beating. Enough is enough; I can’t take these thorns on my head that they smashed into my skull. Enough is enough; I can’t take being nailed to the cross. He didn’t TapouT, he said bring it, bring it because I’m taking on the sins of the world. Then Jesus gave his life, he gave it by the way. He said it is finished, I, and then he, he gave himself up. He gave his spirit. He did not, it was not taken from him, he gave it. Don’t ever think weakness for Jesus.
No, no, no, no, no, they didn’t kill him; he chose to give his life. Then once he’d given his life, he rose again from the grave, proving that he is God.
I don’t know about you, but there’s no one else in history that’s ever done that. That’s why we call them God. With your head bowed and your eyes closed: during this prayer time, if you’ve never trusted Christ before, you can receive him right now by praying a simple prayer and trusting your life in his hands, and trusting that one day when you pass away, because you’ve accepted him into your life; that you can go to heaven, and you can follow him from this day forward. You can pray this simple prayer with me right now. Silently before God, you can pray this prayer. You can say Dear Jesus: I realize I need you in my life. I believe he died on the cross for my sins. You took on the pain, the scourge; you took on the death for me. Then you rose again from the grave, proving that you’re God. And I now I want to make you the coach, the Lord, the boss of my life; I put you in charge. I want to follow you from this day forward. I may not understand all of your Bible, I may not understand everything, but I understand this: you loved me enough to die for me, and I accept you into my life, what you’ve done for me at the cross, and I look forward to following you from this day forward, in Jesus name, Amen. Amen, isn’t God good? (Applause) His word is so true.