Ready to Play

Growing up, I never really played sports. While I was heavy into martial arts growing up throughout my youth, I never really had the interest to play basketball, football (sorry to all the Texans out there...I know it is akin to committing an act of blasphemy), baseball, or tennis. Looking back on it, I think the desire to play was always there. The desire to play has not only been a part of my athletic life but also part of my spiritual life as well.

I always had a desire to go out and do athletic things. When I was a kid, the truth was that I was very naive, sheltered, and physically, I was fat, uncoordinated, and slow. When it came to gym class, or recess after lunch, I would always try to play sports with the other kids, but time after time, I was always the one picked last. It didn't matter what sport was being played: basketball, football, or even dodgeball or tag--I was always picked last due to my size and lack of knowledge regarding the game being played. I remember trying out for my junior varsity basketball team in middle school and failing rather miserably.

After being taunted and eventually kneed in the groin by a school bully, my parents decided to take my chubby, wimpy self to a Karate class in town where all the other kids seemed to be training. Martial Arts provided a solution to a lot of the problems I was facing. Not only did it teach me how to protect myself from bullies, but unlike other sports, it didn't require any prior knowledge of the sport to participate, nor did it require team tryouts or physical fitness tests to begin playing. I started as a white belt and eventually stuck around at the school for a few years. In time, I became physically more fit and more confident. The desire to play and to be athletic seemed to be what kept me there for a while, even when my friends from the school eventually quit. I went on to study different forms of martial arts, eventually finding the Filipino martial arts, which is the art God put in my heart to passionately pursue, study, and teach. To this day, the desire to play is still in me. I train 5 to 6 days a week, oftentimes twice a day. I eat right. I sleep at least 7 hours a night. I like fighting. I like being an athlete. I like to push myself and see where my body can take me.

Likewise, in my spiritual life, I can easily say that I've been ready to play for a long time. For as long as I can remember, I recall praying and talking to God about possibly using me to do something important on this planet while I'm still here. I feel that for the last few years, God has "benched" me in a way. No matter how hard I seemed to work or try, I could never get ahead in my spiritual life, nor was I able to find the purpose God had for me.

God is the greatest coach in the universe. He will train you. He will break you. He will push you to your limits. When He feels it's right, He'll put you out on the playing field. Above all things, He wants you to remember that you are not an individual. You play for HIS team, and He won't let you onto the playing field until He feels you are ready.

In the past month, I had the opportunity to be part of two amazing conferences, each of them representing the two pillars of my life. After attending Sayoc Kali Sama Sama in Pennsylvania, the world's greatest Filipino martial arts gathering, and after attending SFL Conference in Dallas, a truly fulfilling and amazing Christian conference, I feel like He's letting me know that I'm ready to accept my purpose, or at the very least, I will be able to step onto the field pretty soon. However, I just want to go by His playbook. He knows the game of life better than anyone else, after all.