Purification

When you first begin your journey into jiu-jitsu your conscience is your worst enemy. All the answers given to you by your conscience are the beginning of your defeat. Your knowledge, your movements and your conscience have to be trained to learn the truth and gain freedom in jiu-jitsu. Although many believe they can fight they soon learn how little they know. The goal of jiu-jitsu is to learn technique and strive to express it in it's simplest form. In order to accomplish this, your teacher must guide you with patience, being ready to put you through the fire.

This is the purification process.

Your teacher is the one who knows right from wrong. They should gain your trust, teach you what is good and right and open your eyes when the time is right.

The same is of Life.

Life is a purification process. God is the Sculpter who created us for the ultimate purpose of glorifying Him. The first half of Proverbs 16:4 says "The Lord has made everything for Himself".

Romans 9:10-24

10.And not only this, but when Rebecca also had concieved by one man, even by our father Isaac (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), it is said to her, "The older shall serve the younger. As it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated."

14. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness in God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, " I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I have compassion." So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have rasied you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My Name may be declared in all the earth." Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills and whom He hardens He hardens.

19. You will say then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" But indeed O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" Does not the potter have the power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

22. What if God, wanting to to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?


You may want to read that again and again! God is the Sculpter and He prepared beforehand some of us for glory and some for wrath. As it says in the scripture, " So then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God Who shows mercy." We are in a time of purification right now. We have been sculpted and are now in the furnace to either come out glorified or destroyed. Do I fully understand this? No. I struggle with the thought every day but this is what it says in the bible over and again. I trust in the Lord and I know that He is purifying me. It is His work and not mine. The second half of Proverbs 16:4 says, "The Lord has made all for Himself, Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom."

This gives us all the more reason to praise and rejoice that God for His own good reason chose us to be an object of His grace and mercy. We can boast about nothing, for we have done nothing and continue to do nothing without the power of God. We can rejoice because we know that what God promises He is also able to perform. God is the Sculpter and we are the clay being purified by His Holy Spirit.

For more references and research read John 6:60-70, John 8:37-47, Acts 9:1-19, Romans 8:28-30, Ephesians 2:1-10, 1 Tim 1:12-17, 2 Tim 2:25, Titus 3:1-8, 2 Peter 3:8-9