How Kung-Fu has Helped Me Grow more Spiritual
by Logan Urbeck, October 2009
Kung–fu has helped me to grow more spiritual because kung–fu has taught me how hard it is to do some things. Reading your Bible and practicing kung–fu on a daily basis will probably never be easy so, in a sense, you could call it hard work. Kung-fu has to do with helping your body to become healthier and stronger. While the Bible helps you to grow in a healthy relationship with God and become strongly rooted in Scripture. Being physically healthy and spiritually healthy is hard work. The tian gan exercises are exercises that help keep the body healthy is hard enough but trying to find time in between school, chores, piano, family, and God makes it even harder, but I try my best to fit them in my daily schedule. It is about the same thing with God and his Word although I try my best to put Him first, it doesn’t always happen how you want it to. On the other hand I do go to a Christian school so this point is a little easier for me, but not a lot, I still have to find time in between everything to read, study, and absorb what God is saying in His Word. So I guess I could say kung-fu has helped me figure out how to always set aside some time for just me and God.
The second point is dedication. You have to have dedication to sort of give you a little push to practice kung-fu and read your Bible. Laoshr Read told me a lot of people quit kung-fu when they hit green. My guess is that about half of them didn’t want to dedicate the time for it. And it is necessary for you to dedicate your time and your life to God and for you to read the Bible and pray. Shrfu Mark Kimzey had to have dedicated much time to practice kung-fu to fix whatever he did wrong or he got something mixed up. That is probably why he’s one of the highest ranking persons in the association and knows that he has to dedicate that much time or he’ll mix it up the next time he does it or he’ll forget. In the Bible, Moses dedicated many months to freeing the Israelites. Moses knew that if he would keep coming back to the Pharaoh and dedicating himself to God and the Pharaoh would let his people go. Then later on in the story God sent plagues to Egypt and finally after the tenth plague the Pharaoh finally let his people go. So I feel that dedication does play into both kung-fu and Scripture because they are both hard work, and in order to do hard work you have to be dedicated to the fullest extent.
The third point to my paper is patience. You have to have patience in everything you do, but you have to have a little more patience with the things you’re dedicated to. In kung-fu you have to have patience because you may not get a form or exercise right away you just have to be patient, and constantly work at it. For me ba lien shou six and eight are a couple of the forms that gave me a hard time. In Scripture it talks about being patient like in James 5:7 “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and have long patience for it until he receive the early and latter rain.” (KJV) The Scripture talks about patience, but you also have to have patience when praying. God may not answer your prayer that very next day, month, or even next year. God has a purpose for answering your prayer when he does whether you like it or not He’ll answer it when he feels he should or shouldn’t. So kung-fu has taught me to be dedicated to something you need to do like praying doing hard work like reading the Bible. Plus being patient Because God will always do what is the best thing for you all you have to is just be patient and pray.
