The Way of the Warrior

by Erwin Raphael McManus

  Imagine what would happen if we woke up in the morning energized with hope, consumed by love, and empowered by faith. Imagine the power of those who no longer choose to stand in the middle but instead choose to stand for love against hate, for forgiveness against bitterness, for hope against despair, and for freedom against injustice. Imagine if each person who today is simply lamenting the decay of society would instead gather all their energy and begin to do something to make the world just a little bit better. All evil needs in order to prevail is for good men to do nothing.72 But if we do nothing, can we by any measure be called good?

  Stand Up to Your Pain

  The warrior has learned to never underestimate their strength. It is only when you choose the way of the warrior that you discover how strong you actually are and realize there is far more in you than you may ever know. Where once you may have seen pain as the boundary of your limitations, now you know there is a path you can travel if you are willing to walk through your pain.

  On the afternoon that I left Huntington Memorial Hospital, approximately eighteen hours after having six hours of surgery to remove cancer, I was finally allowed to go home, but only after being forced to eat at least one meal of hospital food (now, that was almost unbearable pain). Kim drove me home with a concerned entourage of my son, my daughter, and her husband, along with other caring family and friends.

  When I got home, it looked as if Kim had prepared our bedroom for me to never leave the house again. She bought a full-sized refrigerator and put it in our room so I could have food and drinks available at all times. She had brought in an electronic chair that turned into a bed with the push of a button so I would never have to move using my own strength. No one expected me to recover quickly or to push myself too hard.

  If I have learned one thing in life, it is that if you don’t use your strength, you will lose it. There was no comfortable way to escape my limitations. I left the hospital with a catheter, which is a barbaric device used for male humiliation. That by itself would encourage a person to stay hidden in their bedroom. Walking up and down stairs was another real deterrent to my desire to escape the confines of our bedroom.

  There had been talk that the catheter would have to remain in for up to a month, and that just seemed unacceptable to me. At my insistence, the catheter was removed after about a week. It’s a strange thing to discover a weakness where once you had a strength you previously took for granted. Regaining the strength to control my own body has not lacked a profound sense of humiliation and frustration. The process of regaining my strength—and in fact reclaiming it—has been more textured and layered than I had ever imagined.

  About two weeks after my surgery, I called Dr. Khalili, who had performed the surgery and was overseeing my recovery, and asked him what the world’s record was for recovering from this surgery and returning to playing basketball. Evidently there was no world’s record logged, and that by itself excited me, as I have always wanted to hold one. I cannot overstate how protective my wife and kids have been through my entire recovery. I am surrounded by caring people who worry about the choices I make when it comes to my well-being.

  Having been an athlete, I understand the relationship between pain and progress. There is no progress without pain. And if there is no pain, there is no progress. In that regard, you become the boundary of your own freedom. This much is also true of the way of the warrior: progress requires pain and sacrifice. You establish what you can and cannot do. Talent will never be the ultimate cause of your success. You may have unbelievable talent. You may have been genetically endowed with such extraordinary natural abilities that your potential far surpasses everyone else in your field. But it is not talent that determines your limitations; it’s tenacity. The warrior’s legacy can be written only on the other side of their pain. The way of the warrior teaches us that we cannot stand in our greatness if we cannot stand in our pain.

  Rise Above Your Pain

  So I set a goal for myself. With six holes in my stomach held together by glue (evidently they don’t use stitches anymore), I determined that I would find a way to escape house arrest and run free on a basketball court. The journey began slowly. I decided to embrace my humiliation and began by taking walks in our neighborhood, rolling the catheter right by my side. I made myself take long walks and began going up and down stairs by the second day of my recovery.

  Exactly three weeks later (I know this because I wanted to make sure I would always hold the world record), I put all my basketball gear in a sports bag and dropped it down the stairs so that my sweet wife would not see me leave with it. I told Kim that I was going to go out for a while. She looked at me suspiciously right away. “What do you mean you’re going out?” I explained to her that I was going to meet some of the guys and get out of the house. I just needed to enjoy the company of good friends. I think right before I left she said something like, “Don’t do anything stupid.” I don’t know why wives waste words like that on their husbands. Of course we’re going to do something stupid. It’s inherent to our nature.

  I drove to a local gym that a few of us had rented just for the occasion. The moment I saw all my guys, I was absolutely energized. I could feel my strength coming back before I threw on my Jordans and held the leather in my hand. We played for two hours that day. Some of the holes in my stomach broke open, and there was some bleeding along the way, but nothing that affected my game. I know it seems like a small thing, but running down that court, stopping on a dime, dropping threes on my much younger, healthier comrades, may have saved my life as much as the surgery did.

  If you hear nothing else that I’m saying to you, understand this: your freedom is on the other side of your fears. Your greatness lies on the other side of your pain. You will never live the life you were created to live or achieve your greatest dreams if you’re not willing to bear the weight of that greatness and pay the price of pain that journey demands.

  Other than writing, perhaps the area that has allowed me to do the most good has been speaking. For some reason, I have always been uncomfortable calling myself a preacher. Maybe it’s that old-school connotation that you’re preaching at people. But I find incredible fulfillment in knowing that you can speak life into people, that words have the power to change people’s futures. So I told myself, You cannot get on a stage to preach until you have the strength to dribble and drive. Playing basketball is just a pleasure. Speaking life into people—that’s my passion.

  The reason I share this part of my story with you is so that you will not underestimate your own strength—so that you will know your own power. You may be reading this and feel as if you have lost your spirit, your energy, your will. Yet it’s not incidental that the word encouragement means to put courage into someone, and the word inspiration means to breathe into them. God wants to place both courage and spirit within you. He wants to restore your strength.

  Strength in Numbers

  Isaiah spoke to people who thought they could not take another step. He brought them encouragement and inspiration: “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”73

  Looking back, I realize that the strength I found was not only in the strength that God placed in me but in the strength of the people around me. It was not only the power of the people around me but how their voices informed and formed who I am. Your tribe will shape your identity, and your identity will shape your future. There is something mysterious about the way humans are designed. We are designed to be made strong by the strength of others. We find courage in the courage of others. We are energized and inspired through the energy and inspiration of others. If you’re full of inertia and cannot find your way back to strength, then find your w
ay back to people who are strong. Get in an environment filled with optimism and hope. Allow your soul to be nourished by the courage and inspiration of others.

  I have the great privilege of meeting and knowing some of the world’s most extraordinary people. One of those people is fitness instructor Angela Manuel-Davis. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that here in Los Angeles, Angela would be considered royalty. Her kingdom is found in a small room in West Hollywood known as SoulCycle, a fitness brand that was introduced to many through Oprah Winfrey. I first met Angela at Mosaic with her husband, Jerome. It was then that I began to learn more about the uniqueness of Angela and Jerome, and also SoulCycle, a force that was sweeping the nation.

  It’s amazing the kind of influence a leader can have in a room that barely holds sixty people. For sixty minutes, Angela takes the rider on a journey on a bike that never moves. Now, although the bike never goes anywhere, you do.

  Honestly, to describe that sixty-by-sixty-foot room as a kingdom probably isn’t the most accurate description. Having now experienced what happens in that room, I realize that for those who are present, it is a church—or at least a profoundly spiritual experience. For sixty minutes, some of Hollywood’s most influential artists and celebrities step into Angela’s world and allow her to speak into their lives. She has the ear of the very artists and influencers who have the ear of our culture.

  Angela and Jerome kept inviting me to attend, but frankly I was terrified of the idea. Cardio is not my greatest strength. While I try to maintain a high level of fitness, I was not in any way deluded enough to believe I was at the level of conditioning that would be required to survive her class. She kept encouraging me: “You can move at your own pace. Don’t worry, it’s a really dark room. We’ll put you in the back. No one will even see you. It’s not a competition.”

  She said all the right things, but she left out one major detail; she didn’t tell me what would really happen. She didn’t tell me how the energy in the room would overwhelm me—how the level of intensity and determination in that studio would compel me to give my best. She didn’t tell me how her words there would speak powerfully into my life. She forgot to mention that whatever amount of power and force I could press into those pedals paled in comparison to how fast everything was turning inside me.

  I don’t remember what the tipping point was, but I finally took Angela up on her invitation. At first she had us close our eyes and take a few moments to pedal and reflect. We meditated on where we were in our lives and where we wanted to be. We began to still our souls and listen to our inner voices. Then she began to explain that the bike was really a metaphor for life and that how we faced the challenges in front of us was indicative of how we would face the challenges of daily living. She told us that we were not different people in different places, one on a bike and one at work, but rather were the same people everywhere we went. Finally, she commissioned us to bring our best into the studio and that if we did that, we’d be training ourselves to bring our best into every other room.

  Angela declared with such strength and force and certainty that there was more in us than we knew, that we could overcome the pain we felt. She told us to increase the tension on the bike so we’d have to push ourselves harder. We had to decide, we had to choose; we had to increase the pressure, we had to increase the tension, we had to up the ante, we had to decide what kind of challenge we were willing to face, and we had to decide how much strength we would find within ourselves. All the while, she would just keep shouting, “You are fighting for your freedom! You are fighting for your strength.”

  It’s in moments like these that we find the strength of our wills and test our determination. Every time I wanted to quit (and I wanted to quit so many times in those sixty minutes), Angela’s words would help me find the strength I did not know I had. Her direction had everyone in the room moving to the left and then to the right, backward and then forward, all of us in this beautiful syncopation that looked like a work of art. She knew that if we could step into the rhythm of everyone else in the room, we would draw from their strength, we would draw from their energy, and we would draw from their power.

  Near the end, when everyone was nearly spent, she told us to fight not only for ourselves but also for others and to think of someone we were carrying, someone we were taking across the line, someone we were fighting for, someone we loved. Then she pressed in even further: “The physical pain you are feeling is just a metaphor. It’s just a reminder that the real battle is in a spiritual realm.” Somewhere in the midst of that, I think she said something like, “I don’t care how you look; I care how you live. This is not about looking good; it’s about finding your strength.”

  In a world driven by external perfection, the warrior chooses a different path. When the warrior looks at their own reflection, they see their soul. They know that both beauty and strength are found only within. They realize that everything on the surface is both temporary and superficial.

  You will know your tribe by what they see. If they see only your appearance, they are not your people. When they see your essence, that’s your tribe. The warrior cares more about essence than about image. The way of the warrior calls out your inner strength, your inner beauty, and your inner courage.

  Frankly, I thought having cancer was hard, but SoulCycle pushed me to the limit. I may have spent as much energy pushing the pedals as I did trying not to lose my lunch. My bike never moved an inch, but I traveled light-years in those moments. I was drenched in sweat, yet I walked out of that room with more energy and strength than I had when I’d walked in. The room carried me. Sixty people I had never met carried me. Angela Davis carried me. It was as if she gave everybody in the room a gift that could not be measured by weight or inches or worth. She gave us herself. She gave us her energy and strength.

  Life Source

  Have you ever heard someone say, “They really energized the room”? You might think that’s a metaphor, but it’s actually not. It’s an observation rooted in reality. We know that humans can give each other colds and flus. We know that even without human contact, we can pass to each other bacteria and viruses. Yet most of us are unaware that we also transmit to one another what occupies our souls.

  Your soul is the conduit of your energy. If your soul is empty, you will consume energy from the world around you. The great danger is that you will see people as something to be consumed and discarded when they no longer energize you. When you are full of life, you become a conduit of life. You will become a source of what is good and beautiful and true. People will naturally draw inspiration from your life. They will see you as a source of hope. If you want to clearly see the world you have created within you, look at the world you have created around you. The warrior takes mastery over their energy and becomes a source of life. The warrior is a life source.

  If you are filled with despair, you fill the world with despair; if you are filled with bitterness, you fill the world with bitterness; if you are filled with fear, you fill the world with fear. Additionally, that’s all you will ever find. No matter where you go, your world is filled with the same energy and intention that fills you.

  In the same way, when the warrior is filled with hope, they fill the world with hope; when they are filled with joy, they fill the world with joy, when they are filled with love, they fill the world with love.

  Every human being is both a conduit and consumer of energy. When you are fully alive—when your life is marked by love and joy—you bring energy to the world around you. When you are simply struggling with existence, you consume the energy around you. When I asked Angela from SoulCycle, “What is your purpose?” her response was simple and beautiful: “to inspire, to breathe life into people.”

  The strength of the warrior is not only for themselves but also for the weak. The warrior knows they are made strong so they might help others find their strength. Je
sus once said, “I have come to bring you life and life in abundance.”74 This is our greatest strength. When we are fully alive, we have life to give to the world. When we have more life than we need, when we have life in abundance, we should not be afraid of giving our lives away.

  There was once a woman who touched Jesus while he was walking in the middle of a crowd. He stopped and looked around and asked, “Who touched me?”75 His disciples were perplexed, for he was being touched by an endless number of people. But we are told that Jesus felt power leave him. This is one of the most unaddressed passages on power in the Bible. This woman was marked by a disease and was desperate to find her healing. She believed that Jesus would be the source of that healing.

  Unlike the rest of the crowd, who touched Jesus without intention, the woman touched his garment believing that what she needed most could be found in only him. In the simplest of terms, her faith became the conduit of God’s power flowing to her. It was such a dramatic exchange of power that Jesus felt it. “Who touched me?” is a strange question when you are being pressed against by a crowd, yet somehow she knew he was referring to her. How could she have known that he was singling her out? She wasn’t the only one who touched him, but she was the only one who received his power.

  What if God’s power is waiting for you and all you have to do is reach out to touch him? What if all the energy you need, all the strength you need, all the power you need is within your reach? When Jesus came face to face with that restored woman, he did not reprimand her for accessing his power but commended her for her faith and released her to go live in a new peace and freedom she had never known.