BJJ and Jesus: Sixty Days on the Mat

Jesus was not a fighter. So what could Brazilian jiu-jitsu - a grappling art built to control and submit an opponent - have to do with the life of Christ? More than you'd think, once you stop looking for a fight. In BJJ and Jesus, pastor and jiu-jitsu practitioner Wilson Pruitt takes thirty paired techniques - the guard and the pass, the mount and the escape, the sweep and the tap - and turns each one toward the gospel across sixty short daily readings. This is not a "fight the good fight" book. It's about what the mat teaches the body before the mind can argue: that the way down is the way up, that control is something to relinquish, and that the tap is not defeat but deliverance. Each day pairs a practitioner's-eye look at one position with one scripture and one concrete thing to do - on the mat, and off it. Together the sixty days descend, movement by movement, from the scramble for control into the one posture the soul most needs: surrender. For the Christian who trains, the trainee who's curious about faith, and anyone who has learned more about themselves from being swept and submitted than from any victory - here is a devotional that meets you where you actually are: tired, honest, and on the bottom, where the real lessons live. Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). About the author: Wilson Pruitt is a United Methodist pastor in Austin, Texas, who trains Brazilian jiu-jitsu in nearby Lakeway. He is the author of several books with Wroot Press.