We had a football quiz to kick off our fall series: Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy (The Bible Study), and then we spent some time talking.  Mostly small talk….but we also spoke of the importance of being in a men’s group.  Do you ever wonder why? Do you worry about not fitting in? Do you have ‘better’ things to do with your time?  I don’t blame you.  I understand.  I had those thoughts myself, but I took a risk and started to show up and my life has never been the same.  The men in my life have rescued me.

We discussed Matthew 14:22-33.  Jesus calms the storm.  75% or more of men in America don’t have a friend that they can turn to in a ‘storm’.  I am reminded of 2 men who shared with me that they knew each other very well and were close friends, but when we started going deep under the surface, it became clear very quickly that they didn’t truly ‘know’ each other much at all.  This is the norm.  We walk through life completely alone with the facade of knowing each other.

10 years ago, I jumped out of the boat by sharing with a friend one of my deeply held ‘secrets’, and little by little we continued to grow closer and closer knowing everything about each other, our past, present, and future struggles, fears, and dreams.  I have never felt so free, peace filled, and truly alive knowing that there is someone that I can turn to with ALL my fears.

Then the storms came….and I had a friend who was there with me when I was drowning, suffocating, and had no where else to go….he held onto me and kept me from drowning when the waves were crashing over me.

I don’t know any other way to tell you.  One day, I decided to just show up to a men’s group even when I really ‘couldn’t’–too busy, bad time of the day, too early, etc.  By showing up, my life has been transformed–my marriage, my family, EVERYTHING–I now have friends that know more about me than I know about myself.  Join us! AND bring a friend along for the adventure of a lifetime.

The storms will come.  Who will be there for you? How will you survive?

“But what if your heart be right with God, and yet you are pressed down with a load of earthly trouble? What if the fear of poverty is tossing you to and fro, and seems likely to overwhelm you? What if pain of body be racking you to distraction day after day? What if you are suddenly laid aside from active usefulness and compelled by infirmity to sit still and do nothing? What if death has come into your home, and taken away your Rachel or Joseph or Benjamin and left you alone, crushed to the ground with sorrow? What if all this has happened? Still there is comfort in Christ. He can speak peace to wounded hearts as easily as calm troubled seas. He can rebuke rebellious wills as powerfully as raging winds. He can make storms of sorrow abate, and silence tumultuous passions, as surely as He stopped the Galilean storm. He can say to the heaviest anxiety, “Peace, be still!” The floods of care and tribulation may be mighty, but Jesus sits upon the waterfloods, and is mightier than the waves of the sea (Ps. 93:4). The winds of trouble may howl fiercely round you, but Jesus holds them in His hand, and can stay them when He lists. Oh, if any reader of this message is broken-hearted and care-worn and sorrowful, let him go to Jesus Christ, and cry to Him and he shall be refreshed. “Come unto Me,” He says, “all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).”-excerpt from Holiness by J.C. Ryle