Someone In My Corner

Ethan Dewhurst prayed for my kid every single day for a year.

Of all the spiritual disciplines, prayer has always been the toughest one for me.  What’s cool about The Gathering is that even though I struggle with that, I know that I have people that are praying for me.  Ethan recently shared with me that he had been praying for my eldest son every single day.  I was like, “What?… I don’t even pray for my own son every day.”  And I think that speaks to what The Gathering is doing in the hearts of men, that someone would do that for someone else’s kid.

Being part of The Gathering has meant that I have a list of 10-20 guys that I can share anything with.   When life gets messy and I’m going through a tough time, it means I’m not going through it alone.  We talk about 2 a.m. friends in The Gathering; and I have those.  They are the ones that speak truth to me, and they are the ones that hold me accountable when others won’t.  These guys are in my corner, rooting for me, praying for me, helping me through the hardest time that I’ve ever gone through.

The Bride of Christ

To be honest, I don’t think I really understood what the Church was until I got involved with The Gathering.  The Gathering is THE Church.  We come from a whole lot of churches, church buildings, but The Gathering is THE Church.  It’s more than just who you see every Sunday morning.  I discovered THE Church from my involvement with The Gathering and it has inspired me.  I realized I don’t just belong to one building or one congregation.  There is so much in the kingdom and I want to be part of it.

Looking Forward

The enemy wants men to feel like there is nobody in their corner; like they are alone on an island with all the weight of the world on their shoulders.

I think God wants the men in The Gathering to go deeper.  He wants us not to just show up to a meeting and share a few very surface level thoughts.  He wants us to talk about the tough things that we don’t want to talk about and to truly penetrate each other’s hearts with the love of God.  Because when you do that, we not only change that one man’s heart and their faith, a lot of times you change the whole family with them and generations to come.

I give to The Gathering because if not me, who?  If it is important to my life then it could be important to someone else’s life.  I want to be a leader, which means that I need to give and set the example.

Giving isn’t always comfortable, but it stretches me.  It forces me to trust that God is going to provide and somehow, He always does.  It seems like whenever we take a financial hit and start to worry, God then comes around and blesses us.  It reminds me why I give even though sometimes I’m scared; even though sometimes it feels like it doesn’t make sense.  It builds trust in God the provider.