Community
Men need community. A man alone is not a pretty picture. When we go it alone, we are wide open for hard times. I was struck by this just today. I had breakfast with my "band of brothers" and it was good to fellowship with them but I came away empty. in the noise and distraction of iHop, there was no connection. We each had our busy lives on our minds - three of the five got calls or vibrating emails on their Treo's. We had a hard time getting much done. It was a very "surface" time. We didn't go "deep" - we couldn't - the environment was not conducive to going deeep. "How is your new job going?"...15-20 seconds into the response, the question went somewhere else, "Tell me about Maine this summer". I came away empty and part of me feels selfish for feeling this way - but - we crave community. We crave it. We need other men to "go deep" into our lives. We don't need accountability, we need "deep".

Bill Shorey put this up on his blog a long time ago and it was a foundational message for me. I came home tonight and pulled out Eldredge's "Waking the Dead" and I found Bill's blog stuffed into the book. Consider this....

The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out. Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find? Proverbs 20:5-6

"There are many men who live shallow live, but deep beneath their surfaces lie grand purposes -- buried. I believe every man struggles with this -- a sort of self-dummying down. Day-to-day life becomes the pursuit of the insignificant, but these men are haunted by a desire to search out and find grand purposes. Those purposes are not absent -- just buried.

The Proverb reminds us of two actions that must take place. First, every redeemed man must come to understand that he possesses a glory that has been buried. He needs to recognize that silt has settled into the deep channels of his soul, turning depths into shallows. He needs a settled belief that he is not meant to remain shallow.

Secondly, shallow men need other men -- understanding men -- who persevere with unfailing love to draw out the hidden glory from the depths of a murky soul. Men of understanding are rare; few are willing to engage in the tedious and dirty job of dredging.

Deep treasures of the soul lie buried in deep waters."

That is what I am saying - I need dredging and it will take other men to help dredge out my channels that have been silted over. I've had a real taste of this and it is so powerful. Real growth, real depth, brutal honesty, challenging questions, strong encouragement come from men who know your story and know when you are off track. That is why today left me so flat - it has been too long since our band of brothers were together and in our first gathering it was too shallow. We've all got silt in our channels and we have real treasure buried beneath the silt -- but we also need our brothers to help dredge it out. We are all haunted by grand purposes - they are in us all, we know it, we want to pull them out but there is so much silt.

This is why we need our band of brothers and our community. It is how Christ designed us.

Soar!