The origin story of Grips for God is humble. It can be surmised as a group of guys that wanted to exercise together. Lifting weights is cool but pretty boring for some. Running is a fantastic exercise but it sucks especially for middle-aged former athletes riddled with old injuries from high school sports and life. We settled on an old love, Jiu Jitsu. It is a combat sport but can be done with high intensity without the traumatic brain injury in sports like MMA, football or boxing. It’s fun like a chess or checkers match using your body. Jiu Jitsu forces you to accept certain limitations like body type, flexibility, and lack of strength. It also allows you to use the god given gifts we all have to utilize certain techniques that compliment you as a human. String together a few movements with a strategy and boom you are playing the game or as we say “rolling”. We began meeting twice a week early in the morning before everyone had to be at work so no excuses.

I personally can’t think of anything more important than acceptance of one’s temporary limitations and planning to lean on one’s strengths in order to reach an outcome or goal. Jiu Jitsu teaches you to accept uncomfortable positions in order to have your wits about you when the opportunity for escape comes, allowing you to capitalize on it and find a better position. We also knew as men we had been failing or disregarding our responsibility as spiritual leaders in our home. So we began integrating short opening prayer, short bible reading and closing prayer. We shifted the responsibility around to one another in order to give us all a chance to read or pray. Now life happened during this time a few of us lost friends or loved ones faced struggles and challenges. One thing remained consistent: Tuesdays and Thursdays at 0600 we were rolling.

Henry David Thorough said that “most men live lives of quiet desperation.” What does that even mean? Well, let’s think about this for a minute. We have been taught our whole lives that men are strong, men are stoic, men make money and a bunch of it, men fight the wars and lead the country. As a man I can tell you that there is some truth in the expectation of men in America. I can also tell you as a man that most of us are making it up as we go along. We don’t want to appear weak so we shut up or never shut up. We take the self appropriated mantle of leadership in stride, do our best but at all cost say nothing about our struggles. If you sit back and listen you can hear the story play out in conversations among men. I got a new car, new gun, new house and have so much to talk about much more comfortably than all my failures as a father, husband and Christian.

Jiujitsu makes you look at your issues in a way that somehow separates them from who you are as a person. In jiu jitsu it’s ok to struggle with a position or move. You just keep working and thinking your way through. You understand because that”s your weak spot that it’s going to take extreme physical effort to escape from your perilous shortcomings. That is until you address them. At a certain point you get frustrated enough that you make yourself vulnerable amongst friends and start in those uncomfortable positions giving yourself practice at digging yourself out. Practicing building technical cerebral movements that answer the difficult questions posed by your opponent’s movements. Eventually you have a few cathartic events that give you a deeper understanding of a position and it shifts from the weakest point of your game to a strength.

Such is life. I find that God allows certain happenings in our life to persist in order to give us the tools we need for the edification of others or something to come in our own life. The church in America as we understand it is changing. We for centuries have understood the church as a pretty building where like minded people come to do God stuff. Pews books candles the whole bit. It wasn’t bad by any means, it’s just not done yet. A church isn’t the building, it’s the people inside that matters. They are in fact the church by definition. Christians like to condemn the fall of church attendance to wickedness brought about by the evil one. That may have some truth but it sure takes responsibility off the table. I mean CrossFit is doing really well.

Maybe God wants us to use our passions in life to bless our friends, community and world. Perhaps to love somebody we need to look past the weak spots in their game in order to see the beauty of them as a person created and loved by God to do a mission for him.

G4g has grown a bit but the formula remains the same at 0600 Tuesdays and Thursdays we are rolling. As for the future of g4g. We have some ideas like a train the trainer program for churches but we have a lot to learn and need to further lean into his plan before any codification of purpose. If all we do is continue to invite others, continue exercising, and growing closer to God, that’s pretty cool in my book. If God would like to set the sails of our lives for north azimuth trusting his mission to these leaky vessels by using g4g in some capacity to further a plan that’s so perfect it surpasses all understanding well that’ll be cool too. Lets rain.