Prayer group's members fight for their souls

They call it "Saturday Morning Fight Club."

Before the neighbors wake up. Before the sun comes up. A small group of middle-aged guys and old yellow lab named Amigo gather in a Wauconda living room.

They come from Barrington, McHenry, Island Lake and Mundelein. An appliance repairman, a sales consultant, a high school art teacher.

It's not an underground band of bare knuckle brawlers as the name might suggest. But they do fight.

For them, the combat is invisible. A battle "between the flesh and the spirit," they say.

This morning, the conversation bounces around subjects like sexual purity, integrity, honesty and becoming more like Jesus. They talk about how to be better fathers and better husbands.

They lament the loss of absolute truth, the loss of family values, the loss of one of their founding members who died recently.

They "fight the good fight of faith," as St. Paul said. They fight against their own weaknesses, against what they see as a declining culture, against the devil's influence.

They pray for strength against temptation. They pray for their kids to keep the faith and for safe boating on Bang's Lake.

They've been meeting at the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m. every Saturday for the past 10 years. That leaves plenty of time for family and no time for excuses for missing the meeting.

There's been some tense moments in that time. Heated "discussions" over theology, honest confessions of sin. Sometimes it hurts. But then they remember the name of the group.

Admitting they can't fight the battle alone, an Old Testament proverb gets quoted often. "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."