Green Pastures and Still Waters
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I went to a public school; recess was always an adventure. Bullying was normal, fights were common and trash-talking was daily. When someone would refer to me in derogatory terms, I, along with my pals would say, “It takes one to know one!” According to Word Histories, that phrase made it into public use sometime around 1926 but I suspect it is much older than that. Insults and retorts were probably happening between Cain and Abel. I’m planning to twist the phrase around a little bit for the sermon on Sunday. We are going to be addressing the subject of discipleship and in making disciples, “It takes one to train one.” No one else in our culture is going to make disciples of Jesus Christ if we fail to embrace the Great Commission and do what we have been given authority to do. Jesus Christ is either not taken seriously enough or, His standards are too high to promote. Either way, the church is the only organization that has the authority and the power to make disciples of our Lord. Of course, the church is, in some ways, only supplemental to the home. The home is the first “institution” and churches cannot make up for in an hour or two a week, what families fail to do the other 167 hours. We are all disciples of someone and we all have influence over someone. You may not even know it, but one way or another you are leading someone to someone. You are passing along your “way.” Your way of thinking, acting and responding is being watched and emulated by someone. If we are going to make disciples of Jesus Christ, we better make sure we are following Him; because it takes one to train one.
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I value appropriate tension on my guitar strings; proper tuning is impossible without tension. However, I grow weary of relational and cultural tension. With the guitar, the tuning mechanism is pulling the strings against the bridge; the correct tension of the string is necessary for melody and harmony. With people, tension is the result of divergent ideas that pull against one another, often resulting in disharmony. Culturally, we have faced months of tension over racial issues, over Covid responses and over political matters. People are experiencing a genuine fatigue over all these things. Even guitar strings lose their “song” eventually. The tension that once brought ringing sounds produces string fatigue that brings dullness and difficulty with intonation. In Acts 21, Paul went to Jerusalem with high hopes for unity but he walked into a very tense situation. Politically, Jerusalem was a powder keg just waiting for a match. Even the church was struggling. The Jewish Gentile division was always a source of tension and this was especially true in the geographical center of Judaism and the birthplace of the church. There’s no guarantee or fire-proof plan to eliminate tension among believers but we’ll see that some of God’s people found a way to receive one another gladly and glorify God. I pray some of us will do the same.