They Would Not Stop Talking

"Encourage one another and build one another up." (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

At the end of one of those courses is a tall swinging ladder. You have to climb it to a platform, cross an obstacle in the treetops, and finish on a zip line, and there are people who are afraid of heights, and for one of them it is not a matter of struggling. He simply cannot do it.

And here is what a real team does. They do not go on and finish without him, leaving him at the bottom. And they cannot climb it for him, because no one can do that. So they stand underneath, and they keep talking to him. For a long time. Longer than is reasonable. And at the end of the day the man who could not do it climbs the ladder, crosses the trees, comes down the line, and gives his team a completed status on the final challenge. And if you asked him the single greatest factor in getting up there, it was not courage and it was not skill. It was that a handful of people refused to stop talking to him.

There is someone standing at the bottom of a ladder in your church right now, frozen, certain they cannot. They are not going to climb it because a sermon was preached about ladders. They will climb it because somebody stood underneath and would not stop calling up to them. Go stand under somebody's ladder this week, and stay there past the point of reason.

Matthew S.E. Waggoner

Matthew is a pastor in the Church of the Nazarene and the vision pastor of Falcon Community Church in Falcon, Colorado. He writes essays and devotionals on being formed by grace into the likeness of Christ.

https://www.gracethatforms.org
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No One Left at the Bottom