Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork

 

Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork

Hey all! Good to see you all again. Just as a side note before we get into today's post, I will plan on doing these posts Sunday afternoon/evening so they should be up by Monday morning at the latest. Usually they will be up before 10 pm Sunday night though.

SO! We are gonna dive straight into the scripture, we will be in Ephesians 4:29 today. I don't know if I have said this in previous posts, but I am spending this summer as the Recreation leader for a children's church camp in the Birmingham area. We have a different theme verse each week and this verse was our theme verse this past week.

Here it is:

²⁹ Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

On a surface level reading, we see this message: Be nice to others, don't say mean things. When I first started working with this verse alongside the kids this week, I arrived at the same conclusion. This is a beauty of scripture though, it is alive and can take us sooo much deeper. I feel like this passage gives us two very explicit points:

1. Build up according to their needs

The word needs is highlighted because it has a certain understanding that gets looked over. A team is comprised of different people, just as a body is comprised of different parts. Now some have more self-confidence than others, and some have more experience than others. This is where we get our title from. I at first wanted all of the children in camp to be cheering for each other and building each other up with their words. This was really effective for some of the children and not so much for other kids. 

I walked away from my first day of rec a little confused on why it wasn't working for some. Cheer louder I thought, if the kids are even louder then it will make the ones being cheered for happy. This didn't seem to work either though. It took a little kindergarten girl's tears to make this part of the verse sink in. Some of these children don't need support, they need guidance. By bringing them aside and helping explain the game a little further, children became exponentially happier. 

I think so often we see others and apply this idea of, "I would love for people to do this to me, so it must be what they want too." This verse is very clear though, build them up according to their needs and to do this we must look outside of ourselves. 

2. Pay attention to who is listening

I think it's very easy to just overlook the last part of this verse and keep moving on. We seem to have gotten the meat of the verse in the first part so what could be in the last part. The Bible is very intentional though and every word is important. That those who may listen will benefit, which raises a question. How many of you reading have ever said something to someone and you knew they just weren't listening.  I am terrible at this because I will tune someone out while texting all the time. I know that I get frustrated when people do it to me, so why do I continue to do it to someone else? I think that maybe this part of the verse is included to give ourselves a self-check when looking at the meat of the verse.

Are we saying things that need to be heard? If someone were able to hear every word that we spoke, would they benefit? This is where our challenge for today's world comes around. I think we let a lot of things slip out of our mouths that aren't necessarily beneficial or uplifting. Teams fall apart due to under the breath comments, because when we don't lift someone up with our words, it does the exact opposite.

Today's blog post may seem really simple and something you've heard before. I don't know who is reading this blog, or if I even have subscribed followers. But you've made it to the end of this post, and I like to believe that Jesus brought you to this blog for a reason.

So readers, let me leave you with this, Jesus loves you. If you don't know who that is, I'd begin reading here:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%201&version=NIV

If you have questions feel free to message me I'd love to chat. Also if the word becoming flesh feels or sounds weird or odd, I ask that you hold on tight, as next week we'll be walking through that passage.

Thank you for your time and for reading,

God bless.