Needing a Teacher

He also told them this parable: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher. - Luke 6:39-40

Jesus believed that people can grow and changed. He bet his life on it, in fact.

In this short parable he reminds us that if you want to grow, it’s critical to have someone further along than you. Look back over the parable - there are three types of person: the blind, the student, and the teacher. The blind are those who don’t know what they don’t know - and so they imitate others who don’t know. The students are those who know what they don’t know - so they seek out someone wiser than themselves. And then there’s the teacher - the one who knows something that they can impart to others.

City Church uses a simple shape to capture the process of personal growth through various stages, which we’ll look at tomorrow. For now, let it be enough that each stage includes both the “I” and the “You” - the teacher and the student. Think of it as a child who is learning how to read and being taught by a parent - in developmental stage 1 (D1) the child needs the parent to do all the reading and simply watches it happen; then in D2 the child starts to pick out a few words; then in D3 the child is putting together whole sentences and is just asking for help on tricky words; finally in D4 the child is holed up in their room reading for hours on their own.

The key is that the student embraces being a student. How do you feel about becoming a student, which means acknowledging your need to learn, your need of teachers in your life? Talk with Jesus about this need of yours, and ask him for help in embracing it and stepping boldly onto the journey of growth.