Discipleship: Rope-maker, -holder, -rider

If you would like, you can go ahead and turn to our text for this morning, and that's Acts chapter 9, starting with verse 20.

So you can begin there if you want, and I'm turning to Luke first. Well, first, because I've been preaching through that book. And second, because something that we were considering, not last Sunday, but the Sunday before, ties in with the message that I want to preach this morning.

A good brother of mine, a brother in the Lord, a brother that I've not known very long, commented to me after I preached a couple of weeks ago that I missed something in that text.

And I don't know if you remember, we were looking at just three verses in the beginning of Luke chapter 8. And I was sharing with you from the Word of God a description of Jesus' ministry, and I said this is kind of a summation.

Remember, two weeks ago? It's kind of a summation of Jesus' ministry, and if it's a summation of His ministry, then it ought to be a summation of ours. And so we looked at five things in that particular passage in Luke chapter 8, verses 1 through 3, and kind of worked our way through those.

And this dear brother of mine, I'm not going to mention his name. Bill, we'll mention your name. And he said, you missed one thing.

You should have included training. I mentioned going and preaching and worshiping and serving and giving, and just missed totally something that's just about as obvious as the nose on my face, and it's pretty obvious, the nose on my face, that is.

Missed it entirely, because in that passage, it notes that as Jesus was traveling from one city to another, preaching, proclaiming the gospel of Jesus, or the kingdom of God, which is the gospel, the apostles were with him.

They were traveling with him. You say, well, so what? We would expect them to be with Jesus as he was traveling, and certainly they would have been, and were. I did mention that Jesus poured out his life into their lives, but I just didn't go anywhere with that.

And so here's the idea, or the truth. The vital part of Jesus' ministry, and therefore a vital part of our ministry, ministry is training, discipleship, discipling.

And so that's the subject I want to preach on this morning, and I'm going to do so from this passage in Acts chapter 9, starting with verse 20, 20 through 26.

Boy, I wish I had a tie on. Just kidding. Actually, it feels pretty comfortable. I figure, you know, I can preach this way in Ukraine.

I ought to be able to do it here. Amen? Amen. Okay. I'll take that as a church vote. No. All right, let me read the text, starting with verse 20 in chapter 9.

Now, for several days, and this, of course, is about to describe Saul or Paul's, the beginning of his ministry, for several days he was with the disciples who were at Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogue, saying, He is the Son of God.

Immediately. Now, this is significant because just in the verses prior to this passage there in chapter 9, we have Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus.

He met Jesus there, and he was dramatically, radically saved. And so then it's quite interesting then, isn't it, that immediately, what was he doing?

He's preaching, going to the synagogues and saying, proclaiming that Jesus is the Son of God. That means this Jesus, this Jesus of Nazareth, He's the Messiah.

Where just days or weeks before, we're not really sure about the timing here. We don't know if Luke, the writer of Acts, skipped some things here. But I think we're to assume that this was pretty close to his conversion.

Whereas before, he was taking letters, really subpoenas, to have Christians arrested and put in jail and persecuted. And not long before that, he consented to the stoning of one of the first deacons in the church, Stephen.

And so here he's, on the one hand, or one minute he is spewing out fire against the Christians, and now he's preaching Jesus Christ as the Messiah.

So that's quite a dramatic transition here in the book of Acts. Let me read on. Verse 21, and those hearing him continued... Excuse me, I've got a little piece of paper in front of my Bible.

Hold on just a minute, would you? All right. You know, sticky notes are good, but you don't want to put them right there where you're reading. All right. So they continued hearing...

Those hearing him proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah, they continued to be amazed. Now, why would they be amazed? Well, it tells us. They were saying, Is this not he who in Jerusalem destroyed those who called on his name, the name of Jesus, and who had come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?

But Saul, who's Paul, kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus, not just any Jesus, this one, Jesus of Nazareth, is the Christ.

So there's Jesus very plain, very straightforward. He's the Messiah. He's proclaiming this one. This Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. When many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted together to do away with him, with Paul.

First, he's serving the Jews, his people Jews, by trying to put away with Christians, and now the Jews are trying to put away with Paul. Or put him away, rather. But their plot became known to Saul.

They were also watching the gates day and night so that they might put him to death. But his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket.

All right, that's our text. And, you know, if you were listening to my introduction, and I'm sure all of you were, except for those who just got back this morning at 915, you, hopefully, you heard me say that my message this morning is about discipleship.

It's about discipling. That part of our ministry as a church is very vital. As we're training believers, discipling believers. And you're looking here possibly and saying, well, what here in this text has anything to do with discipling?

Well, really, there isn't anything there about discipling. So could this be an expository sermon? Well, I think it is. But what I'm going to do is draw from this one passage an interesting aspect of the passage and use it as an analogy.

Use it as an analogy of discipleship. And it has to do with this basket that Paul apparently sat in and was let down through a window maybe over the walls of this particular city in Damascus so that Paul could escape certain death.

And so, really, my message is an analogy that's drawn from that basket. Now, we need to understand something about this basket. And it doesn't become very apparent from the English text.

In fact, I don't think any of our English versions will convey this. But the basket was really made out of rope. It was a rope basket.

And, of course, had a rope attached to it. That's how they let him down. So we don't really know if it was some kind of a harness of a type or a pretty heavy-duty, sturdy basket made out of rope.

It's very likely that they used something like that, possibly in that same window. Not for human beings. It wasn't some kind of ancient elevator necessarily, but it was used most likely to carry up produce or food or something up into the window for the occupants in that particular house on the city wall.

And they probably used something like that. And so it was a rope basket and attached to a rope, apparently a very sturdy rope because it was able to hold up the Apostle Paul without breaking and so forth.

And so I want you to consider this rope. If I had one up here, I'd use it as kind of a visual illustration. You know, heavy, thick rope.

Ropes are pretty useful, aren't they? In fact, even in our modern-day technology, it seems like we've come up with some electronic answer, to about everything we do, every task that we do.

And yet still today, a rope is a pretty useful thing to have. You know, it can be a very useful tool. I have ropes at my house. You know, we go camping and use ropes to construct, you know, put up tarps and tents and things like that.

And you use ropes around the house, maybe out in your yard. We just, you know, tie down stuff that you're putting in the back of a pickup or putting on top of your car, you know, and so forth.

Ropes are very useful things, aren't they? Very good for tools. Ropes also, I would have to admit, are pretty good for toys. You know, some of the simplest things are very useful to entertain small children.

Now, we don't always give them ropes. It depends on just how young they are. You know, they might go out and hang themselves on the swing set. But when our boys were little, our first three, Johnny came lately, you know.

But when our first three were young, fairly young, we lived next door to an elderly couple that just became so dear to us. And Mr. Abernathy, he gave the boys some ropes to play with, tie it to the trees and climb up trees and do different things.

And he had a little shed out in the back of his house that he allowed them to go in and get their ropes. He hung them in there for them. So they go in and get their ropes and play with.

So ropes are pretty useful things. They're useful toys. They're certainly useful tools. And I don't know if you have realized this, but ropes have been used in the Bible to accomplish some pretty great things.

Now, I've just read about one where the Apostle Paul, soon after his conversion, was let down out of a window so that he could escape certain death.

And Paul, of course, went on to be one of the greatest missionaries, perhaps the greatest missionaries that has ever lived, and certainly the one who authored so many books in the Bible.

And we would be at a great loss, of course, in Scripture, doctrinally for sure, if we didn't have all of those letters that Paul wrote. So a rope God used to help Paul, to save Paul's life.

You might remember back in the Old Testament that there were some spies that were sent by Joshua into Jericho, remember, to kind of check out their fortifications, see what was going on inside.

And there was a certain, quote, harlot that hid them. Rahab was her name. And when the king, or the, I guess, the head person, whatever they called him, in Jericho, sent troops to Rahab's house, do you have these men?

Turn them over to us. She did what? She let them out over a window by way of rope. Her window, her house, was right on the wall, very similar to this story in Acts.

And she let the two spies out the window so that they could escape very likely a certain death. Now, that's a pretty significant story as well because one of those spies, by the name of Solomon, became Rahab's husband who was the great, great, great grandfather of David through whose lineage the Lord Jesus Christ came.

So God accomplished a pretty tremendous thing with what? A rope. Just a rope. And speaking of David, there is a story in 1 Samuel chapter 19 in verse 12 where Saul, King Saul, is after David and wanting to snuff his life out.

He was a threat to his throne. And he's at his house. David is at his house and Saul has sent his troops to get David and put him to death and Michael, David's wife, let him out of the house by way of a rope so that his life was protected.

So here are three examples in the Bible where God used a rope to protect his choice servants so that they could go on and what they did afterward would be so significant in our lives even today.

So a rope is a pretty useful thing. And so here we have a story here in Acts chapter 9 about a rope being used to save Saul's life. And I said that we could use this rope, this rope and rope basket as an analogy of discipleship.

And here is how we're going to do that. By asking this text three questions. The first question is who made that rope?

Now think about that a minute. Who made the rope? Somebody had to make it. Who made it? The second question and we'll go back and kind of flesh these out as we go along here but the second question is who held the rope?

That's a pretty important question to answer. Who made this rope that was so key, so instrumental, so used by God to protect the life of the Apostle Paul?

And who held that rope as he was being led out through the window down to the ground and to safety? And then the third, of course it's an easy one to answer and you might be thinking what is the analogy here but we'll get to it.

Who was on that rope? On that rope, in that rope basket? Those are three questions that we would ask about the rope.

Who made it? Who held it? Who was on it? Now let's take these three here this morning and I would say to you that the first question leads us to this principle about discipleship and it is the principle of discipline.

The principle of discipline. discipline. The question who made the rope leads us to this principle, the principle of discipline.

And that leads to another question for you. Are you a rope maker? Now in the context of discipleship, discipleship of course is a very integral part of our development as born again believers.

And really as we look at and answer these three questions we are really considering three important facets of discipleship.

And the first one is discipline. The principle of discipline. Somebody went to the trouble and worked at putting together, making this rope.

Using the knowledge that they had, using the knowledge from the trade, and it's very likely that that was their trade, rope making. And using those things, those skills, the knowledge that was available to them, the teaching from other people and so forth, they constructed, made this rope that was strong enough to hold Paul's life and preserve his life.

Now the principle of discipline applies to the individual. Each of us individually. And so I would suggest to you that every one of us as born again believers are in a sense making a rope.

We are making a rope. We are rope makers. What kind of rope maker are you? That is you, you are making your life, developing your life through spiritual disciplines.

And it doesn't really take very much imagination to figure out just what those are. Obviously one of those would be feeding upon, studying the Word of God, God's revelation.

That's an important discipline in the believer's life. And if you are going to make a good rope, your life, then it's going to require studying and knowing God's Word.

Not just studying it for information so that your brain is just expanded with information about the Bible. You can do that, by the way, and there are many who do that. Know a great deal about the Bible, but they don't really have any application.

There's no real application to the life. So it's not just a matter of studying God's Word, feeding upon God's Word, but also allowing God's Word to transform your life through obedience to it, through applying it to your daily life so that what you read, whether it's in your quiet time or other times when you are just studying God's Word, so that what you study, what you read, works itself out in the way you live your life.

It's an important spiritual discipline. It's part of our rope making. I'm glad, by the way, that the rope maker, whoever he was, and the Bible, of course, does not tell us.

I'm glad that the rope maker made a good rope so the Apostle Paul could live. Are you a good rope maker? The spiritual discipline of the Bible reading, there certainly would be the spiritual discipline of prayer, communing with God, that's an integral part, vital part, of our growth, our discipline, our self-discipleship.

It all comes together to make the rope. Make the rope. What kind of rope are you making? Somebody made a rope. What kind of rope maker are you?

Second, the second question is, who held the rope? Who held it? Somebody had to hold the rope. There was a rope maker who constructed a good rope, but there was also someone or someones there to hold the rope and let that rope inch by inch, foot by foot, go out that window so that the Apostle Paul could be gradually and safely let down to the safety of the ground so that he could then escape.

Who held the rope? We don't really know who they were. He doesn't say. The Bible doesn't give us their names. It doesn't give us any description.

I don't know if it was one person, two persons, three or four. You know, if it were me in that basket, I would hope there would be at least a half a dozen holding that rope and letting me out.

But the interesting thing, the significant thing to note here is that this particular passage starts with this question in the minds of the disciples of Jesus Christ there in Damascus.

They weren't too sure about this Apostle Paul or this Saul rather. They still had in their minds, their memory, the things that Saul used to be doing.

Saul used to be wicked, faithful Jew, without any doubt, zealous, certainly, to his faith. But he was wicked and unrighteous and he was a threat to the early Christians and that's all they had and that's what they had in their minds and now here this guy is.

You know, he's out here proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah. This may be some kind of a trick. This may be something he's doing to lure us in so that he can clamp irons on our, cuffs on our hands and send us off to some jail or some execution.

I mean, you've got to know and the Bible implies this. Really, it's more than just an implication. It's pretty clear that these disciples were worried about Saul, did not quite trust him.

Now, I'm not so sure that if I was Saul or Paul and I knew the guys up on the other end of that rope weren't too sure about me, I'm not sure if I would have a whole lot of confidence in them.

But someone held the rope for Saul, for Paul. who held the rope? Well, we don't know. Now, how does that apply to these facets of discipleship?

Well, whereas the first question applies to the principle of discipline, the second question, who held the rope, applies to the principle of discipleship.

Now, those are very similar and yet, they point in a couple of different directions. The principle of discipline points inward to us and our responsibility to be faithful and to do all that God has called us to and avail ourselves of all the resources God has provided for us to discipline our lives so that we will grow in our faith.

But the principle of discipleship points outward to those around us and the responsibility they have to disciple me. And you can look around this room and there are many here, seated here, who have, to some degree or another, a responsibility to be your, your, your, someone who's going to disciple you.

The young people here have Sunday school teachers, really, even the adults have Sunday school teachers that have been called and gifted and kind of commissioned by the church to be the Bible teachers in their Sunday school class, their small group.

And what are they doing? They're discipling through the teaching of God's Word. There are many other contexts of this, of course. I mean, think about it. There is your family.

Husbands, wives, fathers, mothers are, have a responsibility to, to, responsibility to disciple their children. So within the context of the family, we are rope makers for our children, parents.

Chris out here is a youth pastor, our student pastor, and he is a, he has a responsibility to disciple the young people that God has brought to our church and brought into his ministry.

He's a rope maker. So it's in the context of the family, in the context of friends, brothers and sisters in Christ. Do you see yourself in that role of being a discipler?

Now maybe not on a full-time basis. Sometimes opportunities come up where you can give counsel, you can be an encourager, you can share a portion of God's word that God has taught you that would be a help to one of your brothers, one of your sisters who may be struggling with some issue in their life or have some kind of question about direction in life and a myriad of scenarios and we have the opportunity to be a discipler.

Every single one of us have that. We are in a sense holding the rope for our friend, for our family member, for our brother, our sister in Christ in this body of believers.

Now there's a vast majority of believers in the church who just simply do not see themselves in that role as rope holders. But we need to.

We need to. We need to see ourselves as rope holders and that we would be faithful to hold the rope for a brother or a sister.

To be faithful, to be reliable, to be committed to that. What kind of rope holder are you? Now you can see very quickly that the principle of discipleship is dependent a great deal upon the principle of discipline.

If you're going to be a good rope holder then you need to pay close attention to how you're building your rope, making your rope. Make sure you're making a good rope yourself by God's grace and His enabling grace and your determination to be all that you can be in Christ, making a good rope.

Then you can be a good rope holder. And every one of us I believe have been called to be rope holders. There's an interesting passage in Ecclesiastes 4 and verse 12 that sometimes is used in weddings when a young man and a young woman are brought together in holy matrimony.

And sometimes we'll use this passage about a cord that has three strands is not easily broken. And the principle of course, you know, the application is you have that young man and that young woman and the Lord and they're entwined together and then of course that speaks to the strength of that bond, that marriage bond, that relationship.

It's not easily broken and it works. It's true. It's a true enough principle. But I think the principle also by extension applies to me and my brother in Christ and the Lord and if I'm a good rope holder then the three of us together no matter what happens, what kind of struggles there may be in that brother's life, that the three of us are strong and not easily broken.

And so, what kind of rope maker are you? What kind of rope holder are you? And here's the third and final one and we're going to get out here earlier than usual for my preaching.

Don't say amen. Amen. The third one is the, what I would call the principle of obedience, dependence, excuse me, the principle of dependence.

That is a facet of discipleship. Dependence. A kind of humble dependence.

Not just, certainly not just dependence upon the Lord but I am speaking here about our dependence upon another. Trusting someone else.

to help us to be a disciple and it is the answer to this question are you a rope rider? That's kind of a strange way of putting it.

Paul was a, in a sense, a rope rider. He was riding that rope down out of that window, down to the ground. He rode the rope. Now, in order for Paul to do that, you know, I think he would have to have a great deal of faith.

Great deal of faith in someone else. In a physical sense, certainly, a faith in that someone else's strength physically. They're going to be able to hold that rope.

I don't know how big a man Paul was. A lot of speculation about his physical features and appearance. You know, there's been some who've said he was a squatty little fellow, you know, with bad eyesight.

You know, we don't really know anything about that, but I'm sure he was heavy enough that there would be some kind of concern in his mind about whether or not they could hold that rope for me. He had to trust them.

He had to trust the Lord. He had to trust those who were holding the rope for him. And that's why I call this the principle of dependence. Sometimes we just have to trust someone.

That's not always easy. I'm not talking about co-dependence, some unhealthy kind of scenario. But times in our lives where we have to trust someone else to hold us up, to be our discipler, within the body of faith, this, you know, independent kind of mentality that many Americans have, almost to the point of pride, there's just no place for that in the church.

church. We have to depend upon people. We have to trust them. And with that comes the need to be teachable. And perhaps in that sense, we have our biggest problem.

We're not teachable. people. We have our own idea about a certain thing and our own idea about how to do a thing and our own idea about how we might help ourselves when trouble comes or whatever, our decision comes along and we're not really teachable.

people. Then you're not a good rope rider because to get along in this life, God has so designed it where we must be dependent upon others, trust them.

And not just anyone. I think God gives us wisdom on who it is we're trusting. But we are to be dependent.

I remember when I was a kid, and I think I've told this story, not necessarily in connection with this subject. When I was a kid, I used to like to explore caves.

Anybody like to do that? Explore caves? How many of you are just deathly afraid of a cave? Would never go into it? That's a few of you. How about a cave that has no lights, unexplored kind of thing?

And I'm just drawn to that. And our youth, many of our youth have been now two years to Windermere, and there's a cave there. Now, in these days, they've closed off the park that I went back in, and they put up lights and such, and it just totally ruined the cave in my estimation.

But in the days when I was, I mean, a really young teenager, in fact, I don't even know if I was a teenager. I might have been 11, 10, 11. We used to go to Windermere all the time because my dad, of course, was a minister of music, and we would always go to music week at Windermere every year, and not a lot of kids there necessarily, but some, and some from our church.

And I had a friend in my church, he was a lot older than me, and I just kind of, in a sense, kind of idolized him. And he and I decided we would go explore that cave one evening.

Got our flashlights together. That's back in the day when moms would let their kids do things like that, you know. We got our flashlights, and he brought a rope with him, because, you know, in our minds, he wasn't very old either, but he's a lot older than me, and our wisdom as spelunkers, we thought we might need a rope, and so we took a rope back in there, and went way back and explored this cave, and some places were just small little openings, and eventually we got to a place where we had to climb up to a hole in the roof of this one little room in the cave, and so we climbed up there, and went on back, and eventually it got so small, just about the size of our body, and we're just kind of scooting along on our stomach inside this cave.

I'm giving some of you the willies, I know. You're already claustrophobic right now. Panicking. All right, don't panic. This is just a story. It's true, but we're not really there.

Now I'm just scooting along on my stomach, and he's up ahead of me, and I'm behind him, and we just get to the point where we can't go any farther. It's just, there's just no way. And so we had to back out on our stomachs, of course, feet first then, and we get back to that hole in the top of that room, and here's where the trouble came.

My friend had the bright idea that he would tie that rope around my waist, and he would let me down out of that hole.

I didn't have any flashlight, or I couldn't see where I was going. And he'd let me out, and I, and the plan was, when I, my feet touched the floor of that room, I would say, okay, let go.

Well, I was pretty stupid. He's letting me out, and of course, you know, we apparently were not very good knot makers, because that, that rope was getting tighter and tighter around my waist, and digging into my skin, and he'd already let me down quite a ways, and I said, I must just be really close, like maybe six inches or so, and I can just land on my feet.

And so I said, let go. No. And he did. And I probably fell for five feet, and hit that ground, went back, and broke my arm, my wrist, like to never got out of that cave.

I trusted him. Now, it didn't turn out so good, and maybe this is a poor example for trusting the rope holder in your life. But I trusted him, and it's at some point, you just have to trust him.

Now, I did, I guess I would have to admit that I learned something from that experience, and maybe that, in a sense, would make a good analogy for discipleship. Sometimes we learn from the mistakes.

But there are times in your life when you have no other option, but certainly to trust God, trust the one that he has brought into your life to be, for that moment, the rope holder.

And you just trust him. That was Paul. He was a rope rider. He understood the principle of dependence.

And the reason I know that is because if you look at 2 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 24, Paul is going to recollect on this experience in Damascus.

And he does it in a very interesting way, very, very instructive way. In 2 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 24, Paul is talking about his experiences as a believer, and they were pretty tough experiences.

He starts, he says here, five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. That would be pretty tough, wouldn't it? Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.

Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have spent in the deep, in the ocean. That's all pretty tough stuff. I have been on frequent journeys.

In dangers from rivers. Dangers from robbers. Dangers from my countrymen. Dangers from the Gentiles. Dangers in the city. Dangers in the wilderness.

Dangers on the sea. Dangers among false brethren. Just on and on. He goes, I have been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights in hunger and thirst.

Often without food, in cold and exposure. Tough stuff. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.

So he felt the heavy weight burden of the churches that God had used him to plant, establish. The God and Father.

Excuse me. All right. Verse 29. Who is weak without my being weak? That is, I have the same weaknesses.

You're weak. I have weakness. Who is led into sin without my intense concern? Now here's what I want you to see.

If I have to boast. See, he's not boasting in anything here. Until he gets to the end, he says, there's something I could boast about.

If there's anything, if I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness. I boast.

He's saying, if I have to boast anything, not any accomplishment that I have done, not any of these things, horrendous things that I have endured and come out still strong, I would rather boast in weaknesses.

The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I'm not lying. He said, I have weakness.

So he's honest, isn't he? I have weaknesses. I struggle with some things. Therefore, I am dependent. I'm dependent.

Because I can't make it on my own. It's basically what he's saying here. And then he tells us, gives us an example of where he was utterly dependent upon somebody else.

He says, in Damascus, the Ethnarch under Eretus, the king, was guarding the city of the Damascenes, and that's Damascus, in order to seize me.

This is the story in Acts 9. He's relating to it. And I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his hands. Do you get it?

Paul said, here's what I boast in, that I can't make it on my own. If there's anything that we should boast in, it's not our accomplishments, you know, for the Lord or in his church or in life.

It's not even those hardships that I've been able to endure and come out still strong and not failing. We certainly don't boast in those things. We boast in the fact that we can't make it on our own.

Now, that's not very American. We're not taught that in our culture. We are, you know, individualists to a fault as Americans.

And so we don't understand this. But we are dependent upon people. Dependent upon God. Certainly God to disciple us, but God always uses others.

Uses people within the body. To counsel us. To disciple us. To help us with hard decisions. And also to point out to us where we are failing, where we have gone the wrong direction.

It's obvious when you put all this together that the church, our church, would be much stronger, much more healthy if we all understood and applied these three facets of discipleship.

That we would be good rope makers. By God's grace and by our determination to grow in God's word and in prayer, we should be good rope makers.

And as good rope makers, we should then be good rope holders. Genuinely concerned for others. To help them.

Bring them along. To protect them. To counsel. To disciple. And then also understanding that we need to be good rope riders sometimes.

Allow others. Allow others. To pick us up. Where we can't go on our own. What kind of rope maker are you?

What kind of rope holder? What kind of rope rider? What kind of rope rider are you? Thank you.