Many Mentors

Before Christ, I was a know-it-all, often correcting my high school teachers and anyone else I thought was wrong. After Christ, that attitude messed with my spiritual growth. Over the years, learning that I need to learn has been a most challenging discipline. Finding a mentor is challenging also. Moving often didn’t help. How many mentors can keep up with someone whose address keeps changing? Never mind that smarty-pants attitude.

Discipleship is encouraged in Christian churches. I wanted to do it but didn’t see my own need for it. Eventually, God showed me several things. One is that only Jesus can mentor anyone and everyone. He is omniscient; no one knows more than He does or can do anything good that He cannot surpass. I do not know it all!

Second, when a person keeps moving from city to city or even country to country, they need more than one person to do their mentoring. More about that later.

When Paul went to Corinth, people were saved and needed to be taught the things of God. He didn’t rush in, hold an evangelistic meeting, then leave . . .

Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. (Acts 18:8–11)

These verses have me thinking about discipleship and how it has been part of my life. My first Christian mentor was a woman. God used her to teach me about sin; what it is and the hold it has on people’s lives. She also was a powerful example to show me that death and loss are not to be feared. Then we moved . . .

Yet God provided mentors along the way. With more than two dozen moves, I can mention only a few of my disciple-makers. God used a pastor to show how doctrinal differences cannot ruin fellowship yet can be debated in humor and love. God used a friend to teach me about perseverance and how to deal with false teachers. He used my husband and my sister to teach me about giving and that I cannot out-give God. He used another pastor and two friends to teach me that His love is unconditional, pure and complete. He used an entire congregation to show me that love is action, not mere words.

God also showed me that people are different than I am for many reasons. One of them is that He gives various motivations through spiritual gifts that come in various strengths. One of those gifts is ‘teacher’ — often defined as a person with a hunger for information and a desire to pass that information to others. The downside of that gift is a human tendency to think that knowing truth is good enough, neglecting to personally applying it. For that, I need others, like the ‘encourager’ who will say “And what are you going to do about it?”

He has sent people into my life to mentor me in other ways too. The ‘comforter’ who cares about feelings (and I tend to not) is my example when others are suffering and need to know God loves them. The ‘server’ who cares about getting things done gets me off my backside and into the kitchen or on to some other task. The ‘administrator’ helps me see God’s ways of planning projects and completing them, delegating if necessary.

My teaching/information-gathering tendencies are coupled with a strong desire that people know and understand God. The word used in the Bible is ‘prophecy’ which is about knowing and declaring the will of God. This is a black and white mentality and not popular just as most of God’s Bible prophets were not popular. 

A person with this gift sets high standards and often feels that they cannot measure up. Turning inward and having pity-parties are common. However unwelcome this gift is to most who have it, when combined with any of the other gifts, it enhances them to focus on the will of God.

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Jesus, with all this understanding, You have given me a good lesson in why the ordinary idea of a mentor or disciple-maker has never quite worked for me and why I have trouble doing follow-up with new Christians. I jump in with information-overload, push for a radical focus on You, and am impatient with those whose greater interest is in feeling good. Now that I get that, are You asking me to change? You know me and my tendency to be satisfied with just knowing something. Show me how/what You want me to do with what You are showing me today and give me motivation and opportunities to put it to good use.