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.

Keeping an ‘open’ mind

A teacher encouraged an open, teachable mind. Another one warned not to have a mind so open that all my brains would fall out! Both sounded like good advice, but can anyone do both? I didn’t think so.

There are two places in the Bible that refer to an open mind. Neither one uses those words, but that is what they are talking about. The first one refers to a group of Jews at Berea . . .

“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.” (Acts 17:11–13)

The word ‘noble’ caught my eye so I looked it up in Greek. It originally meant high born but came to have a more general connotation of being open, tolerant, generous, having the qualities that go with “good breeding.” Since this term didn’t fit the Jews in Berea, it was used in its metaphorical sense to describe people who were willing to hear new ideas and evaluate them. Noble means to have an open, teachable mind.

Paul taught by quoting the Old Testament and showing how it applied to Jesus Christ. These Bereans took Paul’s teaching seriously enough to not only examine and evaluate it, but to do this every day.

Their eager enthusiasm was not gullibility. As one commentary says, “their examination parallels the best in human jurisprudence, unbiased investigation to get at the truth” resulting in a large number of Jews and Greeks, prominent women as well as men, probably both God-fearers and pagans, believing the message and becoming Christians.

As for the open-minded, brains-falling-out warning, I thought of all those who fall for telephone and email scams and for false teachers. Being teachable does not mean believing everything I hear. I need to check it out. Common sense might help, but not always. (For instance, does it make sense to believe in the resurrection of the dead?) Instead, like those in Berea, what I hear or am taught needs to be compared to what God says, carefully, thoroughly, and continually. That is, I need a standard, a plum line for measuring truth.

Of course, this leads to another issue — the reliability of Scripture, a huge topic for another day. Today, I need to check out things I heard this weekend, some from a confused Christian, some from a liberal church member, and some from a cult member. I could close my mind to all three (‘consider the source’) but that is not being noble. Besides, my belief system should stand the test of biblical scrutiny even when listening to the ideas of others. Who knows what God might teach me as I do.

Besides all that, God says shutting my mind is not very noble either. It could indicate a great deal of pride, as if I know it all and everyone else is not too smart. For anyone who thinks like this, He says . . .

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” (1 Corinthians 1:26–31)

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Lord Jesus, from these words, You warn me that being noble is not about birth or IQ. It is about humility and knowing where my faith comes from — rooted in the Holy Spirit and willing to admit that without relying on You, my knowledge, study, and any other good qualities are anything but noble.

“Wise up” is a bigger challenge than it seems . . .

Wisdom is often defined as appropriately using the knowledge one has in life’s situations. This does not mean a person must be well-educated or even well-informed to be wise.

The Bible uses a different definition. It says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Not only that, those Old Testament books called “wisdom literature” say that it is impossible for an impure heart to know divine truth. Tozer explains that wisdom will not enter a malicious soul or dwell in a person that loves sin. He adds that the Holy Spirit of discipline flees deceit and unrighteousness.

So wisdom is not a matter of having more knowledge, or simply ‘smartening up.’ Instead, books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes teach that true spiritual knowledge comes from heavenly wisdom as a gift from the Holy Spirit to those who fear God. “This wisdom is always associated with righteousness and humility and is never found apart from godliness and true holiness of life.”

The psalms often feature instruction about finding wisdom and the qualifications for having it:

“Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord! Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.” (Psalm 25:4–10)

From these few verses, God speaks to me. Wisdom requires knowing the ways and truth of God because He is my salvation. It is on God whom I wait, not going ahead with what I think is right. Wisdom relies on His mercy, love, and forgiveness. It is teachable and comes to those who are humble, not to know-it-alls. Wisdom knows that God is loving and faithful to those who obey Him.

I remember being in an adult Bible study class in a well-known church in California. This was about forty years ago. We were grouped with several leaders in the church plus an elderly Spanish lady who didn’t say much, but what she did say startled us with wisdom. She didn’t have any theological degrees or formal education, but she knew the Lord. Her teachable humility and the power of the Holy Spirit made her the wisest person at the table.

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Jesus, You are teaching me that as important as correct doctrine is, wisdom is not about being correct but about being yielded to You, trusting You with all my heart. Thank You for the lessons and examples You have put in my life. Keep it up; I’m not there yet!