The Vitality of Mentorship

Hi everyone! Yeah, I know. Long time, no blog post. My apologies. I think that I am going to have to make these bi-weekly for awhile. Spring is a busy season for me.

I don’t know this for sure, but I have a hunch that most of the devoted Christians out there didn’t get where they are in there walk with God because they got up one morning and said, “ I want to be a devoted Christian.” I know that for me, and for many other people, it wasn’t like that at all. Often it’s a slow process. For me, it took God about a year to take me from living for myself to truly living for Him. And He used a lot of things to guide me to the path of truly following Him - books, Youtube videos, reading my Bible….. But, definitely the thing that helped me the most was - you guessed it - mentorship.

Before I went to the MACHS homeschool conference in 2017, I didn’t know too many godly Christian teens. But when I went to the conference, I met several of them. They were great in mentoring me and encouraging me in my walk with God. The way they live was a good example to me. Their godly examples, kindness, and mentoring played a big part in bringing me close to the Lord.

Like evangelism, I don’t believe that mentorship is optional for believers. I believe that it is something that every believer should take part in. I’m not expecting every Christian to have 3+ people that they have mentoring sessions with for an hour every week. But I think that we can all at least spend a few minutes of our time, whether it’s at church, or when we have people over to our houses, or when we make telephone calls, to mentor one another, to encourage and exhort one another.

I’m afraid that too many Christians, myself included, spend too much time talking about the things that are temporary and not enough time discussing the eternal. I realize that talking about earthly things is sometimes a necessity, but if those things are our focus, then we will get sidetracked.

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.

Colossians 3:1

No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.

2 Timothy 2:4

I’d like to talk more about how we can go about mentorship in a later post, but for now, I want to talk about why mentorship is so important.

The natural tendency for human beings is to “go with the flow.” To do what the majority is doing. And the majority, or the world, does not believe what Christians believe. The world says that whether or not God exists, He is irrelevant in our everyday lives. And the world urges Christians to adopt a more subtle version of this view. “Hey, Christians!” the world says, “Come see what we have to offer you! If you do what we say, you can have it all! And, you can even have you little Christianity thing on the side, as long as you keep it in its place. Win win!”

In a world where the current is strong, trying to push us away from God’s truth, how can we go the opposite way? With God’s strength, and, by banding together. We need to be “knit together in love” (Colossians 2:2) When we are continually encouraging and building each other up, we become stronger and sharper. Stronger to push through the current, sharper to cut through the enemy’s lies.

Proverbs 27:17 says:

As iron sharpens iron,

So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.

Iron can sharpen iron, but only when the pieces of iron are rubbing against each other. No sharpening can happen when they are just sitting on a table doing nothing.

Paul is a great example of someone who mentored others. He wrote letters to many churches and individual believers, exhorting them. A good example of mentoring can be found in the letters he wrote to Timothy.

We are commanded to mentor/exhort/encourage other believers in many verses in the Bible. Here are just a few:

But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.

Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.

1 Thessolonians 5:8-11

Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity.

1 Timothy 5:1-2

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:24-25

That’s all I can say for today, but Lord willing I will make future blog posts on this topic.