A Mentor’s Words

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Last time I shared the blessing of a mentor whose steady help came to me mostly through letters written the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper. As a result, I have a treasure-trove of mentor-wisdom from which I continue to draw.

What follows here is the answer to the question, how does a good mentor mentor? The statements below are pulled from much longer letters, but they serve as a sampling of tried and true wisdom funneled from God through my Aunt Joyce to the rest of us. Here’s some of what she wrote:

  • Aunt Joyce's letters, 2The Lord sandwiches blessings and joys between times of changing us, which get us ready to live with him for eternity. He wants every individual to become like him and is helping us with that.
  • The fruit of the Spirit is… peace. I thank God when I feel peace [during tough times], because then I know it can’t be from any source other than his Spirit.
  • Although God has put you in difficult circumstances, I’m praying your praise of him and thanksgiving to him will be renewed, even now, where you are.
  • God doesn’t promise to remove our grief or burdens, but he does promise to sustain us through them, even through the bewildering unknown.
  • God is especially watchful over old people and children, while he is teaching and growing the in-betweens.
  • I think financial burdens can be the utmost of tests. You could lose the home you’ve lovingly cared for and the beautiful gardens you’ve planted, and many other things difficult to surrender. You can weep, but be sure you do it after crawling under his soft, protective wings.
  • I know you’re spending significant time with the One who has all the answers to our questions and the power to execute them in his perfect way. He has all we need, but so often we don’t even ask.
  • You may remember that I have been through and experienced the value of lessons learned from God’s loving hands, but I didn’t always recognize it as his love at the time.
  • I’m learning the difference between knowing the Word and knowing the Author of it. Feel free to knock on his door!
  • When we do the praying, God will do the rest. Don’t ever doubt that.
  • We are helpless to change anyone else. Only God can. Our part is to love them and pray for them. Simultaneously we should be asking God what he’s trying to teach us in that process. And then we should listen.
  • When we’re learning lessons in life, it’s never easy and often seems endless, but it helps to remember the Lord is on our side, listening to even our weakest cry.
  • Prayer doesn’t necessarily change our struggles, and it certainly doesn’t change God, but it does change us, when we pray.
  • Thank you, Margee, for letting me share my heart and for the privilege of having a part in yours.

“The Teacher was considered wise, and [she] taught the people everything [she] knew. [She] sought to find just the right words to express truths clearly.” (Ecclesiastes 12:9-10)

A Mentor’s Methods

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The TeacherSince I’ll be traveling for a few days, I’m re-posting 3 blogs about mentoring and what a good mentor looks like. Here’s the first:

Mentoring programs are big nowadays, but they’ve existed since ancient times. Elijah mentored Elisha. Moses mentored Joshua. Elizabeth mentored Mary. Paul mentored Timothy. And of course Jesus mentored his 12 disciples.

I’ve had several impactful mentors through the years, my parents among them. But the one who walked me through my adolescent immaturities and stuck with me until I was 60 was my Aunt Joyce (married to Dad’s brother). She let me live with her family three different summers in the 1960’s, gently counseling, instructing, and chiding me as needed.

My respect for her grew as I got older, taking on more common characteristics with her: marriage, motherhood, and other adult ups and downs. Aunt Joyce never preached. Instead she coaxed me into new ways of thinking for myself. She shared examples from her own life and was careful to include failures as well as successes. The fact that she would disclose her personal struggles to me always felt like a gift.

Aunt Joyce, 1Aunt Joyce never labeled herself a mentor, and it wasn’t until we’d been “working together” for years that I realized I was her mentoree. She had others, too, and in her later years complete strangers approached her through church contacts, requesting mentoring. She never turned them away and viewed each relationship as a holy privilege.

One of the reasons Aunt Joyce was effective was that she didn’t say, “You should… do this or that.” Instead she’d say, “Here’s something you might want to try,” or “This approach worked for me in similar circumstances.” She made it seem like the two of us were in it together. And if my steady stream of questions and needs drained her, she never let on.

Of course the ultimate mentor is God, and he’s willing to partner with any of us desiring to be his mentorees. As with all good mentors, though, he leaves it up to us to take advantage of it.

Adam and Eve had it made with their daily mentoring sessions with him in the cool of each Eden evening. But despite their Mentor’s flawless advice, they only agreed with 90% of it. The 10% they tossed aside made a radical difference in their quality of life. We can contradict what our mentors tell us, ignore their counsel, or follow their advice and watch our lives change for the better.

Aunt Joyce lived a long, fruitful life and was a valuable mentor for one reason: her advice was always right-on. That’s because it came down to her from the Lord, which then allowed her to give her opinion with confidence.

I’ve tried to follow Aunt Joyce’s example in lots of ways, but the One she most hoped I would emulate was God himself, the ultimate in Mentors.

“One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.” (Psalm 145:4)

Pour on the Power

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LightningLast summer during a wild electrical storm, a lightning bolt struck a tall tree in our subdivision. Its electric current entered the tree with such force it split the whole thing in two, slicing from top to bottom and sending massive chunks of wood flying.

Much of the bark exploded off the trunk, and we clearly saw where the lightning had entered and exited, leaving a charred hole three feet tall.

After studying the ravaged tree, we went home and researched on the internet. Now I know where the phrase “lightning speed” came from. One bolt of lightning races a distance of several miles from a storm cloud to the ground in milliseconds, packing a punch the equivalent of an atomic bomb: over 100 million volts of electricity and a trillion watts of power.

BarkMoist tree sap becomes vaporized by temperatures above 60,000 degrees, which is 5 times hotter than the sun’s surface. The resulting steam is what blasts the bark right off the trunk.

What an incredible display of power! And all of it originates with Someone we know personally: our Creator-God. He uses his power in lots of different ways, and amazingly, uses it for good in our lives when we ask him.

 

lightningTo see the result of one lightning strike is to be visually reminded that our God is indeed powerful beyond imagination. No one can come up against that kind of power and win. No one can out-do God. He can use his unmatched power to do anything he wants, and incredibly, what he wants to do is help us.

But that raises some important questions: “If he’s so powerful, why doesn’t he answer all my prayer requests? Why didn’t he prevent that accident from happening? Why didn’t he heal my loved one from cancer? Why didn’t he stop me from making that terrible mistake?”

God is, indeed, omnipotent. No force in heaven or on earth is more powerful than he. But just because he possesses such power doesn’t mean he always has to use it.

Lifting.I think of a young daddy who works out regularly at the gym and has enough muscle-power to lift a barbell with hundreds of pounds on each end. When he goes home to cradle his newborn, however, he keeps his power in check.

God is careful with his power, too, and doesn’t always give us the reasons why he does or doesn’t use it. He simply wants us to trust that his judgment is superior to ours. This isn’t easy, but it stretches our faith and coaxes us to depend on him more as we endure.

photo 1(3)I like knowing my Father is omnipotent. And if I ever doubt it, I can walk down the road and look at a certain tree.

 “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty.” (1 Chronicles 29:11)