PURPOSE AND PLACE OF MENTORS. (Part one)

Relationships help us to define who we are and what we can become.
Most of us can trace our successes to pivotal relation ------- Donald Clifton and Paula Nelson

Relationships are one of life’s invaluable essences. It is not so surprising humans have an enduring fixation on the subject. To know and share the bond of committed relationship is a truly irreplaceable experience. No wonder the probable depth of relationships and the real chemistry of how they form and evolve remains an abiding source of ceaseless curiosity to humans. Man is rightly fixated with the bond of relationship, its intricacies and its entanglements, and its denouement. In his affairs and social commune, he constantly finds relationships ineluctable.

SCAFFOLDS TO SUCCESS
Relationships would make you or mar you!

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Source: https://biblicalpatterns.files.wordpress.com

Moreover, the quality of relationships you build, or consolidate is directly proportional to the level of potential within you that will find fulsome expression. God gives exhibit of the desirable pattern of relationship development. After demonstrating its potency and synergy in his co-existence with the Son and the holy Spirit, as a template. For starters, our relationship with the Son is the pivot of our salvation. You are saved, as a believer, by the strength of your redeeming relationship with the Christ of the Most High, the Messiah! God fully portrayed relationships as a pathway to potential release and an avenue to purpose!

Sturdy relationships are pivotal in self-development, creativity exploitation and potential expression. Therefore, any relationship worthy of unstinting investment ought to be objective-specific. If you do not recognize this requirement , you might possibly under-form or mismanage (or even squander) a great many relationships around you. The onus lies on every Christian believer to culture relationships that are for a lucid reason, for a defined season, and to achieve aspects of life’s vision.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. Ecclesiastes 4:9

A servant of God once remarked, ‘Some people are like scaffolds for you to climb up. Once you have risen, their task is complete and they disappear from the scene.’ It is this allusion to scaffolding that would help us properly situate the relationship type: the mentor-protege relationship.

MENTORS? WHO NEEDS MENTORS?

Mentors help equip their proteges, which makes mentoring is a legitimate avenue of attaining maximum potential in every field of human endeavour. The dictionary defines a mentor as an “experienced adviser and supporter: somebody, usually older and more experienced, who provides, advice and support to, and watches over and fosters the progress of, a younger, less experienced person. For the mentor-protege relationship to yield maximum potential, it must necessarily become a deep and fulfilling fellowship.

It should not be a puzzle about the resurgence the issue of mentoring, as the secular world seems to be rediscovering its benefits. The household of faith needs relive the ministry of mentoring, if it must properly harness potential and express talent to its full extent.

Perhaps you genuinely appreciate the testimony of God in your life, but you have as yet to cultivate a meaningful relationship with the Lord. You can retrace your steps right now and cultivate this inestimable relationship. It maybe for you the MISSING LINK! The Lord is waiting for your move!

For relationship of this type to yield maximum potential, it must be cultivated from scratch until it becomes an interactive and productive fellowship.

DO NOT DISTURB: MENTORS AT WORK!

Jeff Woods in his book Better Than Success: 8 Principles of Faithful Leadership wrote, “Jesus provided the definite example of mentoring when he spent three years training the disciples to carry o his ministry. Jesus did not just train the disciples; he spent quality time with them. He ate with them. He traveled with them. He encouraged them. He chastised them. He challenged them. He supported them. He did not just give himself, he gave his whole self. He did not just pass along the extra, he passed along the best. He did not just teach skills, he taught a philosophy. He did not merely call the disciples to a task. He called them to a lifestyle. He gave them everything that they needed to continue the ministry. That is not merely training. That is mentoring”.

Above all, Jesus nurtured the disciples and gave them the opportunity and the equipping to men God knew they were!

It was the disciples who FELLOWSHIPPED with Lord Jesus Christ that knew him, and to whom His ways were revealed! Jesus was, however, a Role Model to those who admired Him for his pithy wisdom and peaceable outlook. They came to admire His forthrightness and in a way, bask in His celebrity, but nothing more. Also, there were those who were happy He took pn the overbearing and oppressive religious establishment of the day. When this cadre of ‘followers’ heard Him tell His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him, they fled, unsaved, untouched, and untransformed.
Of course, the Bible is the pre-eminent mentor’s manual, but Book of Esther is particularly striking. The sequence of the events in the lives of Mordecai and Esther makes the Book of Esther to be possibly described as the quintessential mentor’s manual. I do not necessarily approve of beauty pageants, but the parade of young virgins before King Ahasuerus changed the course of Esther’s life and the Jewish destiny. Every Esther without a Mordecai is another sad, heartache story!

The Book of Esther would not have existed at all if Mordecai, a Benjamite had not stepped forward to be a scaffold for an orphan to climb to the monarchy of an empire spanning over one hundred and twenty seven provinces of Persia and Media from India to Ethiopia.

The manner and disposition of Mordecai the son of Jabir toward Esther teaches every prospective mentor rudimentary mentoring principles:

-Be a scaffold to somebody; seek opportunities for your protege to climb through your access.

-Set the welfare of your ward as priority and pour resources into it.

-If opportunity arises that does not fit your own purpose directly, take advantage of it for someone less privileged in order to accomplish the larger purpose.

-Do not leave your ward midstream or the overwhelming waters of adversity would wash away your effort.

-If you help your ward become illustrious, then you multiply your strength. Because if you pour your life into other’s life, then you gain back more than one life in return.

The other striking example is Moses. Moses came to mentor Joshua in the most extraordinary circumstances. The story is the stuff of enduring epics!

Nothing exalts a mentor like implicit obedience to God and intrinsic love for protege (or ward). There was once an African Head of government who even at his deathbed reneged from naming his successor fully aware of the precarious political balance the country was mired in. So, in terms of leadership, in a sense, he died intestate. Today, his Franco-phone jewel, once touted as the bastion of peace and economic prosperity in the West African sub-region, is chaotic and in embroiled in strife.

Moses, as the leader of Israel, on the other hand, had no such qualms. This man showed the sterner stuff of unqualified leadership when he petitioned the Lord as the Lord disclosed his imminent transition:

“Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, who may go out before them, who may 
lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the LORD may not be like sheep which have no shepherd”. 
Numbers 27:15, 16 (NKJV).

What a wise leader! What a complete unselfish act! Oh, Moses could have rather protested the very matter of fact way the Lord disclosed his impending transition or he may have sunk into depression. But he did no such thing; he turned his mind at once to the people who were the essence of his leadership, in fact, of his manhood-the people of God. He asked God for a successor.

Timothy, the son of Eunice, could never have quantified the full impact of Apostle Paul in his pastoral calling and public ministry. What did the young pastor have to offer a congregation more worldly-wise than he? The dead weight of inexperience would have assured that the young minister would never express the fullest extent of his gifts, abilities and potential without help. Without a seasoned Paul in the background, the thorny tongues of scoffers in the city of Ephesus would have overwhelmed the ministry of Timothy.

MAKING OF A STAR

A mentor may not be well known or a star, but he or she must feel uninhibited to raise an achiever of stellar accomplishments.

Barnabas offers a good example. He played a crucial role in the life and later ministry of Saul of Tarsus who later became Paul the apostle. Barnabas saw something in Saul of Tarsus the other disciples overlooked!

"And when Saul had come to Jerusalem; he tried to join the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and did not believe that
he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles". Romans 9:26-27 (NKJV)

Barnabas paved way of Saul’s entry into a circumspect circle of believers. By bringing the converted Saul of Tarsus in person to the apostles, he gave to Saul and his yet-to established ministry invaluable leverage. This right hand of fellowship brought Saul to a level of complete communal acceptance, fellowship, and attendant spiritual growth.

Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a
whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in
Antioch. Acts 11:25, 26 (NKJV)

Barnabas in a sense stood as surety for a man other believers were reluctant to accept. By this singular act of generosity, Barnabas conferred legitimacy on the testimonial of the extraordinary conversion of a notorious rabble-rouser.

In contemporary times as well, we can cite example of man who was unafraid to raise a star in the sphere of American literature. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was mentored by his friend, the novelist and critic William Dean Howells. Samuel Langhorne Clemens and William Dean Howells were both distinguished writers in their individual rights, but his friend and mentor cannot lay the same claim to fame or genius, as did Mark Twain, was mentored by his friend, the novelist and critic William Dean Howells. Samuel Langhorne Clements and William Dean Howells were both distinguished writers in their individual rights, but his friend and mentor cannot lay the same claim to fame or genius, as did Mark twain.

It was Mark Twain who gave the world two books almost every child has read for the subject of literature, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), both master pictures of life on and along the Mississippi River in that era. People have said that the genius of Mark Twain was that he understood the moral realism of childhood.
The other example is between Sir Humphrey Davy and Michael Faraday.

Michael Faraday, an English physical scientist, achieved more fame and accomplishments than Sir Humphrey Davy to whom he was an assistant early in his career. Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction and many other important electrical and magnetic phenomena. Today people talk about the “Faraday effect” and measure in Faraday, all named after a former laboratory apprentice.

ALWAYS REMIND YOURSELF THAT THE QUALITY OF THE RELATIONSHIPS YOU FOSTER IS PROPORTIONAL TO THE LEVEL OF THE CREATIVE POTENTIAL THAT YOU CARRY WITHIN THAT WILL COME TO FULL EXPRESSION.

Thanks for stopping by.