OKAY… SO… I was going to begin by addressing why it was so important to my mentor (Nehemiah) to remind God that he was part of a group called “your people”.[1] It is easy to relate this to the new war that has broken out between two groups who both claim to be the real people of God tracing their ancestry back to the same father, Abraham. And it is very personal to consider how real it is in us to long to be part of a people, or, as my wife calls it, “my tribe”. Even in our daycare, the children are always lovin’ on each other with what good “friends” they are, or trying to wound each other by declaring, “You’re not my friend!!!”
EVERYTHING in life makes a big deal of us being “a people”. Every one of us when we were born increased our “family” (our first people) by one. We discovered that family meant more people than the ones we lived with every day. We found that as we moved through life there were some people who became friends, and we had seasons where we could not bear the thought of losing them. Strange as it may seem, this is because we were made by God to be his people, and all the damage done by Satan and sin to steal, kill, and destroy only proves that being “your people” to God is a central aspect of being human. It also explains why being “a people” can be so dysfunctional, self-focused, and hateful towards outsiders when we try to be a people apart from God our Creator and Father.
HOWEVER, I was not able to dwell on this very long before I noticed something else that was far more piercing (I smile to write this because I suspect that I am entering another sequence of the Mandelbrot Fractal that will end up leading me back to how I fit in to “your people”![2]): My mentor’s connection to God’s people was as a man who was not… (drum roll please)… MENTORED!
THAT’S RIGHT, Nehemiah suddenly appears on the scene of God’s work in restoring his people to their home without any list of mentors who trained him and passed on their wisdom, knowledge, and maturity.
AND SUDDENLY it made so much sense why it had to be that way. God had promised decades prior, “‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.’”[3] David had been one of these shepherds much earlier, a man after God’s own heart, and he also did not have mentors who taught him how to love God and trust in him. He learned to know God in solitary places while watching his father’s sheep. In other words, David also had no mentors. The way he knew God was from personally getting to know God!
THIS REMINDED ME that just before addressing God with the identity of “your people”, Nehemiah had first confessed the sins of the people (including him and his family) as the reason they were in such trouble. It was because they had forsaken their family relationship with God, broken faith with their covenant, and delighted in adulterous idolatry with the gods of the nations. They continued acting like “a people” in their fellowship in sin, but they had forsaken their first love, to be “your people” to Yahweh, the only true God.
IT SUDDENLY became clear that my years of complaining to God about not giving me godly mentors was sinful. The Bible is full of examples of unmentored men who served God in the right time and place as men after God’s own heart. This is not because it is wrong to be mentored. And it is not because being mentored produces an inferior relationship with God to not being mentored (Timothy is a prime example of a man with a vibrant relationship with God under the fatherly mentoring of the apostle Paul).
IN FACT, it is quite clear that the healthy pattern of discipling leaders in the church is to involve an unbroken chain of mentoring. Paul said to Timothy, “and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”[4] Paul mentored Timothy, Timothy was to “entrust” the same teaching “to faithful men” (which would require spending time with them as their mentor), these “faithful men” would need to be “able to teach” others, meaning that Timothy would mentor them not only to live for Christ, but to mentor others in how to do so, and there were “others” that included both the full number of disciples in each location, but also some men among those believers who would also be mentored to be mentors. Yes, that is the way it SHOULD be!
THE PROBLEM is that the chain keeps being broken by weak links, mostly men who do not want to be personally responsible for having a faith in God that others can lean on (yes, that is such a thing). Because of this, we keep coming back to scenarios in real life where men have not been mentored. And, today, I needed to acknowledge that God expecting me to be a man after his own heart without mentors to disciple me is completely consistent with how he has so often worked with others. He has every right to do the same with me.
I NOW have a double aim in getting to know Nehemiah. One side is to fully embrace and receive everything God is giving me through his word in the life of this shining example of a man after God’s own heart. Or, to say it another way, I must let Nehemiah mentor me in how to serve God and his people without any mentors!
THE OTHER aim is to “Consider him (Jesus) who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted,”[5] so I never forget that I AM being mentored by my heavenly Father as I am “looking to Jesus” through the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
WHAT GOD
has done to clear up my complaining, and to guide me through confession, is to
settle that I have my place in his kingdom to live and learn as a man after his
own heart because it is HIS heart, and he is sharing it with me! And that means
going into this day prepared to love and care for everyone he brings my way with
the expectation that my love will be after the heart of his love. And knowing I
have loved others as Jesus has loved me will be the thing that puts a smile on
my face for the way the Triune God helps me to do so.
© 2023
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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