Mentor Like Jesus - Prayer as Practice

I would rather follow someone who can really pray rather than really teach.  Sermons are great, but earth shaking prayer gets me every time.

My dad's mother, Ila Mae, was the best pray-er I have ever known.  I used to listen at her bedroom door when she would stay with us.  She knew the Bible well but was not the best theologian.  She had a strong faith, and that was evident in her prayers.  She displayed the faith she claimed in her earnest prayers.

Followers today need more than "true" words.  The experience of our faith through the discipline of prayer expands the truthfulness of Scripture into the expansiveness of our life in God.  Prayer demonstrates the integral bond between what we know and what we trust.  I must, at all times, live beyond what I know for that is the field in which faith grows.  My backyard of known truths cannot possibly offer the potentiality of the fallow field of faith.  Prayer moves us toward the harvest of faith.

Does your prayer life demonstrate how much faith you have?

Mentor Like Jesus - Denial is a Powerful Thing

Sometimes the truth eludes us because we cannot apprehend it.  Sometimes the truth evades us due to timing or misunderstanding.  Sometimes the truth is there all along, but we do not want to accept it.

Denial, have you ever been there?  At one moment you are so certain, and then the next a whole new reality has broken through.  Denial is like a personal camouflage for our hearts.  Those things too painful to see can at times become invisible.

The crucifixion played a role in destroying the denial of Jesus' disciples.  It really was that bad.  Jesus really did die.  Their hopes had been dashed.  They did not imagine a suffering savior; they awaited a militant, prophetic, priestly king.

With hopes crushed, and denial destroyed, resurrection brought reality into focus.  Clarity can do the same for us today.

"Open my eyes that I may see . . . "

Truth and The Perception of It

I have an intense interest in the difference between reality and perception.  My fleeting attempts at understanding theoretical physics are often stymied by my sense that perception is the benchmark and not reality.

The other night I was walking through the house with no lights on.  On this dark evening, I perceived that a pair of socks was our cat.  Did my perception change the socks?  In the multiverse of possibilities were my cat and my socks both there?  This reality clinging to the socks and the other petting a cat.

Does the vision of a color blind person change the reality of the colors in the rainbow?

So, if we work within our own perception, how can we distinguish the reality from the perceived?

Mentor Like Jesus - Does truth matter any more?

Truth, what is truth?  Is it knowable?  Is it subjective?  Is it important?  Is it overrated?

What is your take on truth?  Truth is __________________.

Mentor Like Jesus - Truth at the Core

Truth is a mysterious subject.  Truth can bring you freedom, or ensnare you.  Truth can build up or destroy.  Truth can be subjective or objective.  Truth can be elusive or apparent.  Truth can . . .

At the heart of mentoring like Jesus stands a monument to truth.  Not just biblical truth but social, relational, experiential, perceptual, educational, personal, and emotional truth.  Truth that stands as vanguard over the entire mentoring process.  Truth that protects the mentor and the mentoree.  There is no acceptable practice of mentoring that is not hedged by truth.

Mentors who do not live within the truth are dangerous.  Manipulation, personal motivation, cultic control, domination, intimidation, and pain flow from untruthful mentoring.  I know.  I've been there.

Have you been there too?  Have you been fooled?  Have you been hurt?

Mentoring should stand up to the scrutiny of the Word of God, historical perspective, cultural context, submission to authority, personal moral conduct, validation of a Biblical result, and the community of Faith.