Awaking Wonder: Becoming the Mentor Your Child Needsনমুনা

Mentoring Means Laying One’s Life Down

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

When I became a believer, my whole life was transformed by studying and learning from the life of Christ as recorded in the Bible. His model of love, humility, and coming as one who serves was exactly opposite from what I had learned in the world. 

Jesus’ method to reach the world with His ways and truth was to live with, teach, train, and send out His disciples to the world to bring His light and redemption. 

Christ’s life became the model for teaching my very own disciples, my children. His disciples were never perfect, but were flawed human beings, and yet all had been transformed by His messages to such an extent that they were willing to die for His kingdom. I did not look for perfect behavior in my own children but for heartfelt responses, growth, a movement in the direction of maturity and strength. Patience and a belief that serving them mattered kept me going forward. 

As a mother, I realized that if I was going to model Jesus to my children, I would need to develop a grid that said, “I am to be a servant leader to my children. As I follow Him, I understand it will cost me my life. I am to give myself as He so generously gave himself.” And that this—following His ways—was a part of my own serving and worship of Him. 

Teaching my children was not ultimately to please them or to deserve their affirmation. It was out of worship to Christ, to serve Him and emulate Him. Teaching children is a very long-term journey and it is fraught with difficulties and self-doubt along the way. I was often confronted in my heart with the deep selfishness and lack of patience and maturity I had brought into parenting. But the attitude with which we come to our children will affect much of their response to us as teachers. 

As I look back on many years as a mother, a mentor of others, and an educator, the giving generously of my life and putting aside my expectations was exceedingly important to having the impact that I was able to achieve. It is a grid or lens through which to see my life: “I am the teacher, the servant leader, the parent. Even Jesus laid down—put aside, gave up, sacrificed—His life, so if I am to reach my children, who are my disciples, as He reached His, there will have to be a giving up of my own expectations, rights, and freedom to serve them.”

Is this laying down of your life something you need to do today, for the very first time . . . or maybe the nine thousandth?