Mentors

I Timothy 6:11-21, II Timothy 1:1-7

Dear God,

Thank You for the mentors and advisors that You have brought into my life. Thank You for all who have taught me, both deliberately and by default. Thank You for those mentors and advisors who are a delight, as well as for those who have taught me simply because they are difficult. Thank You for the time, care, constructive criticism, and challenge each has brought into my life.

There are those mentors You have brought into my life who delight me. Thank You for their investment of themselves into my life. Seeing these folks has always been a cause for joy. I find my spirit responding like that of John in his mother Elizabeth's womb when the pregnant Mary came into their home. Elizabeth felt John leap within her. Something within me leaps with joy when I am privileged to spend a few moments with these dear people.

Thank You for serendipitous moments of inspiration, guidance, and care that so many have invested in me. Thank You for my friend who is always optimistic, encouraging, and believes in me. Thank You for my friend who never misses a moment to pray with me. Thank You for my friend who asks the deep, probing questions that intensify and enhance my journey of conscience to be like You.

However, there are those colleagues and acquaintances who are more difficult and challenging to me because of the sense of conflict and adversity they bring into my life. I would often seek to avoid these encounters. I shun relationships with such. But You, in Your mercy and grace allow these precious one to cross my path. They often love You no less than I, but my instinct is to label them as the problem, simply because I find them difficult. I find myself wanting to engage in the extremes of fixing them or ignoring them.

These difficult relationships are unpleasant. Teach me a spirit of gratitude for the difficult people in my life. Help me to remember that it is not my duty to change them, but to allow You to change me–often through them. Help me to understand the gift with which difficult relationships present me. Remind me of the humbling truth that I may represent another’s difficult relationship. Any holiness that You are working in me is not best revealed in ease and comfort, rather amidst adversity, testing, and difficulty. Reveal and refine Your holiness in my character through the frustrating and the challenging relationships of my life. Allow my righteousness, cultivated through adversity, to "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of my Father" (Matthew 13:43).

Thank You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for all who are tools in Your Hand to shape me toward Christlikeness.

Amen.