Transcript
As I said a few moments ago, we're picking up this morning where we left off last week.
And last week we looked at two of three principles that Paul spells out here in 1 Thessalonians
Chapter 2 that we need to understand not only but also embrace if we're going to become
all that God invites us to be.
Quick review, the first is we need both a father and a mother if we are going to become
fully mature in Christ.
Paul puts it this way, verses 6 and 7, as apostles of Christ we could have been a burden
to you, but we were gentle among you like a mother caring for her little children.
And then later on, verse 11 and verse 12, for you know that we dealt with each of you
as a father deals with his own children encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives
worthy of God who calls you into his kingdom and glory.
We saw last week that a mother to the degree to which she embraces the feminine, the feminine
principles of communion and integration provides a safety and an environment in which a child
or an individual can be nurtured to find the stability and the security from which that
child or that grown up can eventually do life.
And a father to the degree to which the father embraces the masculine principle of separation
and differentiation calls the child forth, enables the child to know what his or her
values are and empowers them to stand on those values over against all the conflicting values
all the way around. A child needs a mother's influence as well as a father's influence.
That's why historically cultures around the world have had coming of age ceremonies for
young boys. Think of the Jewish notion of the bar mitzvah. In my father's day you became
a man when you finished school at grade 6 at the age of 12 and you joined the workforce.
And one of the areas of confusion in today's world and one of the reasons we have this
undefined drawn out teenage years is because mostly in Western culture we don't have clearly
defined coming of age ceremonies. And so we make them up as we go along. For some it's
getting their driver's license at the age of 16. For some of us, for some it's being
allowed to go to the liquor store to the bar and get your own liquor and for some manhood
is defined by your first sexual experience or things of that nature. And then we wonder
why there is such confusion in today's society about what it is to be a man or what it is
to be a woman. Both spiritually and in the natural we need the influence of the feminine,
we need the influence of the masculine. And then Paul we saw defines the masculine in
this passage with three words. The words are encouraging, comforting, and urging. For you
know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children. Encouraging,
comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God who calls you into his kingdom and
glory. And if it's a mother's job to embrace a child, make for a safety zone, and to meet
the deepest needs of security in that child's life, then the job of a father is to challenge
the child out of there to enable the child to stand. And that means encouraging him to
be all that he can be. It means comforting him or her when trouble or failure has overtaken
despite the best efforts. And of course urging in the sense of listen this isn't about your
comfort this isn't about your security this is about the kingdom of God and the well being
of other people. We need the masculine and the feminine. The feminine protects and shelters
and comforts in a motherly fashion. The masculine draws us out and challenges us to become all
that we can be. And that brings us this morning then to a third principle that Paul talks
about. I introduced it very briefly last week. Asked you to do your homework and of course
you all did that. This process must be bathed it must be bathed in selfless sacrificial
love. Listen again to how this is worded in this particular scripture passage. As apostles
of Christ we could have been a burden to you but we were gentle among you like a mother
caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with
you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well because you had become so dear to
us. Surely you remember brothers our toil and hardship. We work night and day in order
not to be a burden to anyone while we preach the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses
and so is God of how holy righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. Now if you
did your homework which of course you did you will have identified five active words
that describe Paul's relationship with this church at Thessalonica. You will recall he
led these people to the Lord in Thessalonica which is in Greece on his second missionary
journey. Let me walk you through the words that he uses in this particular passage because
it's really interesting. The first thing he says is we were gentle among you like a mother
with her little children. You don't normally think of the Apostle Paul as a gentle man
do you? I mean he's tough because you don't go through what he has gone through without
being that but he's also got the gentleness usually associated with a mother. Then he
says we loved you. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only
the gospel of God but our lives as well. Fascinating glimpse into the heart of the Apostle Paul
in terms of his relationship with the church. These weren't just mission objects. These
weren't just you know scalps to hang on his belt. No these were people that he loved intensely
identify himself with. Then he goes on to say we were delighted to share with you not
only the gospel of God but our lives as well. He allowed himself to develop relationships
that were deeply rooted in the heart. Then he goes on to say I don't in any way ever
want to be a burden to you. You remember our toil and hardship we worked night and day
in order not to be a burden to anyone. If you read Paul's writings to the churches he
always goes out of his way to demonstrate that he doesn't ever want anybody to be able
to accuse him of taking from them. And if you want to read about that the closing chapters
of 2 Corinthians really talks about how he addresses those charges because people are
always accusing God's people of well you're just in it for the money or you're just in
it for what you can get out of me. Paul says I worked night and day so that none of you
could ever say I was taking advantage of you. Then he goes on to say that he was holy and
righteous and blameless. That is to say he lived before them with absolute integrity.
Roll these all together and you get a picture of the selfless love that he demonstrated
in being both a mother and a father to the people of Thessalonica. And right here you
have the first of two very significant principles that we need to keep in mind in any parent-child
relationship in any mentoring kind of relationship. And the first principle is this. A mentee
that is the receiver of the mentoring, a child if you will or the person who is being helped
has to be teachable. That is to say if you're going to learn anything from somebody who
is serving as a spiritual father or a spiritual mother as well as a natural father or a natural
mother you have to be teachable. You have to be willing to learn. Sounds simple enough
but an actual reality is rather difficult and I'll tell you why. Most of us spend X
numbers of years trying to prove to ourselves and to the rest of the world that we're growing
up don't we? And when we're growing up we have our own ideas and we have our own thoughts
and to lay those aside and to receive somebody else's word for it when sometimes we don't
understand it or experience it for ourselves is extremely difficult. Witness any parent
trying to tell his teenage son or his teenage daughter about what is acceptable behavior
or what is not? Question for you is how many here remember ever seeing the Karate Kid movie
series? Anybody here? A number of you. Roberta first called my attention to this but in Karate
Kid 1 which goes back to 1984 which kind of dates all of us a little bit, there is
a fascinating interchange between Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Miyagi. Let me tell you the back story
and then I'll show you the clip. If you know the movie Daniel and his single parent mom
moved from New Jersey to California because that's where her new job was. Daniel didn't
want to move, had a difficult time acclimatizing himself to the California surf crowd and got
into a lot of trouble particularly with a number of young men who are all part of a
karate club called Cobra Kai. The fact of course that he took up with the ex-girlfriend
of one of their leaders didn't help that relationship. So they tended to beat the snot out of him
and he wanted to learn how to fight back and he discovered Mr. Miyagi who was the gardener,
the handyman in the apartment complex where he lived was a karate expert so he asked him
to teach him karate which he agreed to do. But it involved getting young Daniel to do
a number of things that he did not appreciate or understand or could see the relationship
with karate and that's what shows up in this little clip. Let's take a look at it. It's
really quite fascinating. Good clip, isn't it? And doesn't that capture the challenge
of mentoring or parenting? And that's hard enough with "normal" people because we
rebel against being taught. It's even more difficult if we're broken or wounded because
a broken or a wounded person's perspective on life is distorted and twisted. For example
if you are the kind of person who has a spirit of rejection then you will pick up rejection
in all kinds of places even where you're not being rejected. A lot of us will have experienced
that for example. Somebody thinks you're mad at them or somebody takes offense when
you had meant no offense and it's like walking on eggshells around people all the time because
their perceptions of life are distorted. If you have somebody who had major issues with
authority when they were little and you come along and you try to speak into their lives
their defenses go up just like that. And for that person to get better or to grow up he
or she, and this is where it's very difficult, has to lay aside his or her own perceptions
of reality and they have to buy into your version of reality. And if you've ever tried
that that's incredibly difficult because now you cannot trust your own experience. That
makes you feel like a baby, it makes you feel very dependent on other people and you will
have a lot of people around you telling you that you're an absolute idiot to give your
life into the hands of somebody who is like, who knows better than you. And yet that's
what needs to be done if you want to grow up. The mentee has to be prepared to submit
to the mentor which is why Jesus puts it this way of course in Matthew chapter 18 verse
3. Let's go back and find that verse, it's not there. I tell you the truth, unless you
become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. What makes a
little child a little child? It's a willingness to learn from the adult. And Jesus says if
we want to get somewhere in life we have to be like little children, not in the sense
of being childish, there's lots of that to go around, but childlike in the sense that
we're willing to submit and we're willing to learn. Well that's the first principle
of mentoring that we need to keep in mind. The mentee Daniel has to submit to Mr. Miyagi
if he's going to learn the fine art of karate. But the second part is what we're talking
about here and that is just as important and that is the mentor must have selfless or sacrificial
love. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God
but our lives as well because you had become so dear to us. You had become so dear to us.
And love here isn't just a nice feeling, no no, love is putting the interest of the other
person ahead of yourself. It encompasses all the terms the apostle Paul is using when he
talks about being gentle among them and loving them, sharing his life with them, he doesn't
want to be a burden to them and he models absolute integrity. And I'll tell you that's
easier said than done because if you've ever parented a child and a lot of you have or
if you've ever tried to walk with somebody through their life's journey then you will
know how difficult and painful that is and how readily and easily your love is thrown
back into your face. You go out of your way and you share your time, talent and treasure
with somebody and they walk away from you. Not only will they walk away from you but
they blacken your name because their feelings have been hurt and they distort the nature
of the relationship. And you find yourself in situations where your heart breaks because
you're misrepresented and you're treated sometimes like dirt. How many parents haven't felt that
way when they have been in conflict with an ungrateful child and how many of us haven't
felt that way whether with employees or somebody else that we're trying to walk with and the
very human temptation then is to lash out and get even and break off the relationship.
Now that clip that I just showed you I cut out a whole bunch of very foul language because
young Daniel after having spent four days washing cars, polishing or painting the fence
and painting the house and sanding the deck is absolutely fed up and he thinks he's just
being taken advantage of and he wants to walk away because this is not what he bargained
for and Mr. Miyagi has to hold him accountable and take him to task because that's the only
way that he's going to learn how to do karate. And so it takes the grace of Jesus in your
life and in my life to lay ourselves down like this to repeatedly step back into a situation
and to continue that covenant relationship that we have established in order to bless
the other person. It has to be about their well-being not my frustration. Do you understand
what I'm saying there? Do you know how difficult that can be? Because everything inside you
says you treat me that way if you're going to be that kind of an ungrateful person then
well you know stick it. You're just not going to get my time, my love and my attention.
And so that doesn't mean we have to be perfect as people who walk with people but it does
mean that we have to be authentic and we have to be transparent. We have to hold ourselves
to the same standard that we're expecting our children, our students, or our mentees
so that they can see modeled in our lives what it's like to be a follower of Jesus.
And as we do that we have the satisfaction and the joy of watching the person that we
have mentored rise to the occasion and become equipped and matured in the calling out that
we have been doing for them. And so here is the final clip out of Karate Kid 2 or Karate
Kid 1 where Daniel enters into a competition with Johnny Lawrence. Johnny Lawrence used
to be boyfriend to Ollie who now is girlfriend to Daniel. Earlier on in this competition
one of the Cobras has already injured Daniel's knee to try to get him to withdraw out of
the competition and here is the fight that takes place. It's a bit violent even for Karate
but you'll catch the flavor of what it is that we're talking about here. Let's run that
clip. Roberta I'm going to ask you to come up here. I know we hadn't planned to do this
but it so happens last night Roberta met with her organist mentor and that in itself was
a fascinating story to tell. So I'm going to ask her to just describe that process because
he made her do things years and years ago that she wasn't too wild about. Last night
I went to a concert with the Leonard Coy and Andre Neville. I've never been to one I thought
that because he was playing I'd like to go. So Andre Neville was my organ teacher I started
with him when I was 11 and I was with him for about four years and have not seen him
since and we've sort of parted our ways and that's where we left off. And so last night
I thought I'm going to connect with him and it was quite a moment actually for both of
us. He was not aware at all of my journey in life and where I am today and I think he
was just so incredibly overjoyed and overwhelmed with just the thought that I had pursued music
and he was just it was just for him it was just an awe thing you know it's like I taught
this person and here she is and you don't get very many students like that who they
just maybe take lessons for maybe a few years and then they quit and so the fact that I
am doing what I'm doing has a lot to do with him in many ways because just like Daniel
who had to wax and I mean I had to do a lot of playing and practicing but he made me play
hymns all the time. That was it and you know I wasn't always allowed to play the glorious
Bach and you know Buchstahude and all those wonderful glorious organ pieces but I had
to master the hymns and that's what I did. All through you know four or five years I
played and I played and I played and I practiced and I practiced hymns and that was it and
I think I would not be here today if it were not for that and he had a big role in that
and so I was able to share that with him last night and his eyes were just beaming and sparkling
and he was full of this joy and pride and I was just really it was just really a neat
moment so for both of us so that's my story.
I trust you know this if you don't you need to but Roberta is an incredibly gifted organist
and musician. She has multiple times laid it all on the altar so that she can serve the
Lord and serve Christian community with the gifting that the Lord has entrusted to her
and I think that's an incredible model that in turn gets repeated in other generations
that she has taught people music and worship leading even as she's doing some mentoring
today in that capacity. Two questions for you as we wind up this morning. Number one
as you look over your life who has there been that God has used to speak into your life
and call you forth? Father, mother, brother, sister, teacher, employer, somebody in spiritual
leadership, somebody who saw you, who saw your potential and who reached into your life
and who came alongside you and said you can do this and who has rejoiced with genuine
joy in the places of your life where you have succeeded. Give that some thought then ask
yourself have I ever thought of thanking that person for their investment in my life if
you haven't this might be a good time to do that because just like Roberta's mentor
had no idea of the trajectory of her life the chances are those who have influenced
you may not even know in what powerful ways God has used them in your life. I know that
I have been mentored to from a distance by people who don't even know that I exist and
yet whose ministries have profoundly influenced me and have contributed to who I am today.
So the first question is who was there in your life that God used to bless you and call
you forth? Then secondly who is there in your world now that God might invite you to step
into identify their giftings and their callings and call them forth? One of our interns technically
speaking right now is Dan Bodelan and Roberta is spending time with him every week calling
him forth into his sense of calling in the areas of worship ministry. Who is there in
your life? Doesn't mean it has to be spiritual, it can be, but what gift has God given you,
what resources has God given you that you can invest in somebody else's life so that
they can stand up one day and be everything that God is calling them to be. You see generationally
that is how the church imparts life and vision and passion to the next generation and if
you and I don't do it and if you and I don't do it deliberately the world will because
it will mold our offspring and our young into their image and into their likeness and if
ever there was a time when we need young men and young women, boys and girls who know who
they are, who know what their identity is in Christ and who can stand up and be counted
for Jesus it is today and the job rests on your shoulders and my shoulders to try to
make that happen. So who is there that you can enter into covenant with to find the terms
of the relationship and do your part in calling people into maturity in Christ. Not only will
that benefit them but it will benefit you and it will indeed benefit all of Christian
community. Amen.
you