| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “The influence of a mentor” Our Bible verse for today: “Then Samuel said: Does the Lord take pleasure in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? Look: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams.” 1 Samuel 15:22 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Advice is only helpful if you take it” One of my favorite mentor/mentee stories comes from the movie “The Karate Kid”. Ralph Macchio played a teenage boy, Daniel LaRusso, and Pat Morita played the elderly karate expert Mr. Miyagi. In the movie, Daniel was being tormented by a group of bullies who kept beating him up. My. Miyagi took Daniel under his wing and not only taught him how to defend himself by using karate, but also how to be a cool and calm young man of character and integrity. However, Daniel was impatient and over-eager, and therefore needed to learn the discipline of patience as he slowly developed his new skills. One of the great lines from the movie came from Mr. Miyagi when, with a long look and a bit of a sigh he would say to Daniel, “Patience, Grasshopper, patience.” Well, Daniel did learn patience, as well as many other skills from Mr. Miyagi – because he listened to him and took his advice. As was noted in yesterday’s devotional, not all advice is good advice and therefore we do need to be thoughtful and careful about who’s advice we accept. But if you have entered into a mentoring relationship with someone, then your default mode should be to accept their advice. Sadly, sometimes we don’t. Such was the case with King Saul. He was being mentored by the prophet and teacher Samuel. But Saul was headstrong and impatient and he sometimes disregarded important lessons from Samuel. Ultimately that led to Saul’s downfall. That’s what we’re reading about in 1 Samuel 15:22 (above). Samuel isn’t the only example of this in the Bible. Tomorrow we’ll consider some others. For today, I encourage all of us to prayerfully consider who our mentors are, and how seriously we take their advice. Advice is only helpful if you take it. God bless, Pastor Jim |
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