This Week at The Loft - Mentors

Everyone needs mentors in their lives.

As a child, you were mentored by your first teachers, your parents. You learned so many things from them, some good and some bad. You observed how they did life. Unconsciously, at first, you mimicked them until you were old enough to think for yourself. You had the choice to follow in your parents footsteps, or to make changes.

Hopefully, along life's journey you have found, or are finding, other mentors to help you live your life. Perhaps you had a pastor or a teacher that inspired change in you. Perhaps your mentors might be writers or speakers whose message just spoke to you. They might be co-workers or perhaps a friend who provided such an example so you began to imitate what you so admired.

I've had many mentors in my life but the first one that comes to mind is Sister Barb. Her husband was one of the former pastors at my home church. Sister Barb lived in our town for exactly one year but she taught me a lifetime of lessons. You can read all about her in my post, Hugs to Sister Barb.

I hope to do for someone else what Sister Barb did for me. You know, mentoring is actually a biblical principal. Titus speaks of it in the New Testament:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Titus 2:3-5 ESV

The actual word mentor is not used but teaching and training means just that. And of course, that is not the only example. Moses had Joshua, Paul had his Timothy, and the best example of mentoring was Christ and the disciples.

For a mentoring relationship to work, first, we must have a teachable spirit. I sure don't know it all, and I love to learn better ways to do and be and live.

What about you? Have you ever been in a mentoring relationship? What are some of the benefits? What are some of the pitfalls? We'd love to hear your story today at The Loft, a hangout of Christian bloggers who are building community.

Graphic by Kerry Messer

 

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To Participate:

1. Be creative. We provide the prompt. You feel free to use words, photos, video, audio, your family pet, whatever, to communicate on the weekly prompt.

2. Listen twice as much. If you leave one link, visit two.

3. Be a community. Include #TheLoft graphic and/or hashtag in your post and social media so we can find each other.

4. Write like Jesus would write. We are a Christian link-up. Offensive or inappropriate posts will be deleted. No questions asked.

5. Be pertinent. Our heart is to build community and intimacy, and our means to do that is to build each link-up around a single prompt. Please make sure your post is on topic.

6. Link-Up. Each Wednesday morning at 5am EST, the link goes live, and for 6 glorious days you can link up your post on that week's prompt. The linky will close at 5pm EST on Monday.

We are going to provide a months worth of prompts each week so that you can be thinking and planning for the coming weeks. 

This Week's Prompt: Mentors
October 21 Prompt: Autumn
October 28 Prompt: A Picture Prompt - take a look at the picture below and write a post about how it speaks to you. 

October 28 Picture Prompt at The Loft

 

November Prompts: The month of November will be all about Thanksgiving and being thankful. Any post, picture, poem, song about thankfulness is what we are linking up this month.  

I hope you will plan to join us each week at The Loft Link-Up. 

Now, it is time to link-up!!


   

    http://www.inlinkz.com/new/view.php?id=571829" title="click to view in an external page.">An InLinkz Link-up