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Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.
There are eight different greek words for love, and we experience each of them in a different way. The greek word for the love God has for us, or the love a parent has for their child, is agape love. It's the unconditional love we receive. It's the love that is still there regardless of how badly we mess up or think we're unlovable. It's the same type of love we strive for in our mentor/mentee relationships. This love is the same love that's mentioned in the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians. John and Zach kick off a new series this week where they explore how we can model the fruit of the spirit in our mentoring relationships, starting with love, and they share some truths around that topic.
There are eight different greek words for love, and we experience each of them in a different way. The greek word for the love God has for us, or the love a parent has for their child, is agape love. It's the unconditional love we receive. It's the love that is still there regardless of how badly we mess up or think we're unlovable. It's the same type of love we strive for in our mentor/mentee relationships. This love is the same love that's mentioned in the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians. John and Zach kick off a new series this week where they explore how we can model the fruit of the spirit in our mentoring relationships, starting with love, and they share some truths around that topic.
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Creators and Guests
What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Hey, mentors. Just a reminder about the You Can Mentor book. It's titled You Can Mentor, How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses. The whole point of this book is to equip and encourage mentors with new tools and ideas on how to make the most of their mentor mentee relationship. If you're a mentor, hey, go pick it up.
Speaker 2:And if you're a mentoring organization, pick some up for all of your mentors. If you would like to order mass copies, like more than 20, send an email to me, zach@youcanmentor.com, and we will get you guys a special price. But go and pick up that book. It's good. You can mentor.
Speaker 3:Hey, Zach.
Speaker 2:That's a I mean, yeah, that works.
Speaker 3:The fruit of the spirit's not a coconut. You don't know that song, though? No. The fruit of the spirit's not a coconut.
Speaker 2:We are recording. Right? We are. Okay. So welcome to the You Can Be Poor podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm John. I mean, I'm Zach.
Speaker 3:You wish, dude. You wish.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I just told John. I said, you need to be more expressive in the intro, and that's what you got.
Speaker 3:I sang. Oh, wait. The thing earlier? The fruit of the spirit's not a watermelon. Yeah.
Speaker 3:If you wanna be a watermelon No. You might as well hear it.
Speaker 2:People didn't tune in to the podcast to hear this, John. You're embarrassing us. You can't be
Speaker 3:a fruit of the spirit because the fruits are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and peace, self control. Okay. That's
Speaker 2:a song. Okay. Today, do you wanna go with the title fruit salad? I know you've been talking about it.
Speaker 3:We are gonna be talking about the fruit of the spirit. I did ask, could we please call this series fruit salad? Because think about all the different fruits. When you put them in the bowl, it makes a fruit salad.
Speaker 2:But it's the fruit of the spirit. There's only 1. Yeah. Okay. So today, we're gonna talk about the fruit of the spirit, and we're gonna talk about love because that's the first one.
Speaker 2:Yes. This is going to be a new series that we're going to talk about, and the main point of it is that we need to understand, identify with, and ultimately practice these 9 traits as mentors. We want to somehow encourage our mentees to be developed or to develop these traits in their life. Absolutely. These are important.
Speaker 2:Very important. And the only way that you are going to experience these is by way of a relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. That's right. You yourself cannot possibly love to the degree upon which your mentee needs you to love. Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self control in our own strength, we might be able to do these kinda well sometimes, but it's only whenever we rely upon the Lord and ask him to work through us, to move through us, that these traits are ultimately expressed how they were meant
Speaker 3:to be expressed. Absolutely. We we understand who God is through these. He is the ultimate definition of these. The world has kind of a carbon copy of these, and that's again what we want to kind of discuss each week.
Speaker 3:I think that it's also important that when we meet with our mentees, we can kind of say, hey, you know what? What do you what do you kind of consider love to be or what do you how do you know it to to be something that you experience in life? And this is just a great opportunity to maybe kinda compare a weaker version, a weaker comparison to what God truly allows us to experience each with each each attribute.
Speaker 2:And and I I'm gonna be honest with you. I've been hearing about the fruit of the spirit for my whole life, and it has only been in these last 5 years as a father that I have experienced how much I need the Lord. I put a poster up on my boys' wall, and every night before bed, we share the attributes of the fruit of the spirit. And we say it together. And it's like every time that we say it, it's a reminder of how I've fallen short.
Speaker 2:And I know that that sounds really cryptic. Like, okay, boys, it's time for bed. All right, great. I get to find out how terrible I am. But in a way, it's actually beautiful, because it's pointing me back to my need for Jesus, because I'm like, okay, boys, love, joy, pee.
Speaker 2:I'm like, well, I wasn't joyful today, and I didn't love you how you need to be loved, and I wasn't kind, and I did okay on self control, and I think I was faithful, but all of these other ones, you know? And so I think as a believer and as we as mentors, 1, either try to guide our mentees into knowing Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, or if they have accepted him, trying to develop them in their intimate relationship with him, it these are really important to talk about.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Listen. We want our mentees to experience the fullness and the abundance of how their characters can be shaped by God, and we want the same for ourselves as mentors. When life hits us with trials and challenges, we lean on the Lord, and we realize that we are more than conquerors when we exercise these attributes. This is what he's given us to be.
Speaker 3:And this is also amazing because these are the things that we know about God, and these are also conveyable in our lives. These are characteristics that we wanna see lived out on a daily basis. Is it is it always going to happen? It's not. And that's when we we lean on grace.
Speaker 3:But I think this is gonna add so much good conversation between your you and your mentee and really hopefully get these things to be lived out in their own life as well. And I they can we want them to see God in these attributes that we are exercising and that they're forming in their lives as well. Did you did you know this, Zach? Can I just throw a little trivia at you? Sure.
Speaker 3:Did you know that out of all the topics of of any song ever recorded in in all of mankind, that there are more love songs than than any other type of song to the tune of about a 120,000,000 songs that that have the theme of love.
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 3:Do you think that's have you ever written a love song?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:Have you ever have you ever requested a love song? Because you're old enough to remember radio stations and No. Did you ever request you'd what about at the roller rink? Did you ever go up to the DJ and request a a love song for a little girl in junior high, hopefully, when you were in junior high as well?
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes. I did. I mean, I'm thinking back to 6th grade. You know, you've got I mean, the main love song was anything written by a band called Boyz II Men.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's right. Wait a minute. I'm I was mentioning Boys in the Band. Yeah. That's because you're old.
Speaker 3:But but BTM, Boyz II Men, Belviv DeVoe. Different artists. Different.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But you asked me what love songs I liked, and I told you, and I felt like you just mocked
Speaker 3:me. What do you feel like is the quintessential Boyz II Men love song?
Speaker 2:I don't. Something About A Waterfall. I I don't know. I haven't listened to them in 30 years, John. Let's get back on point here.
Speaker 2:So love is really it's it's all people talk about. Like, they might not even know that they're talking about it, but we all have this innate desire inside of us to be loved and to give love. And so, like, there are so many books about love, and what are your 5 different kinds of love languages, and there's love songs, and there's love notes, and there's love letters, and there's love everything. And the Bible even talks about, right, like without love, we're kinda nothing. Right.
Speaker 2:Clinging symbols. And love is the most important thing. Jesus Christ came to show us that he loves us by dying for us in the middle of our sin. And so as a kid, I mean, I can remember I wanted attention. I would do anything that I could could do to get attention.
Speaker 2:I wanted affirmation. Just tell me that I'm doing a good job. Just tell me that you like me. Just tell me that you love me, And I wanted acceptance. I just want you to to make me feel like I belong.
Speaker 2:And really, all of those things are a symptom of love. I just wanted to be loved. And so many of our kids, they might not be feeling the love from any adult in their life. And if they do, maybe it's only 1 or 2. And even if they are feeling the love from 50 adults, all of the love that humans can give is imperfect.
Speaker 2:It will never satisfy. There's a song by an artist, John Mayer. I like John Mayer. And it's on his live in Los Angeles album. It's I think the song's Believe.
Speaker 2:I don't know. But he goes on this rant. Right? It's a concert.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And he's just talking about how he has tried all these things. He's a famous musician. He's a famous artist. He's gotten all the girls. He has all the money, and yet none of those things satisfied.
Speaker 2:And so now, he's gonna do everything he can to to invest into love, into loving other people. And there's different kinds of love, but today, one thing that we are going to talk about is the love that only comes from Jesus, and that is that unconditional love.
Speaker 3:Easier said than done. No kidding.
Speaker 2:But, like, the different kinds of love, I mean, like, John, I I love you. You're a great guy. Yeah. But the love that I have for you is different from the love that I have for tacos.
Speaker 3:Wait a minute.
Speaker 2:Very different, might I add.
Speaker 3:Oh, you're saying that you don't necessarily have, like, a filia kind of love for tacos as you do for me, like a brotherly like a I would I would chew my right arm off if I needed to Yeah.
Speaker 2:No. I definitely would. No. No. I would I would leave you at the drop of a hat.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay. Okay. That's But I
Speaker 2:still love you. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Hey, man. Love you.
Speaker 2:But the love that I have for my wife and my kids is different even from tacos and you. Yeah. So there there are different kinds of love out there, but today, I think that we're gonna focus in on the love that comes from Jesus. Completely.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah. That's That's where we're going with this for sure. And then I think, as you mentioned, that is that is an unconditional love. That is really where we wanna be.
Speaker 3:So the world has a lot of different types of counterfeit loves and ways to express it. Is it emotion? Is it a day on the calendar? Again, with all the love songs, but we're not talking about that. We're we're really going to the to the top with talking about the unconditional love of God.
Speaker 3:Listen. We are wired for love as as human beings. We are made in God's image, and so it is something that we have capacity for. And I think that it's also just a really incredible thing to remember as we mentor that our mentees are wired for unconditional love as well. They are they are made so that they can accept that love and also express that love as well as they learn what it means to really love somebody.
Speaker 3:And so that is all the more reason why we need to be good examples.
Speaker 2:So so often with our mentees, if they are not behaving in a way that society deems appropriate, more times than not, it's just a bid for love. So the kid who's in school acting a fool, trying to make everyone laugh, he just wants to be loved. The kid joining a gang, he just wants to be accepted so he can feel loved. The kids having sex, they just wanna feel that love, even if it's for a second. And we have all experienced things on earth that might give us that feeling for a short time, but only a relationship with Jesus can fill that void.
Speaker 2:That truly is the solution that we wanna point all of our mentees to.
Speaker 3:3 years of doing youth ministry from 3 years of doing youth ministry, there were times when I would have a kid in my youth group who had really kinda gotten to the point in his life when he viewed himself as unlovable. And something interesting that would always take place in those at those times when I would spend time, hopefully, getting this kid to understand that god loves them is that they would almost seek opportunities to prove to themselves and to me and to maybe a youth worker and and their and their friends as well that they indeed are unlovable. And so that is when the acting out would happen. That was when they would do something, and they would kind of be brought to the point. And what they what they hope to do is show everybody, listen.
Speaker 3:I am unlovable, and so turn your back on me because you're going to anyway. And I think that is all the more reason why it's so important for us to realize that that isn't and that acting out is often led by just kind of a kid living the lie. And so all the more important why we start to show some other characteristics of God, namely patience and kindness when we love these kids to have them understand that this is what unconditional love looks like.
Speaker 2:I think when a kid acts out, when they do something that you know and they know, that's not gonna fly, that is the opportunity to double down on love. I think about the story of the father and the prodigal son. I mean, the son, he said goodbye to the family. He took the money. He wasted it.
Speaker 2:He just totally messed up his life. He comes home, and what does the father do? In the son's worst moment, he receives love that he has never received before in his life. Whenever he was at his lowest, the father gave him the highest amount of love and acceptance that he could possibly give. And man, what a great opportunity we have as mentors.
Speaker 2:Because the number one thing that our mentees need, the number one thing, it's not our advice. It's not our tools or our skills or anything like that. The number one thing that they need is unconditional love that comes from our presence and us representing, representing Jesus to them. That, hey, in the middle of whatever you're going through, good or bad, I am going to love you because it's not about what you do, it's about who you are. And that is unconditional love.
Speaker 2:And if you're a mentor out there and you're saying, I'm not cool enough. I don't have anything to offer. I'm too old. I'm this and that. If you can love, no matter what, if you can show up and love these kids, if they're doing great or if they're doing terrible, and stay in it, you're gonna give these kids the most rarest thing on earth, which is unconditional love.
Speaker 3:And you may be the only person in their life doing that. They may have every other relationship and institution in their life. You guys, it may be nothing but performance based affection, right, that they get. Hey. If you tow the line, if you do well, if you make the grades, if you perform well in your athletics, then I love you.
Speaker 3:Then you're accepted. Then we're okay. We want this relationship and to understand that as the mentor, you may be the one person in our life who's not who's not throwing that at him, but instead saying, listen, it's not about how how well you perform. I love you. God loves you no matter what.
Speaker 3:And so all the more reason why we would really take this to heart and understand that that love is foundational in this mentor mentee relationship, and that love needs to be unconditional.
Speaker 2:I also think one thing as mentors that we can really do to help our mentees experience this love is to figure out how they're wired and to figure out how do they experience love. So, like, for me, you know, I'm a words of affirmation guy. Like, you can't tell me that you love me enough. Notes, gifts, even, all of those things to show me that you love me, that really speaks to me. My wife, she's an acts of service.
Speaker 2:And so it's, you know, how I love her is by doing the dishes and doing all of the laundry and things like that. If I were to give my wife words of affirmation, it would do nothing for her. And if she would clean up the house for me, I would not feel loved. So it's up to us with our mentees to figure out how do they receive love. And more times than not, it's different than how you do.
Speaker 3:And so yeah. So It's gonna go a long way. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 3:So our mentor truth, under this key component of the truth that unconditional love is the most important, is that if you have not love, just like the love chapter of first Corinthians 13 says, nothing else matters.
Speaker 2:And the mentee truth, what the mentee can walk away with is this, you are loved just as you are. You are loved because Jesus first loved us despite our junk, and that is the gospel. That is the good news. So as we start talking about love, we are going to give you these different aspects of love. We're going to talk about unconditional love, how God is love.
Speaker 2:We're going to talk about service and sacrifice, and then we are going to to talk about how this applies to you as a mentor and to you as you lead your mentee.
Speaker 3:That's right. Because you're not gonna be able to take someone somewhere that you're not that you haven't been. Right. That's kinda what we believe about mentoring.
Speaker 2:And I'm gonna kinda I'm gonna go off to the side for a second, but John and I were talking today about how how this applies to your mentee if your mentee is a believer or if they're an unbeliever. And if they're an unbeliever, the last thing that we wanna do is to try to force this stuff on them. One of my favorite sayings is the holy spirit is a gentleman. He never he never kicks down the door. But instead, if your mentee is an unbeliever or isn't walking with God or is just kinda searching, it's up to us as mentors to to be able to observe and identify and take advantage of potential open doors.
Speaker 2:So as you hang out with your mentee, ask good questions and observe if there's an opportunity to talk about Jesus. It should be natural. It should flow. You shouldn't try to bang him over the head with the Bible. But instead, we we have to pray for them, and we have to trust that God's going to provide those opportunities.
Speaker 3:This is what I love about the fruit of the spirit is that it really lends itself well to talk about who God is. And thus, that's what evangelism can be when we explain and we share from our heart and share from scripture. And so the beauty of this is that scripture, as you mentioned, has so much to say about love. We know that God is love. Right?
Speaker 3:First John chapter 4 verse 8. As it says, whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. And so we run that filter throughout scripture. Whenever it mentions love, well, we get to know and understand that that's talking about God. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
Speaker 3:Right? John 15.
Speaker 2:I also think that, like, the love that God gives us, that kind of love is so radically different than the love that this world gives. And so what a great opportunity for us to be different. And if we consistently show up and we consistently love no matter what, over time, the mentee is going to notice that, and they are going to say, there's something different about this mentor. How come they keep showing up? How come when everyone yells at me, they accept me?
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:How come when people get mad at me, they receive me? They're patient with me. Right? So I think that that's really, really important.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It's the hard work of unconditional love because it really is hard work, isn't it? And sometimes it's also maybe a balancing act. I mean, when we can I I believe when we start talking about unconditional love, we also need to consider that that temptation maybe or that that danger that we might get into enabling? Zach, would you say that there's a difference in enabling a mentee in relationship and unconditional love?
Speaker 3:I mean, does does unconditional love just look like, hey, whatever goes, you know, mentee, whatever whatever you're going through, you know, it's all fine because I love you. God loves you. What's what's maybe the difference between understanding unconditional love and and and what could look like maybe unhealthy leadership?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the answer can be found in how God loves us and how Jesus Christ walked this earth. Just because God loves us unconditionally, just because he's always there for us, that doesn't mean that he approves everything that we do. It doesn't mean that he does not correct us or does not discipline us whenever we're going the wrong way. Mhmm. Now, that's a it's a really fine line to walk, because in today's society, if you disagree with what someone does, it's really easy for that person to feel like you don't love them.
Speaker 2:So we have to be really careful with our communication and say, hey. Look. I love you, and I'm not going to leave you. I'm always here for you. But when you do these things, I am worried that it's not going to give you life to the fullest.
Speaker 2:I am worried that it's not going to be the best thing for you. Right? That's a lot different from judging them. That's a lot different from coming down on them. It's more of a guide.
Speaker 2:It's more of a shepherd than it is a teacher. Right? And so it's okay to disagree. It's okay to share your opinions, but we just cannot make the mentee feel like they're being judged.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. You know, unconditional love does not throw discernment out out the window, and, also, it doesn't throw disappointment out the window. I think you'll still have those opportunities to be able to share and should be able to to say in the spirit of love, oh, I'm disappointed by these choices that you're making. You know, that's a part of parenting just as it is a part of mentoring as well. And the beauty of unconditional love, the beauty of this truth that God is love is that those are integral parts as well throughout the process of understanding what love really looks like and how it's exercised on a daily basis in our relationships.
Speaker 2:And I think the most important aspect of God is that he doesn't ever leave us. Mhmm. Is that he is patient with us. Right? There are some people out there, mainly myself, who have been dealing with some of the same sins for decades, and I just can't seem to get it right.
Speaker 2:But yet, God still loves me, and God's still patient. So God's not going anywhere, and we, as mentors, shouldn't either. And God is patient with us. So us, as mentors, if your mentee continues to make the same mistake over and over and over, if your mentee does not follow Jesus, it's a great opportunity to practice patience and to love no matter what. That agape love.
Speaker 2:Right? That is the love that doesn't ever fail. That is the perfect love. That's the selfless love. And we have an opportunity to, because of the holy spirit inside of us, love our mentees like that.
Speaker 3:That's right. And, again, can't stress enough. This isn't by human power. This isn't by willpower. This truly is an active Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3:And that's the beauty of it because we're talking about a limitless, bottomless love that remains faithful despite our being faithless at times, as scripture says. Case in point, the beauty of this mentor truth, godly love, it's just different than worldly love. And our call as believers, as mentors, is to love differently.
Speaker 2:And the only way that we're going to get what we need to love differently is by us spending time with Jesus and having him fill us up. Absolutely. So the minty truth is no one loves us quite as much as God loves us, and God's love is different. It satisfies when the love of this world doesn't. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:These are things that our mentees need to know about God and about the love that he gives. What's up next, John?
Speaker 3:Well, our next truth is that love is sacrifice. I love these three words together. This harkens back to a lot of programming that I get to do with skate camp, where throughout giving a session of skateboard instruction, we put ramps out in the parking lot or we go to the skate park, and we have our mentors there. And we are with these kids being able to just enjoy that time with skateboarding together in community and something that we do kind of midway through our program is say, hey, everybody. Why don't you come over here?
Speaker 3:Let's all sit down on the grass. I want to share something with you. And so you may you guys may not know this, but right now we're actually recording in our shop here. And so up on the wall, we have one of our skateboard graphics. And so I'm going to I'm going to note that to Zach right now as he looks up at it as well.
Speaker 3:It's our Giving Tree Board. I love our Giving Tree skateboard. We've been making this board for for years now. And what's great about it is it gives us the opportunity to give a truth and and really kind of a visual illustration about this truth of love being sacrificed. So are you familiar, Zach, with Shel Silverstein?
Speaker 3:Are you familiar with A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Giving Tree? Right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Okay. So do your kids have your kids ever had any of these things read to them? Yes. Okay. I think that Shell Silverstein needs to be a part of everyone's childhood side note.
Speaker 3:But to the point of The Giving Tree graphic, what I love about that book and listeners, if you know this book, you know what I mean. You're already nodding your head. If you have no idea about this book, let me just kind of give you a brief overview of the story and how it how it helps to support this truth of love is sacrifice and then say, go get that book. Your kids need to have this book read to them, The Giving Tree. It's a story of the friendship between a tree and a little boy.
Speaker 3:And as it goes, these guys really loved one another. They would spend time together. The boy would would swing through the branches of the tree, would sleep in its shade. Well, one day the boy says, I'm hungry. And so the tree says, well, here, boy, have some of my apples.
Speaker 3:And the boy climbs up in the tree, eats some of the apples. And by the way, it's an apple tree. So yeah. Because that's what the apples grow from. Gotta pick that up.
Speaker 3:Okay. And boy was happy because his belly was full. Tree was happy because the boy was happy. Years go by. The young man says, well, you know, hanging out with you is great and eating these apples is fine, but I need to start thinking about my future.
Speaker 3:I need a house. How am I gonna build a house? And the tree says, well, take my branches, boy. Build yourself a house and be happy. So boy climbs up in the tree, cuts down all the branches, goes and builds a house.
Speaker 3:He's happy. The tree is happy because the boy's happy. More years go by. The boy says, well, I'm grown now. You know, I've had the stability of living in a house and that's been great, but there's a big world out there.
Speaker 3:I wanna go out, and I want to experience all that there is to do and see. So the tree once again says, well, why don't you cut down my trunk? You can build yourself a boat, and you can go see the world, and you can be happy. So the boy, who's now a grown man, cuts down the tree, makes a boat, sails off. The boy's happy because he gets to do the thing that he wanted to do.
Speaker 3:The tree's happy because the boy's happy. But what what are we left with now, Zack? Stop. We got a stump. Many years go by.
Speaker 3:And one day, a feeble old man walks up to the stump, and the stump recognizes him. It's the boy. And the tree says, I I am so sorry. I I have no apples for you to eat. I have no branches for you to make shelter.
Speaker 3:I have no trunk for you to build a boat with. I'm I'm just a stump. And the boy who's now an old man says, well, I don't really need to eat. I don't really need to build a house, and and I don't really have the strength to go sail across the world anyway. All I really need is a place to sit down.
Speaker 3:And the story says that the stump lifted himself up as much as he could in joy and pride and said, well, come, boy, come and sit. And it says the boy was happy because he had a place to sit, and the tree was happy because the boy was happy. So that beautiful story is the story of Christ. And the beauty of that is that I get to tell kids and teenagers that story throughout the year multiple times and really drive home the fact that that is what kind of love God's love is all about. Because as you can see, the kind of love that the tree showed to the boy was sacrifice.
Speaker 3:It was saying, I love you so much that I will deny myself, and I will I will take from myself in order to bless you in this way. And that that's Jesus' love right there, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Do you think that book had that in mind whenever it was written?
Speaker 3:That, I don't know. But I think that it's just right on the nose. Right?
Speaker 2:I I always read it in there's a there's a level of sobriety whenever I read it, and it it kinda makes me sad.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, let's talk about this. The the boy, he's a jerk. Yes. Right? He just keeps coming back for more, and he's he's never he's never finished.
Speaker 3:Right? He's never done. And, again, what a what a a really accurate representation even of of we as God's creation? I mean, how often are we, you know, on the mountaintop and and enjoying his presence? And we are so there with the Lord, and yet it's not long after that we begin to grumble again.
Speaker 3:Right? Oh, we just have this manna to eat. Oh, you know, woe is me. Why is where is the lord in this that I have to go through these trials?
Speaker 2:One of my favorite things about following Jesus is this the things that I prayed for 5 years ago are the things that I am complaining about today. Yeah. It's ridiculous. And this isn't a knock on our mentees, but our mentees are children. Even if they're 18, they're still pretty young.
Speaker 2:And just my kids take. That's all they do. They just make my life harder, and they don't really give anything in return. And that is parenting, and to a certain degree, that is mentoring. Our mentees probably aren't gonna say thank you.
Speaker 2:Our mentees probably aren't gonna even realize what it is that we're doing. Our mentees just keep on kinda taking and taking and taking over and over and over, but to follow Jesus is to die self, and to follow Jesus is to sacrifice so that others can experience. And a saying that I learned from you is, as a mentor, they shine the spotlight. And the mentors don't need the spotlight. As mentors, there's nothing that we need except for Jesus.
Speaker 2:And so we get to take that love, and we get to take the fruit of the spirit, and that's gonna give us everything that we need to give to our mentees.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Again, and that's the sweet spot. When we can and that's why it's something that we want to equip you mentors with is to understand that we want you to be in such a place with the Lord that you understand that all of your needs have been met and that you're a person of margin so that when you enter into that relationship with your mentee, you don't necessarily need validation from them, and you're not looking for anything from them so that you can be the giver and that that will be a blessing to them. Love is sacrifice.
Speaker 2:And as a mentor, you are going to sacrifice. I mean, the name of the game is sacrifice. Sacrificing your time, sacrificing your energy, sacrificing your love, sacrificing your money, sacrificing everything. It is almost like the most important things that you have in life, money, energy, time, those are the three things that being a mentor demands. But that's what Jesus did for us.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And so we get to do it. Be we get to love because he first loved us.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And didn't you, you know, do you remember when those first moments when you were a father and you realized you you have been so blessed by this child that God has blessed you with with your wife? And you've you held your baby maybe for the first time, and you just felt this immense amount of love for them. And what's incredible about that is they did nothing for it. Babies are are very inefficient in terms of how they how they really improve our lives.
Speaker 2:Yes. They're terrible.
Speaker 3:They begin from day 1 taking our sleep from us. Right? And so the beauty of that moment, though, and and of parenting in general and of mentoring in general as well is the fact that we say, oh, we are so fortunate. We are so blessed by the Lord and that he has given us everything that we want to be able to, and we will gladly spend ourselves in this way. We will sacrifice in this way because God has so richly blessed us.
Speaker 3:And so you have a great point here, which is our mentor truth under love is sacrifice, and that is that God loves the aroma of our sacrifice. That's a pretty cool Old Testament metaphor right there. Sacrifice is uncommon, and it's a great example to give our mentees to follow. It's not easy to do.
Speaker 2:And and it's not common. Most most people today focus on themselves more than other people. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And there's and there is a get to give. I'm sorry. There is a give to get mentality at all costs. Right. Where we kind of have the scales based on relationship to say, look, if I'm going to invest this over here, well, I'm going to want to get something out of it, you know, over here or I need you to invest as well.
Speaker 3:And if you're not investing and if the scales look like they're not even, well, then I'm gonna start to scale back my investment. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Great. I think for the mentee, their truth is we can identify someone's love for us when we consider how they sacrifice for us. We can also know of our love for others when we sacrifice for them. And so, serving and rejecting the things that are gonna move you forward so that you can give the things that are gonna move other people forward.
Speaker 2:It's a big deal. It's hard. I mean, I'm I'm a adult, and that's even hard for me, because I'm selfish. So
Speaker 3:It's a lifelong process.
Speaker 2:Lifelong process. That's true. Alright. Last one. Love Serves.
Speaker 2:John, go for it.
Speaker 3:Love Serves. Have have you ever read Bob Goff's book, Love Does?
Speaker 2:I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay. I think I have as well. Can I speak into some of those main points of it?
Speaker 2:I'll allow.
Speaker 3:Probably not right now because I maybe I don't remember them, but but I do remember that overriding truth to say, you know, as the world says that love is this, love is this, love is this, we remember as Christ followers that love is not as much an emotion as it is an action. And this really kinda goes back to love as sacrifice. We think about, well, what are we sacrificing out of the love relationships that we have? You know, what are we giving up because we invest in these relationships? Love does.
Speaker 3:It serves. It sees to the betterment of others. It is it is an action. It is something that, you know, that you begin with very first thing in the morning as a parent, as you have these people that you are responsible for. It will probably be tracking your day, and it will be a part of of what you're doing throughout the day as you as you serve those that you love in your community, in your home, because love does indeed serve.
Speaker 2:And it's a choice. You have to choose to love. If the only time that you love is whenever you feel like it, it's just not gonna work out super well.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And that goes back to the to the fact that we serve because we are we are led to by Holy Spirit. And this is this is internal. This is as he dwells within us. And so we we obey his prompting and are living by his power as opposed to our own.
Speaker 3:Because I can tell you this, our own power of love, it really is emotional, you know, and it is hot and cold, and it is conditional. And so thanks be to God that that his is not.
Speaker 2:The mentor truth is that the son of man came to serve, not to be served, and we should do the same. He wants nothing in return, and we should want nothing in return for the love that we give our mentees. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know what? There's just think about that for a moment. Loving without needing is actually really freeing as well, isn't it? There's a there's a really beautiful freedom. I don't know if we give that enough credit sometimes to say when you can give because you know that you've been given too in such a in such a great way, there's just a beautiful freedom in that.
Speaker 3:And that goes for all types of giving in your life. When you understand that there's not this poverty mentality of thinking, well, you know what? I would love to give, but if I give to you, I'm not going to have enough for myself. That so often stops us in our tracks to be givers and to love as we should. But to understand that first and foremost, we have this beautiful margin about our lives because God has so richly given to us in abundance.
Speaker 3:Right? We're living in abundance in our faith that I can give, and it doesn't take from me in that sense. Right? I'm not going to be worried about what I have because I give to you. I I can just freely give.
Speaker 3:As you mentioned, Zach, I think this is a really great way to a great analogy to go back to the idea of, you know, I've heard it this way. There are 2 types of leaders in the world. There is one who needs to stand in the spotlight, and there is the other who holds the spotlight on another. And I think, you know, the mentor is so often the one who is holding that spotlight to say, look, I'm confident enough in myself of being loved by God that I can give you love and I can show God's love to you in a really great way. So mentors just can continue to be that way, continue to serve in such a mighty way that you just don't need that kind of recognition.
Speaker 3:Instead, you you're so free to love freely and to serve well.
Speaker 2:And I think that's what we wanna teach our mentees is that love is not giving so we can get. It is fulfilled by simply giving.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Just like Jesus does with us.
Speaker 3:Amen to that. That's great. Alright. So we've got some mentor conclusions here real quick. Four good points here.
Speaker 3:Can I share these? Do it. Number 1, mentor. Love unconditionally. Understanding what that means and really what that how that's played out.
Speaker 3:Number 2, emulate the all encompassing love of God. You will do this for the rest of your life in all different types of relationships. This is not just one thing at one season that you kinda get and then go off and do. There will be setbacks and there will be incredible victories, but it is something that we've signed on to as we are Christ followers. Number 3, when we sacrifice what matters most and what does matter most, you know, it's our time.
Speaker 3:It's our money. It's our energy. In the name of the Lord, he uses that to advance his kingdom. And number 4, for mentor conclusions, serve your mentee and expect nothing in return.
Speaker 2:And I know for me, sometimes the things that are the most simple are the hardest to focus in on. I like to make things more complicated than they should be. And as a mentor, if you can just focus in on unconditional love, you're gonna be an incredible mentor. Because they don't need your advice. They don't need your information.
Speaker 2:They need your love. Just like just like we need with Jesus.
Speaker 3:That's it. Keep showing up. Right?
Speaker 2:Yes. Just
Speaker 3:be there.
Speaker 2:And for your mentee, if you're a mentor and you want to walk alongside your mentee and help guide them into this, the 4 things that they need to know is that they're loved just as they are. That God is the ultimate source for understanding and experiencing love. That God's love is different than the love that this world gives. That we're most like Jesus when we're sacrificing for others. And that pure love serves without needing recognition or compensation or anything in return.
Speaker 3:That'll preach. That's it, man. You know, this reminds me, talked about being able to stand up in front of these skateboarders and share the story. Something that I think is also really exciting. Part of what we get to do is actually give skateboards away to skaters because that models grace in a very real way and it validates a skater because guess what?
Speaker 3:Skateboarders love getting a skateboard. Doesn't matter even what's written on it. But I think that it is so. It has been so exciting. Some of my favorite times of being out of the skate park has been when I give a deck to a skater and I and I really just kind of briefly tell them that story of how love is sacrificed with this traffic.
Speaker 3:And I have no idea if they're a believer at all. And and quite honestly, I'll assume maybe that they aren't just based on even spending some time with them. This is always my favorite, is when this has happened in the past, when a kid takes this deck, hears this story, and then before the day is over, they have actually given that board to someone else at the park that they found who's maybe their skateboard is in worse condition. And that is this beautiful empowering of understanding that unconditional love is contagious. And so we really just want to affirm you, mentor, as you hear this, to understand that your unconditional love to your mentee, it is going to be so powerful and so different than the worldly love that they're experiencing that you'll find that they will want to express that to others in their lives as well.
Speaker 3:And I just don't think you can do much better than that.
Speaker 2:Can we as mentors get that love from first getting that love from Jesus. So we get from Jesus, we do what he does, and then our mentees experience our love, and then our mentees do what we do.
Speaker 3:That is absolutely true of all of these attributes of God as we talk about the fruit of the spirit. So, mentor, as you are praying for your mentee, we would ask that you say, Lord, fill me with your love. I know that I find it from you. Help me to express that love to my mentee, and, Lord, empower my mentee to show it to their to to those members in their life, in their family, you know, to show that to their siblings and their parents and classmates and teachers. Let it be something that they they gain such a powerful understanding of that they begin to express that in their world as well.
Speaker 3:Great. I
Speaker 2:love it. Awesome. Alright. You can mentor. You can love.
Speaker 2:If this impacted you, share it with a friend. Holler at us. We're here for you, and know that you can mentor.