The Divine Mentor: Growing Your Faith as You Sit at the Feet of the Savior

by Wayne Cordeiro

When you continue down a path that’s skewed—even slightly—you may find catastrophe or chaos gaining on your heels no matter how hard you try to outrun them.

For example, if you think one plus one equals three, then every equation involving that premise will lead to a faulty conclusion.

He came out and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives.5 Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.6

You can celebrate God in a crowd, but you can only get to know God one on one.

Ouch

Did you happen to notice that all those pieces of armor are for defensive purposes? The passage mentions only one weapon for offense: ‘‘The sword of the Spirit . . . the word of God.’’10

Victory only comes to those who learn how to go on offense and then succeed on the offensive. That’s exactly what the Word of God is designed to help you do.

What you have hidden in your heart will be the litmus test.

What do you have stored on the memory card of your heart? If you wonder, try writing down all the references of Scripture that you’ve memorized on a sheet of paper. How many will that list yield? Is it more than John 3:16?

(1) Bible (2) pen (3) journal (4) Bible-reading plan (5) daily planner

When you commit to spending forty minutes a day alone with God, and when you plan to maximize those minutes, you will begin not only to hear but also to capture the wisdom of the ages like never before.

The Bible is not a magic book. When I was growing up, we had a gigantic, gilded family Bible that sat on the coffee table. Nobody ever cracked open its pages. We just presented it for all to see, as if its mere presence would ward off the devil as soon as he glimpsed its industrial size. I had a friend who told me that, as a boy, he used to sleep with the Bible tucked under his pillow to protect him from bad dreams. Nice thought, but God makes no such promises. For the Bible to do you any good, you must pick it up, read it, and absorb its truths into your heart.

So get a pen and underline the passages where God seems to be getting your attention. All you’re doing is agreeing with what the Spirit is already doing in your heart. One man once told me, ‘‘We are poorer because of the opportunities we have missed.’’

The Holy Spirit is already highlighting passages for you. With your pen, you can let Him know that you’ve captured the truth and that you refuse to miss another opportunity to become a little more like Him!

If my motives are wrong in serving, I can still serve; but when I am done, it will leave me hungry and spiritually thirsty.

Now, let’s switch things around. What if I had spoken for most of the hour, then said to Jack, ‘‘Okay, you have five minutes. Go!’’ What kind of relationship would that reflect? Would that honor him? On the contrary, what was honoring was that I limited my speech and gave him freedom to speak into my life. This is how we best honor God in our devotions.

I knew God would speak through him, and I didn’t want to waste the moment.

We can all remember times when we’ve been so engrossed in a project that we skipped breakfast and then worked right through lunch. By three or four in the afternoon your hunger begins to scratch at the insides of your stomach. Just then, you remember you’ve forgotten two meals! What do you do—what’s your response? You wouldn’t say, ‘‘Well, I skipped breakfast, and I breezed right over lunch, so forget it—I’m not eating anymore. After all, I’ve already forgotten two meals—what’s the point?’’ Of course not! You’d look forward all the more to dinner.

The Bible is God’s choice for a life-dictionary. Joseph will help you convert family betrayal into a future of promise. King David will help you through a child’s rebellion. Moses will help leaders with complaining staff. Abigail will encourage those with foolish husbands.

The health of twenty-first-century America will no longer be determined by what people get the doctors to do for them, but rather by what doctors can get people to do for themselves.

As you peruse the entire scheduled reading for a given day, ask the Lord to bring home to your heart one text in particular.

That is a prayer the Holy Spirit loves to answer.

He will highlight one verse or thought that momentarily stops you in your tracks or seems to shine out from the page. He will whisper, ‘‘This is for you—this is a promise you can hold to’’ or ‘‘This instruction will get you back on track.’’ Whatever the text is, write it down ...

By interacting in this way with the Lord through His Word, you’ll be hearing His prophetic voice. You will begin making permanent decisions based on eternal wisdom, not on temporary setbacks.

The question is never ‘‘Does God speak?’’ but rather ‘‘Am I listening?’’ To best hear what God has to say to you, you must still your heart.

The first and most important commandment of all, according to Jesus, is to ‘‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’’4 That means He doesn’t want you to disengage your brain as you listen for His voice.

How will you be different today as a result of what you’ve just read?

The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.’’10

Application is what seals God’s Word to our hearts. Application makes the difference between hearing His will and doing His will.

Application is what sets apart a disciple from a dabbler, a follower from a fan. Application states how you will live differently because of what you’ve just read.

I’ll never forget his answer. ‘‘Wayne,’’ he said, with a heavy sigh. ‘‘I wasn’t reading the Bible for life. I studied the Bible only to get sermons out of it. I would find one and immediately give it as a message on Sunday. As soon as I could extract enough lesson material to hand out, I was done for the day. It was never routed through my heart, so it left me starving even though I was overseeing an orchard.’’

Knowledge alone is no guarantee of growth. But with God’s help we can dial in the two lenses of knowledge and application.

I know this from my own life!

Lord Jesus, help me to be a person who listens to Your Word. Today I will take time to hear what You are saying to me. Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.

And in His law he meditates day and night.

Remember what happened to the fearful, lazy servant in the parable of the talents? The master said, ‘‘Take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’’14 Having hard soil can result in what little you have being taken away and given to good soil so it can bear an abundant harvest.

Here’s an easy solution: Don’t journal on the 90 percent you don’t understand; journal on the 10 percent you do.

If we’re not faithful with the 10 percent we understand, why should He reveal to us the 90 percent we do not yet understand?

When we are faithful with what we do know, He will be delighted to reveal to us what we do not yet know. Let th...

It might give us opinions and arguments, but those will neither stir our souls nor transform our actions.

Manna, as it was called, contained every vitamin and nutrient they would ever need. It had a sweet, nutty flavor. The psalmist called it ‘‘the bread of angels.’’3

Funny thing about fresh bread: ‘‘Fresh’’ has a time limit. It’s like a sweet, beautiful sunrise. You can’t loiter and catch it later. It’s fresh for the moment. Procrastinate, and it’s soon swallowed up by the sunlight that bids you resume your daily busyness and activity.

That church had once dispensed fresh bread. Now it was full of straw.

For good reason Jesus instructed us to pray, ‘‘Give us each day our daily bread.’’6 The Lord wants us to come to Him each day for what we will need on that day. Nowhere does He ask us to pray for our weekly bread, or our monthly bread, or our yearly bread. He fashioned us to need fresh bread daily, and nothing but daily fresh bread will ever satisfy our souls.

We all have a tendency to drift.

However, meeting with divine mentors on a daily basis will allow us to make the necessary corrections in smaller increments, so we don’t have to go through the shock of a major adjustment.

Wisdom is built layer by layer.

Like a varnished table, its depth comes from dozens of thin coverings.

Wisdom is built in the same way. So is solid character that will stand the tests of time. You can’t get a shot or take a pill for it. You grow into it day by day, step by step, word by word. It comes only through consistency, and it yields its deepest gems only to those not in a hurry for a quick fix. Wisdom is like a muscle, and you don’t build muscles overnight.

If you take the Word of God into your head and spout it out to others, but you don’t take it any further, that’s called information.

The Pharisees were truly remarkable when it came to information, intellectually amassing all kinds of biblical data. But they neglected to apply it. They refused to live it. They never oriented their lives to it—even though they loved to teach it to others.

No wonder Jesus told His followers, The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not pract...