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

by Wayne Cordeiro

If you hear an exciting message that makes you want to stand up and shout, but you take it no further, that can be called inspiration.

This makes for good conversation and stirs our intentions, but it leaks. This kind of inspiration alone isn’t enough.

Conversely, when you ask, ‘‘How will I live differently because of what God has just said to me?’’ then incarnation has begun.

Incarnation is what changes the world. Incarnation transforms your family. Incarnation rewrites your future.

• • Just in your head: information. • • Just in your heart: inspiration. • • When it bleeds out of you: incarnation.

I love this. Not inspiration or information, but incarnation.

When it’s just in your head, it makes you pharisaical. (And inside each one of us is a Pharisee just waiting to grow up!) When it’s just in your heart, it makes you a fanatic. When it bleeds out your toes, it makes you authentic.

That’s good!!!

A daily time at the Lord’s feet will build guardrails in your character.

• • Joseph had to flee Potiphar’s wife. He knew lust’s pull. (So did Samson.)

Wow. Learn from wisdom and not consequences!

Make no mistake about it: Heaven and hell watch inside activity more than outside activity.

Such was the case with Saul’s envy of David. Its lethal poison lay silently in the king’s heart . . . until the songs began.

This is the litmus test for any leader: He’s tested not by what he does as much as by how he responds to what others do.

• • When others’ successes are greater than yours, do you rejoice or are you secretly bothered? • • When a peer or a competitor flops in performance, do you secretly rejoice or do you genuinely weep?

Like Isaac, who dug again the wells of his father, Abraham, so too we must ‘‘dig again’’ the wells of our fathers, so that we might journey through the deserts to see God’s promises fulfilled.

Do you long to see the Spirit of the Lord work within you? Do you desire to reflect His heart more than your own? If so, I have just one piece of advice for you: Eat fresh bread.

I was proud of this stately piece of history that my grandchildren would one day inherit and call ‘‘Grandpa’s desk from the turn of the century.’’ I was feeling quite smug about my purchase until one day I noticed something curious. Upon closer inspection, I was horrified to find that the only genuine oak on the whole desk were the rolls of the rolltop. The rest was oak veneer covering pressboard innards. I’d been too quick on the draw. I had purchased a pressboard desk that I thought was solid oak! No one would want a pressboard desk as a family heirloom. If it’s going to be valuable and treasured, it has to be authentic and genuine. That alone would bring the worth we esteem. It has to be oak all the way to the core.

Do you know the same could be said of character? We are generally one of two types: veneer or solid oak.

the Divine Mentor will make sure your oak structure is more than a thin exterior. He’ll take it right to the core of your being.

Why is knowing Him so important to God? Why does He want us to love Him with ever-increasing devotion? It’s because of something called ‘‘creative affinity.’’ Creative affinity means you become increasingly more like that which you love the most. You take on the characteristics of whom or what you cherish most deeply.

You become what you worship.

One of the greatest gifts you’ll receive from entering the Bible on a daily basis is an increasing resistance to offense. Don’t miss this! Taking offense, justified or unjustified, will impede the miraculous in your life.

The humiliated commander was furious. Fortunately, his servant, Gehazi, said, ‘‘If he had asked you to accomplish a near impossible task in order to gain your healing, would you have done it? He is simply asking you to do something easily attainable. Isn’t it worth a try?’’14 With that, Naaman hitched up his pants and promptly waded in. He dipped his afflicted body under the current, and with each completed dunk something of him drifted downstream . . . a little of his pride. Every time Naaman’s head broke the water, God broke down his conceit. By the seventh dip, the work in him was completed. His self-consciousness and smug self-will had been dissolved by the water and the hand of God. He was now positioned for healing.

To save his own hide, Abraham told the king that his wife, Sarah, was his sister.

When we are faithful to let God’s Word scrub our hearts, He provides us with divine protection. As our hearts are laid bare before the Word, He points out any wrong motives we may have.

Here’s a new definition for ‘‘slowness’’: God’s optimum speed in bringing about His likeness in you.

Like Naaman the leper, we need time to come to repentance. We require days, sometimes seasons, to change our mind and direction.

A hurry-up father once approached future U.S. president James A. Garfield while he was still the president of a local college: ‘‘Is there any way you can get my son through this institution faster than four years?’’ he implored. ‘‘Time is running short, and the business world is waiting!’’ ‘‘It all depends on what you want,’’ Garfield wisely replied. ‘‘Squash will take only three months, but if you want oak, that requires four years.’’

You can manufacture veneer, but you grow oak. It will take a bit longer, but that’s the only way to be aut...

A correctly defined promotion means ‘‘another step closer to fulfilling my calling’’ or ‘‘being better able to use my gifts.’’

When they raised their hands in worship, I saw at least one man with scars from the shackles that had been his companions in prison.

Yes. That is why I memorized the Scriptures as quickly as I could. You see, they can take away the paper, but they cannot take away what I have already hidden in my heart.’’

He never promises to bless the readers of any book except the one He authored.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

When I reflect back on my life, I realize the times I grew the most came wrapped in ‘‘struggle paper.’’ You see, the greatest gems are not found on mountaintops. They tumble to the valley floor.

The best interpretation of the Bible is the Bible itself—not another book, not a denomination’s teaching.

If you extract the precious from the worthless, you will become My spokesman.13

A good place to start is by staying near to God’s heart. When you stay near to the Lord’s heart, you become more like Him. You begin to understand what He’s saying, how He’s saying things, the words He uses—even His inflections—and you start doing and saying the same things.

As they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.14

You can’t hang out with somebody for long without picking up a little of him or her—without his or her character rubbing off on you. Jesus said, ‘‘Everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.’’15

The Lord God has given Me the tongue of disciples, that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word.

Hurting people don’t need another churchy cliche . They don’t need religious words. They need someone—one person—who will speak for God.

A husband and wife are tired of struggling. They need someone who will speak for God. A troubled co-worker is at a dead end. He needs someone who will speak for God. When a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, or when a minister is discouraged, or when a saint is caught in sin, they don’t need a religious assassinator. They need a genuine ambassador. Be one, my friend, and delight the heart of God.

Millions are stranded, desperately searching for a way to God. They’ve experimented with counterfeits, settled for the world, and still are empty and in need. They are looking for just one light that would lead them home.

Obedience will not remove obstacles. It will only help you navigate through them.

Obedience compels us to live by trust and obedience, not by results and rewards. No preset guarantees. Only promises.

There’s a big difference between taking a class and being taught by the Master.

Isaiah reminds me today to keep looking forward. ‘‘What’s next?’’ should be the cry of my heart. ‘‘What can I repair or develop in order to improve? What must I correct, refocus, prepare for? In what shall I invest my time?’’ // APPLICATION

Although accolades are nice, I must, as Paul instructs, forget what lies behind and press forward to what lies ahead (see Philippians 3:13–14). It’s in what’s ahead that potential is found, promise is discovered, hope is uncovered, expectations are released, and vision is fashioned.

As C. S. Lewis said, ‘‘When you keep your face toward the sun, the shadows will always fall behind you.’’

If you come to the Bible daily for twenty hours of intensive study and yet do not invite God to interact with you through its pages, then you’ll be climbing in the same boat that took Judas Iscariot so far off the charted course.

It was not the blood of Jesus Christ that gave us unity, but our agreement on doctrinal issues. We came together not for confession and forgiveness, but for debate.5

Believe me, my friend, it’s a lot better to listen for divine whispers than to wait for a divine shout. Usually those shouts come in the form of serious consequences—and you just don’t need that.