CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY, PART ONE: MENTORS

With this devotion, Jonathan Dudley begins an occasional series on Christian community.

"All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord's Supper), and to prayer." (Acts 2:42)

Whether we are learning golf or developing new ideas in business, it always helps to find someone who has established themselves in the area of expertise and ask their suggestions. The more modern expression for this is "finding a mentor."

In Acts 2, we see the forming of the first Christian community. The author of the book, Luke, listed the four essentials of the founding church and the real fruit of maturing as a Christian: teaching, fellowship, sharing meals, and prayer.

Today I am going to focus on teaching.

When Luke wrote about teaching, he mentioned specifically that the teaching came from the apostles themselves. At this point in history, there were many things discussed about Jesus Christ, but these believers that Luke described were being taught by the actual men who had been eyewitnesses of Christ's resurrection.

What a great source! Could you imagine being a disciple by the Apostle Peter? That would be pretty sweet.

So why was this so important at the time? Well, I believe God paved the way for the foundations of the truth to be built upon--it was not some manmade fabrication--and what better way to do this than to have the eyewitnesses spread the faith!

For those of you who have had a great mentor in your life, there is a difference between those who are in daily communion with Christ and those who are just going through the motions.

The apostles in Acts were men who had been with Jesus and had a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit in their lives. They were living out the fullness of the gospel and God was doing some amazing things through them.

Therefore, there was a fresh energy that empowered their teaching and it brought great revelation to the people of the times. The harvest was plentiful and these faithful harvesters were ready to gather as many people into the kingdom of God as they could.

The same things can carry over into our lives today as believers. Although our mentors may not have actually seen Christ with their own eyes, those that spend time daily reading God's Word and living it out are ambassadors for Christ and motivators for us.

A great indicator of a sincere mentor is one who battles through our pains for us. Paul wrote to the Galatians, "I feel as if I'm going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives" (Galatians 4:19).

In other words, Paul took others' burdens upon himself that he might labor in pain with them in birth and maturity until he felt they had developed in Christ to the extent that they could then go and labor with others.

It is no secret the when younger believers gather around their mentors, they naturally grow with them and they are encouraged to move forward in their relationship with the Lord.

Therefore, wherever we are walking as believers, let us take time to consider the important ingredient of teaching, and reflect on how we have incorporated this into our lives and been blessed by those in our lives who have invested time in us. And also, may look to be blessings to others once we have been equipped.

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Jonathan Dudley

August 14, 2006

Copyright 2006 Links Players International

The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.