Last year I learnt some key things about being a mentor from my Masters Supervisor ( See here for that lesson) but I also learnt a whole lot about following.
Just so you understand for most of last year I was pretty convinced that at any moment they were going to find out how much I did not know and how much I am not an academic and throw me out of the Masters of Theology program. I did it simply because I knew it was outside of my comfort zone and so I should challenge myself. I also wanted to keep learning and growing.
So after getting a supervisor I really wanted and respected here is what I did. I did exactly what he told me to do!
I have to tell you there were times when the only reason I did what he told me was because I trusted him. I knew academically he was, and is, streets ahead of me.
One of the first things he told me to do was to read a 750 page book on the philosophy of hermeneutics. I have to tell you I could not see the connection between this work and my thesis which centred around Discipleship and Abundant Life. However I ploughed through that book with Google Dictionary as my guide because I trusted Dave.
He then had me read another 300 page book on pentecostal philosophy and around 200 pages on the New Perspective on first century Jews.
I thought I was going to be reading dense difficult books forever!
Then I started work on what was my topic and I have to tell you I still didn’t get the connection.
Seven months later I was doing my analysis and conclusions and suddenly it all clicked into place – the keys to everything I was doing was in those works. (Another bonus these books are no longer difficult and dense to me, but a joy !)
I followed because I trusted and it all came together and made sense in the end.
However academically I know I need help – often I don’t get how much I need help and I don’t always trust the leadership above me as I should.
I was so challenged to trust in a new way, to trust when I don’t understand, to trust when I can’t see where I was going, to trust when I am being asked to do something difficult and challenging.
I learnt an old lesson again, I rarely see the whole picture and I need people ahead of me and I need to trust them. As we get older it is so easy to lose the humility of trust. I certainly needed to be reminded of it again.
How do you fond trusting people God has placed in your life to lead you ? What has affected that trust?
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