I remember one hot summer day in Houston, TX being at Astroworld (Houston's Six Flags theme park, now closed down) with a large group of students from the West side of town. I was the youth minister at a church, and we were taking our annual trip to enjoy the rollor coasters, shows, and each other's company. It was a blast, just like every year. But I remember this particular day because I got into a very cool spiritual conversation with a student as we took a break from the lines and heat. Somehow we got to talking about mentors, fathers, and big-brother-types. You know, people “ahead of us” who would take a special interest in us. People who would choose us as someone they would resolve to pursue and be available to in order to bestow their wisdom, life, and ways.
Sounds beautiful, huh?
But it stirred an overwhelming feeling of being quite alone and mentor-less. I’m humbled and proud to mention that this student was honoring me in our conversation as one of these mentors, spiritual father figures, and big brother types...and I was surprised at the depths that were touched in me, moved to tears actually (yes, right there in the shade of a tree at Astroworld), as I wished I could identify someone loving, coaching, teaching, and pursuing me as I was doing for this student.
Looking back on my life, I think one of the several unspoken, secret, tsunami-like motivations that invisibly moved me into my calling of loving people – which eventually moved into into a position of mentoring and fathering people – was this very deep desire to have someone do this for me. Wow. As I write this, the words of Jesus, “do unto others as you would have others do unto you” comes to mind. I think that’s what I was unknowingly doing. I wanted some fathering in the innermost places of my heart, and I showed it by making a life of giving that to others.
“Our greatness comes from our woundedness,” someone once memorably said.
Over my adult life, I have approached several folks who I perceived as “ahead of me” in the life that I am constantly moving and growing into, and have asked them overtly to mentor, coach, be available to, and benefit me with their wisdom and experience...to love me, really. To big-brother and father me.
Now, I know this is a huge request. To ask this of someone should not be done lightly. And although you may get one, you sure should not expect a quick, un-thought over, un-prayed over affirmative answer. If the person you are asking understands what you are truly asking, and they are worthy of being asked, they will not say yes lightly (so they may not be able to say yes quickly).
However, as I became aware of this desire in my life, it was amazing how few people there are who I felt like I could ask this of. Those who:
- have become “masters” of spiritual things with humble confidence
- have room in their life for any deep relationships
- valued the passing on of their own life discoveries and wisdom
- had a clue how to go about mentoring even if they desired to
Out of those that did, and I can think of two that I asked, one reluctantly felt that he had to say no because he lived across the country and the demand on his life for this kind of relationship had already consumed his time (another witness to how few there are, and how hungry people are for it). The other didn’t have the heart to say no (and bless his heart, he caught me in another deeply emotional moment, so I know I made it hard for him), but never could realistically follow through because of the demands on his life as well.
While it sounds like I should be writing an email entitled, “The Mentorless Generation” (that would actually be a good one), I’m connecting to all of this because out of all the ways that I have approached God, the one that has allowed my heart to experience the most healing, the most guidance, the most meaningful information, the most illumination, the most life, the most passion and love…ultimately, the most oneness with God… has been when I have approached him as a father, a mentor.
As it turns out, I think it is His favorite way that I have approached Him, as well.
And as it turns out, Jesus revealed the Father as wanting to do just that.
When he taught us to pray, he went against all the religiosity of the day and the misunderstanding of the word “reverence” and told us to address God as, you guessed it, “our Father”. (Mt 6:9)
When he decided to implement a world-changing plan among mankind, his primary strategy wasn’t to preach to big crowds, post blogs, write books, gather Facebook friends, Twitter, or organize a centralized headquarters out of which he would do all these things. No, he incarnated himself into the rabbinical system of the day, invited 12 people to join him intimately in his life in order to, you guessed it, relationally “mentor” them. (Mk 3:14)
John Eldredge says, “God wants to father us. The truth is, he has been fathering us for a long time—we just haven’t had the eyes to see it. He wants to father us much more intimately, but we have to be in a posture to receive it.”
That’s what I want. It took some time, but buried underneath a bunch of false spirituality, high-church thinking, stiff-necked theology, and incomplete and unbalanced views of God, I found a tender desire that responded with a nuclear fission explosion of hopeful excitement when I heard God say, "I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters." (2 Cor 6:18)
I suppose there are lots of ways to answer the question, “How to approach God?”
But lesson number one, the one that I believe must be found and practiced in order to address anything else with any kind of accuracy and humanity, is to approach God as a father.
