Dead Mentors

In my Bible reading plan right now I'm going through 2 Corinthians. As I was reading I found myself thinking about the Apostle Paul and his life. He has left us such a wealth of material! and that's an understatement! Then I started thinking how I wanted to be his student. I know it sounds corny, but bear with me.

I believe each of us should have mentors and coaches in life. People older and wiser than us who can challenge and encourage us. Some of our mentors should be living and some should be dead. What I mean is that we should have mentors in our lives who are living, but we should also have dead mentors who shape our lives by their legacy.

A cool dynamic takes place when we view ourselves as students of people like Paul, Peter, and most importantly Jesus. They have given us so much and I think we would be wise to become their students and allow their lives to speak into ours.

I think that in much the same way that teenagers tend to ignore their parent's wisdom and think they know everything (we've all been there:) so we would be unwise to ignore the wisdom of people who have lived faithful lives before us. These need not be limited to biblical figures, though they are the best, but also great people of the past like Augustine, Athanasius, Francis of Assisi, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd, Martin Luther, C.S. Lewis, Henri Nouwen, J. Hudson Taylor, George Muller, and on and on. Though far from perfect, we would be wise to learn from the lives of great people from the past.