Mentorship is an interpersonal supportive relationship, an aid relationship, a relationship of exchanges and learning, in which an experienced person, the mentor, offers their acquired wisdom and expertise with the aim of fostering the development of another person, the mentee, who has skills or knowledge to acquire. Paul, who was a mentor to the Christians of Philippi, said:

“What you have learned, received, and heard from me, and what you have seen in me, practice these things. And the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:9.

In his book entitled “Mentoring,” Bobb Biehl writes that: Mentoring […] is a relationship between two people. It is a relationship in which the public and even private masks we wear fall away so that communication can take place on a more real and profound level. Ideally, in a mentoring relationship, there is the creation of emotional bonds, a commitment to support, encourage, and provide security.

In the Bible, there are several mentoring models that are worth exposing here. What you need to know is that despite your degrees, you do not possess and will never possess all knowledge. If you have discovered your gifts and talents, there are people who discovered them before you. There is nothing new under the sun. And for this reason, the Lord values the exchange of experiences:

“because one generation passes away, and another generation comes, but the earth abides forever” (Ecclesiastes 1:4).

God designed us to be dependent on one another so that those who have first gained access to certain knowledge can make it available to others. This dependence also reminds us of our insufficiency, for only God is sufficient in everything. Having one or more mentors is important. Mentors pass on to you in a short time what took them many years of study, learning, and accumulating experiences to understand.

I lost a lot of time before meeting my mentor. I loved the Lord, but in everything I did for Him, the touch of the Holy Spirit was missing. I did certain things for God, but with my own efforts and intelligence. He noticed it and took me under his wing in August 2016. Since then, I have advanced much faster than in my beginnings. Thanks to him, I am on the path of extraordinary exploits for the sole glory of our Lord.

He has been a mediator between my humble beginnings and where the Lord is leading me because he taught me never to operate without the Lord, the Spirit. He was sincere with me the first day he spoke to me. He said: when you sing, we only hear a beautiful voice. I admit that I almost disappeared. And weeks later, he began teaching me how to operate under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Friends, it’s wonderful. When I started to apply it, testimonies began to pour in from everywhere. I was often solicited to be a moderator at gospel concerts.

One day, after a service, a sister came to me and said: Brother Tony, while you were speaking, there was a giant angel behind you. Another brother will say, about the same concert: “Brother Tony, every time you brought a group on stage, and left the stage yourself, the glory of God decreased in the atmosphere, and when you came back up, the glory of heaven’s atmosphere took control of the room again.”

But before my mentor taught me about the things of the Spirit, this was not the case. I had a beautiful voice, and I still do, but I operated without the Holy Spirit, forgetting that it is neither by power nor by might, but by His Spirit. Zechariah 4:6.

To qualify mentorship as a mediation that gives access to greatness, as Martin Sanders highlighted, is to help the accompanied person reach their full potential. You may wonder: in how many areas should one have mentors? The answer to this question depends on the areas in which you want to shine; the areas you aspire to or are already evolving in. If for the areas you aspire to, you know someone who has succeeded brilliantly and who can download this data into you, cling to them. Otherwise, find a mentor in each area.

And when I speak of having a mentor, I do not ask you to run around every office seeking appointments. There are several ways to learn and emulate a person without even being with them physically. There is what is called learning by contemplative and reproductive admiration. It is distant mentoring, without the person knowing you personally.

This type of mentoring is found in fields such as sports, music, journalism, or even preaching. This type of mentoring has a double requirement: to seek the patterns, the processes that led this mentor to become what they became, and simply reproduce what they do. You can follow a person remotely through their books, audios, videos, conferences they give, their interviews, etc.

However, in mentoring that requires you to be in contact with the mentors, the first condition to fulfill is humility…

This text is an excerpt from the book “ESTABLISHED IN GLORY” written by Tony-Branly NZIKOU.

We invite you to read the following article “PREPARATION IN THE SHADOW.”

MENTORS