Daily Reading for Saturday, Feb. 16: Mentoring

“When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.”
Luke 9:1-2 NIV

A key ingredient to mentoring is knowing when you need to let those who are being mentored “try their wings.” We’ve all heard how birds learn to fly. Many times, they are forced from the nest (which has often been made uncomfortable by mama and papa bird), and they either fly or fall.
We see here that after the twelve had been with Jesus for a period of time, he sent them away from him to do what he had been doing. Why? Because he was modeling mentoring for the church. He trained his guys, sent them out to do what he trained them to do, and then brought them back together for more training and feeding. That is how we need to be as Christians. We gather together to celebrate the Lord, to worship him together, to be fed by His word and encouraged by one another. We then go out and do what we were taught to do, and then we come back together for more celebration.
If you are mentoring someone, make sure you let them test their wings. If you are being mentored, and it seems as if your mentor is not paying much attention to you, you may be in your wing-testing time. It may feel uncomfortable when you realize that you are not in the safety, security, and comfort of the nest, but birds are not designed to sit in a nest—they are designed to fly. And so are we.