...is not easily broken.
This passage from the good book was firmly imprinted in my mind during an informal FiCS brothers' retreat at Bodega Bay during Spring Break of junior year. Andy 'hsiaonao'/'beautiful' Hsiao led a devotion from a Promise Keeper's book, where it talked about the constant need to have three "strands" amongst one's like-minded friends, and used that illustration from that verse to represent the three types:
1. A strand representing an older and wiser brother, one who leads and influences through mentorship and/or discipleship.
2. A strand representing one's like-minded peers, a source of fellowship, mutual encouragement, and accountability.
3. A strand representing those that you act as strand 1 towards.
I'm thankful that in my nascent life here, there has already started to be the seeds planted of strands 2 and 3.
But the glaring omission is still in the first category. So my request is this... I need a mentor, a discipler out here. Not someone formally ordained in his position who leads by formal sheparding of his flock, but a gege, dailo, hyung, someone that I can just be totally vulrenable and transparent too, that I can expose all my sham, all my sin, all my interest in various specific and non-specific members of the opposite sex, everything... someone who is totally unafraid of rebuking me, often harshly, to strengthen -- or oftentimes, restrengthen -- my own discipline.
Basically, someone like say, Harold or Justin at FiCS/KCPC... or Collin, Min, or Roy at GrX was to me in influencing my own life both directly through counsel and teaching and indirectly through their own lifestyle...
In being out here, and facing the temptation on multiple fronts, the need is clearly so much greater.
I know that a healthy spiritual life always will have those three strands present. And yet, I wonder, is the first strand always in the form of a person? In the Book, the discipler/disciple relationship was far from apparent for many great leaders -- certainly in the OT pre-Son, it seemed to be the norm, and yet they did great things.
Indeed, even in secular epics ranging from Star Wars to LotR to many a Final Fantasy, the mentor, the father figure of the hero, while playing an instrumental role in cultivating him, was never around in the moment of ultimate triumph...
Whether such a new person appears in my life, seems to be one of those ambiguous spiritual answers, for which I am called to wait not on the final answer to, but to continue to persevere in faith and trust, knowing that He will provide at the right time...
Thank you for your thoughts, and please continue to do so!
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