“Order whatever you want,” I told my friend from my high school years. We were at Red Robin, and I didn’t have much money, but I knew I had more than this single mom, whom I had shared the gospel with a few years before. I watched as she stuffed herself with food she didn’t need to pay for. And she told me her story.
“Do you remember our friend, Mary? She talked to me about Jesus long before and long after you came and went. Well, she no longer follows Jesus.” I knew this—I had been at a reunion of old friends and saw how far Mary had walked away. “So what do I do now? I am struggling—obviously—but the person who told me about Jesus no longer believes in Jesus. What do I do?”
Friends, you may be in the same place as my friend was. Let me offer you a few encouragements if your mentor has left the faith.
First, it is natural to feel unbalanced and uncertain. Maybe you think to yourself, “There was nothing that made her faith more or less sincere than my own.” It is important that we don’t dress up our insecurities and provide answers the Lord has not provided. We need to bring our honest struggles to a God who has promised to help. We can pray to him, “I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
Second, our God loves to use broken vessels to save us. The Lord has graciously used me to help others to know and follow Jesus, and I am embarrassed almost every time I see these brothers and sisters afterward because of my own unending struggle with sin. I forget that it is the Lord who rescued these sinners, not me (1 Tim. 1:15–17). We should not glory in the instruments the Lord uses, but in the fact that God strikes straight blows with crooked sticks, as an old theologian would say.
Third, our faith has a resting place: Jesus. Every day, people rise and people fall; Christians prevail and Christians fail. Jesus does not fail. The apostle Paul rebuked Peter, who had believed and followed Jesus years before Paul (Gal. 2:11–14). He could do so because his faith did not rely upon Peter, but upon Jesus—who is the author of our faith and perfects it (Heb. 12:2).
No one had a greater opportunity to fail than Jesus. He was prepared to drink the cup of God’s wrath. Satan sought to deter him. His disciples slept rather than prayed with him. Yet, Jesus declared “your will be done” (Matt. 26:42). He did not fail the frail people who depended upon him, and he will not fail you.
Friends, I am sorry that your mentors failed you. My heart has been broken by those I trusted as well. But do you know who will not break your heart, but will instead hold and uphold it? Your lord and savior, Jesus Christ. He does not slumber or sleep. He will keep you both now and forevermore (Ps. 121).
If our faith rests upon those the Lord uses, we are doomed. If it rests upon the savior who lived the life we couldn’t live, and died the death we couldn’t bear, then our hope is imperishable. Rest in your savior, so that if or when your mentor fails, you can continue to “run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1), looking only to him who purchased you by his own blood.
