SPIRITUAL FATHER VERSUS SPIRITUAL MENTOR

The term spiritual father and spiritual mentor or instructor have often being misinterpreted and erroneously interchanged.

Who is a mentor? A mentor or instructor is a wise and trusted counselor or teacher. The student under a mentor is referred to as a protege or mentee.

Who is a Father? A father is the male genetic contributor to the creation of the baby and the paternity can be verified through DNA test. In other words, he directly gave rise to the baby.

Everything we acknowledge in the physical was first a creation of the spiritual. It existed there first before the earth ever had any premonition. A father may not be a mentor and a mentor may not be a father. However, a father may double as a father and mentor. Most of us don’t have our earthly father as mentor but some do. And our mentors aren’t necessarily our earthly father.

Apostle Paul explained the difference in 1 Corinthians 4:15 ” Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. NIV.

As you can see from the scriptures above, Paul was the one who started the church at Corinth and led most of them to Christ. You can hear him boast that he led them to Christ but handed them to instructors. He reiterated that they may have lot of instructors but only one father, and that’s him. You know that it is practically impossible to have two biological father. It’s the same with having a spiritual father.

KEY POINTS

1. Your spiritual mentor may or may not be the person who led you to Christ.
2. Your spiritual mentor is not the person you always listen to, but rather the person whose instruction you follow and apply.
3. Your spiritual father is the person who led you to Christ.
4. Even in the natural life, your biological father is always the person through whom you came to this life. Every other person is just a surrogate, adopted or guardian father.
5. Just because we use spiritual father and mentor interchangeably don’t make it right. 

Thanks for reading. I hope this was helpful. Kindly leave a comment.