Mentor for a day

Through the years I’ve been a mentor to my sons, various employees, and friends to whom I have taken a liking, but I’ve never had a mentor myself. If you are like me and you do not have anyone that will take time to tutor you or that you can turn to for advice, I recommend you look towards the Bible for counsel. In fact even if you have access to a mentor I recommend going to the Bible when you seek guidance.

I often get letters from those who seek advice. Invariably I send them to the Bible to find their answer. Often people write to me concerning someone who has greatly wronged them. The Bible tells us to forgive them.

Ahhh. It is so easy to say, but so difficult to do.

As I mentioned yesterday I once had an employee who had seven years tenure with my company and was like a son to me. He turned out to be dishonest and he very nearly bankrupt my company by embezzling nearly all of our current assets. I had risked my life savings and put everything I possessed into that company and had mortgaged the rest to the hilt in order to get it established. I literally began my workday at 7AM and did not stop until 4AM six and even seven days per week for over seven years to build that company.

When I discovered what he had done I had to lay off good people. We went from 65 employees to 19 in three days. Not only that but he deliberately sabotaged our company and destroyed all of our financial records because he wanted to cover up his crimes and he was setting up a competing company and wanted to ruin mine. He was very nearly successful and it took me seven years to ever fully recover, (the same amount of time that it took me to build it).

To be perfectly honest when it first happened I wanted to kill him, (slowly and painfully). Later I would have settled for breaking his legs and maybe an arm (or two) with a baseball bat. Later I wanted to put him in jail and spent nearly two years meeting with the DA and the Grand Jury and trying to help them prepare a case.

It occupied all of my thoughts and all of my time and I was obsessed with getting even with him. Finally I decided to just forget about him and let God deal with him. When I did my life turned completely around for the better and his went to hell and a hand basket, (whatever that means).

I learned that forgiveness is not about the party that has wronged us, BUT ABOUT US. I didn’t call this jerk up and say I forgive you, but I did “forget” him, and when I say forget, I mean forget. I completely put him out of my mind and concentrated solely on my God, my family, and rebuilding my business.

I could have spared myself two full years of my life that had been spent filled with hate and bitterness had I simply mustered enough faith to believe the Bible when it instructed me to leave getting even up to God. I have now entered the ninth inning of my life and as I look at the normal life span of an adult male and I compare my age to it, I realize just how short life is more than ever. I greatly lament having wasted those two years of it on such a foolish thing.

So my dear friends take it from your mentor for a day. Don’t waste your life trying to get even with someone no matter what great harm they might have done you. It is not your place to repay evil with evil. The Bible states that God is angry all day long with the wicked. He sees what they have done to you and has promised that He will take care of your enemies at a time of His choosing. My life’s experience has proven to me over and over that nothing could be more true.

Don’t waste your life hating

Romans 12:19
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.