Mentor Fathers understand the concept of UN-conditional love.
It takes unconditional love to bring out life in those we love. When we as fathers and mentors attach conditions we in fact place limits, strings and conditions that will control and manipulate and ultimately control those we 'love'.
I have somehow been aware of this principle but never quite could explain it, until I recently read something along these lines that made me so much more aware of how this works.
When we love our children and those we mentor without condition they will learn to understand life ie. how to interact with secuirty and true identity. They will walk in an assurance and confidence of who they are because they will sense they do not 'have to' conform to some conditional expectation that we hold over them. They will never share their heart with you and certainly will not trust that you have their best interests at heart.
Why?
Because really they do not have the liberty to 'hear' the voice of their conscience; the voice of their inner man, to guide them to making decisions for themselves, taking responsibility to take the initiative for their own lives.
True mentoring will always empower the mentee, the child, to the power of obeying their own conscience.
Many mentor/fathers have said to me that there is no "expectation".
But do you know that expectation can be implicit or explicit.
Implicit when I have expectations but do not share them, you can however feel them and sense they are there, and know that if you do not meet them, there will some form of punishment or consequence. Explicit when they are shared and made clear in the relationship and therefore can be measured and agreed to by both parties.
The implicit one is the one that goes with the love given with condition..
I have discovered this one many times. Even when the person or organisation says there are none and may not even be aware there is expectations, they none the less, with their culture and way of doing things, expect you to conform; at times even obligate you to conform. And God help you when you do not.
One thing I can say about the man God used to mentor/father me was he never had a condition or an expectation upon me. I never sensed anything like I needed to be like him or had to act a certain way or attend certain formalities. He just always encouraged me to pursue the relationship, and made it easy to do that with his acceptance and love for me. Yet I earnestly desired to the right thing always and sought his guidance and correction for my life.
But boy on the other end of the stick, I have had men (of God) reject me because I didn't or couldn't or perceived to not want to do it their way. Even when I pursued their relationship.
The unfortunate thing is that when we make our love conditional, the object of our love begins to work so hard at trying to prove that they have value and identity without our acceptance that in fact they do not follow the dictates of their inner man and stay in an immature state. We then arrogantly begin to criticize them for their rebellious -ness, and all simply because they are back-peddling from our 'conditions' of love.
Mentees/disciples/children/followers are desperate for unconditional love and acceptance. It does not mean we do not confront or correct or set boundaries for our relationships and their lives. But understand discipline is different to punishment for not conforming to our implicit conditions that we lay upon them for receiving our love and acceptance.
Search your heart today,
Are you loving your children regardless of their decisions and choices in ,life?
Do you constantly have your own idea or dream that you want to impose because you feel that is best for them?
Do you manipulate those you lead to get them to conform to your view and do they have to 'work' for your love?
Don't say you love unless you love UN-conditionally!!
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