(Print by TillyClaires)

(If this looks like deja vu... it is because I posted on the wrong day! I pulled it and today is where it belongs.)

The Lord has gifted me with the desire to mentor women. I meet weekly (almost) with one younger woman and we go verse by verse through God’s Words. We pick a different book of the Bible once we have finished one. It is a slow process, some chapters we can finish in one session, some take two, some have taken longer. The goal is to apply God’s Word written well over 2,000 years ago into our lives and show how it still is relevant and useful to us today. Now we are working through Proverbs.

That is my joy… to watch God open women’s eyes and hearts to His Word and to be privileged to be a part of the process. The first week in Proverbs 1 we saw how God emphasized that we should seek wisdom and knowledge. That we should follow “her” (wisdom is referred to as a woman… don’t think too highly of it….God also uses a woman as an adulteress who leads us down the wrong path).

Proverbs 2… pretty much says the same thing. As does Proverbs 3, 4, 5...etc. They all basically tell us that wisdom is what we should seek and follow and stay away from the path of the wicked. As we discussed how God repeated and repeated the same concept, just with a little variance each time, we realized how very important it was for Him to continue to emphasize the same concepts.

I wanted to share with my friend why God would continue with what could be considered monotonous repetition. We talked about how “they” (whoever “they” are?) say that we need to hear things 7-10 times before it sinks in and we discussed how God took the concept a step further in each chapter, affirming what we had learned and adding to it.

Then the word popped in my head… Rototilling! (This is my favorite part of mentoring because it is when I feel closest to the Lord… He just pops things in there for me to use!) I like word pictures and try to use them whenever possible. Jesus gave us the example of word pictures by teaching us with the parables. (If He in all His wisdom knew we learn best that way, then I better follow His lead.)

Rototilling! You take a piece of hard ground and rototill it. The first round you break the soil into large clumps and it is a bit more absorbent than it was. The second round it improves but not until you have worked over that ground repeatedly is it broken and sifted enough to plant the seeds for successful growth. That is what God is doing in Proverbs… He is rototilling our minds. Proverbs is one giant mind rototiller that prepares our mind for God's seeds to take root.