{"id":4685,"date":"2025-06-09T09:41:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T13:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4685"},"modified":"2025-06-09T09:41:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T13:41:00","slug":"vrps-very-resourceful-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/09\/vrps-very-resourceful-people\/","title":{"rendered":"VRPs Very Resourceful People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

All of us are called to be stewards, or caretakers, of the gifts and resources we have been given.

That includes our talents and abilities, our bank accounts, our calendars, and our physical wellbeing.

What\u2019s often overlooked, however, is our need to be stewards of our personal energy.

Almost 40 years ago, in an article called Anatomy of a Spiritual Leader, <\/em>pastor Gordon MacDonald pointed out that there are five kinds of people who affect our level of energy on a daily basis.

Some people build us up.\u00a0They fill us with joy and restore our passion to keep going. Other people (as Dana Carvey\u2019s character, Garth Algar, so memorably puts it in Wayne\u2019s World<\/em>), have an unusual capacity to suck our very will to live.

Many of us drive ourselves into energy deficits because we fail to take into account how draining certain relationships can be, even as we fail to take advantage of the kinds of relationships that faithfully restore our commitment to keep pressing on.

The good news is that personal energy is a renewable resource.

MacDonald classifies the five different kinds of people with three-letter acronyms, and arbitrarily assigns energy values to them as a way of describing our need to sustain balance.

They are VRPs (+3), VIPs (+2), VTPs (+1), VNPs (0), and VDPs (-1).\u00a0

Each day this week we will spotlight one of those five kinds of energy-affecting relationships.

Before we get started, however, we should note that no human being is objectively \u201cstuck\u201d in a particular category.\u00a0No one has been assigned a T-shirt that says, \u201cI am a relational black hole that consumes all the energy in every room: Run for your life!<\/em>\u201d

In fact, somebody who loves to talk, talk, talk may fill you with inspiration, even while that same person leaves others in the same conversation feeling exhausted.\u00a0

So what is a VRP?\u00a0MacDonald identifies that individual as a Very Resourceful Person<\/strong>.\u00a0

A VRP is someone who raises my level of energy every time we are in the same zip code.\u00a0He or she rekindles my vision, restores my perspective, and (often without even trying) reassures me that life is worth living.

A Very Resourceful Person, in other words, is a mentor \u2013 one of the most precious of all human beings.\u00a0

A mentor might be a living person who is close at hand \u2013 a parent, grandparent, teacher, boss, or friend.\u00a0

But a mentor might just as easily be an author you have never met; a public speaker whose messages you have only heard as recordings; a wise person who has been gone for centuries; or a family member whose voice still rallies you whenever you feel depressed, even from the balcony of heaven.\u00a0

VRPs are life\u2019s ultimate deep wells of courage and inspiration.

In his book The Divine Conspiracy,<\/em> Dallas Willard points out that all of us learn how to live \u2013 for better or worse \u2013 from those who teach us. Each of us is somebody\u2019s disciple. \u201cThere are no exceptions to this rule, for human beings are just the kind of creatures that have to learn and keep learning from others how to live.\u201d

How does this learning take place? In order to effect healthy spiritual growth, God sends special teachers into our lives \u2013 men and women who by one means or another are called to demonstrate, proclaim, interpret, and model the various essentials of the Christ-following life. To climb a few feet higher on the spiritual slope, we need to receive the encouragement and the extended hands of those who are at least a few feet ahead of us.

\u201cSolo flight\u201d is not a value celebrated in the Bible. Spirituality is imparted and received through relationships<\/em>.\u00a0

Joshua\u2019s leadership lessons arrive via his association with Moses. Ruth looks to her mother-in-law Naomi. Elisha becomes the prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Elijah. Mary receives \u201cproblem pregnancy\u201d encouragement and partnership in the company of her older relative Elizabeth. Many of the second generation of Christian missionaries, including Titus, Epaphras, and Tychicus, look to Paul. Apollos receives mentoring from a married couple named Priscilla and Aquila.\u00a0

It\u2019s widely known that \u201cmentor\u201d entered our vocabulary through Homer\u2019s mythological epic Odyssey<\/em>.\u00a0

Before his embarkation to the Trojan War, Ulysses places his son Telemachus in the care of a wise old man, Mentor by name. Homer reveals that Telemachus\u2019 education goes far beyond book learning.\u00a0 Mentor gives the lad a healthy dose of street smarts, so that years later the son will be ready to stand beside the father in the epic final battle for their family\u2019s survival.

Then there\u2019s Barnabas, that remarkable VRP in the life of the apostle Paul.

Even though the former persecutor Saul \/ Paul is mistrusted by virtually all of the earliest Christians, Barnabas displays a unique capacity to see his spiritual potential. Under this mentor\u2019s influence, Paul is gradually able to move from the perimeter of the young church to the center. And we see no evidence that Barnabas is ever unhappy that he slowly disappears from public view because of Paul\u2019s giant shadow.

What mattered most, in the end, was that the whole world could be blessed by Paul.

Gordon MacDonald reminds us that we often make a serious personal-energy miscalculation. We take our mentors for granted, or we\u2019re too shy to ask for their time, or we devote the lion\u2019s share of our efforts trying to \u201cfix\u201d the other people in our life \u2013 the ones who tend to draw down our energy.

Take a moment today to reflect on the people who feed your soul. Ask yourself: Who is my Barnabas?

Thank God for their presence in your life, and give yourself the gift of receiving their encouragement.

No matter what you\u2019re facing this week, remember this first building block of sustaining sufficient energy to live a mission-centered life:\u00a0

Mentors matter.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here All of us are called to be stewards, or caretakers, of the gifts and resources we have been given. That includes our talents and abilities, our bank accounts, our calendars, and our physical wellbeing. What\u2019s often overlooked, however, is our need to be stewards of our personal energy. Almost 40 years… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[939,56],"class_list":["post-4685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barnabas","tag-mentors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4687,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685\/revisions\/4687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}