Mentoring and Being Mentored

Mentoring and Being Mentored

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”  Proverbs 27:17 (NIV)

 “I’d like to talk to you about the Apples of Gold event coming up this Fall.  Do you know about it?,” said a sweet church lady as we were passing in the hallway.

 

“Yes.  That’s the mentoring program, right?” I replied.  She smiled and nodded her head as she continued right down the hallway.  Which left me more than a little confused… 

 

Fresh out of individual Biblical counseling, I began my search for a mentor.  A mature woman with whom I could build an honest, deep, spiritually-satisfying relationship.  I didn’t know many women at my church, yet, so I prayed for God to guide me to the perfect woman.  And He did.  

“I’m really busy right now.  How about sometime next month?” she said.  “And I don’t particularly like the word mentor.  How about encourager or prayer warrior, instead. ” 

With diminished enthusiasm, I marked an agreeable date on my calendar and continued to pray but this time, “God, are you sure that she is the one? “ 

“Trust me, she’s the one,” He reassured me.

With the spiritual gift of encouragement, you will find that people are naturally drawn to you.  Don’t get the big head, though, because it isn’t really YOU they are drawn to at all…it is your gift. 

And it isn’t always a good thing.  For example, one of my dear friends had begun to come to me on a regular basis to vent about all the bad things going on in her life.  Time and again, I encouraged her to find a church home, to pray and seek God in all things, to turn them all over to Him, but she seemed to just tune me out. 

I began to feel overwhelmed as I watched her life continue to spiral out of control.  My heart ached for her.  Her situations were very real and very bad but nothing that God couldn’t handle.  But…there’s the rub, because I couldn’t MAKE her call out to God.  I began to feel emotionally depleted, used up and frustrated.  Taking my own advice, I prayed and turned my friend over to God and, in turn, He provided me with the insight and words to finally help her. 

“I am your friend but I won’t be your counselor anymore.  That’s not my job title.  Counselors are specially trained to listen to problems and then file them away in their cabinet along with all their other patient’s files.  As my last piece of advice to you, I’m going to recommend that you find a biblical counselor.  And I'm so excited for you because I know God has awesome things planned for you and I can’t wait to hear all about those things.  I love you and am so grateful God has put you in my life.” 

Sometimes, unknowingly, we can get in the way of the Holy Spirit doing His job.  Tweet this! Or maybe we try to be the Holy Spirit, Jr.  We feel we need to fix situations or people.  But they don’t need to be fixed by us.  They need to hit rock bottom so that they don’t have any other option but to call out to God to help them. 

 

And I am reminded of a time not so long ago when I hit that bottom myself. 

 

And though I am grateful for the people who tried to fix me along the way, I am most grateful for the many who made the heart wrenching decision to pray for me, instead, to hit bottom and do it quickly. The ones who knew that by hitting that bottom it would allow me to find out that Jesus was my granite underneath it all.

At our first meeting, my encourager (as she likes to be called) told me about her walk of faith which was so eerily similar to mine that it raised chill bumps all over my body.  “I told you,” God said.  And though she and I don’t have that typical mentoring/mentor relationship (whatever that is), she has been and continues to be one of the most influential women in my life. 

She tells me about classes I should take, events I should participate in, women and organizations I should connect with, credentials that I should check out.  We’ve gone prayer walking around our neighborhood together and we have plans to share the Good News at a booth at the upcoming fair.  And words can’t describe how grateful I am that God put her in my life. 

And I have a sneaking suspicion that she told that sweet church lady to invite me to be a part of the Apples of Gold event coming up in the Fall but I’m still left wondering…did she mean for me to participate as a mentor to others or to be the one receiving the mentoring?

Because God reminds me that I am, and always to be, both.          

“Timely advice is lovely, like golden apples in a silver basket.”  Proverbs 25:11 (NLT)

“Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers of slaves to much wine.  They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.”  Titus 2:3-5 (ESV)

“The godly give good advice to their friends, the wicked lead them astray.”  Proverbs 12:26 (NLT)