-By Cindy Wright

When you think of mentoring someone, you can become scared at the thought! You think, “What makes me think I could teach anyone anything?” “What makes me such an expert that anyone would benefit from what I’d have to say?” “What if they ask me questions I don’t have an answer for?” “I’m not that “old” so how could I be qualified to mentor?”

Those are all legitimate questions to ask yourself. They’re questions I’ve thought about myself many times. But then there’s this tug on my heart which I know is the Holy Spirit. He lets me know that I don’t have to have all the questions answered correctly to do something He’s prompting me to do. I just need to be available for the leading of the Lord, and have the faith that He’ll direct me in the way I should go when I don’t know what to do next. The important thing is that I’m willing and the Lord is leading and empowering me because it’s His idea in the first place!

Often, when it comes to mentoring, we think we can only do it if we’re trained to do so and are involved in a church which helps and encourages us in the process. When it comes to mentoring though, it’s not about following a set program— although many churches have great programs that can help with this. It’s more about living your life so you give the Holy Spirit the elbow room to teach others through you.

The Bible tells us to teach younger men and women, which is a type of mentoring. It says:

You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. (Titus 2:1-8)

That’s all that mentoring is — it’s teaching, encouraging, advising, and setting for them “an example by doing what is good” — living our lives with integrity. It doesn’t mean we have to be perfect or an expert in what we’re encouraging someone to do — but we need to be growing forward in our walk in life and with the Lord.

As Dr Les Parrott says, “Mentors don’t have to be marriage experts. In fact, it’s their story that really does the teaching.” It comes down to what we’ve learned through rather than just what we’ve lived through in our marriage.

It’s also important that we don’t live one way and teach another. Mentoring is a way of life — teaching, as well as living and doing what we’re advising others to do.

• It’s being open and giving God the elbow room in our schedule so He can bring someone our way to minister to their needs.

• It’s becoming a “student of life” we have something to share with someone else when God brings them our way. As we become aware of all the “learning opportunities” around us, God can use us to share these “tailor-made just for them” nuggets of truth.

• It’s proceeding in life prayerfully so our eyes are tuned in, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, to all the ministry opportunities and learning opportunities He brings our way.

• It’s believing in others and infusing hope into them when they can’t believe in themselves. As 1 Corinthians 13:7 says, love “always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

• It’s following the principle of Hebrews 10:24 where it says, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

• Sometimes it’s quietly crying with, and standing with, and holding up a friend without saying much at all— knowing that sometimes friends need a strong, quiet friend to be with them more than they need someone who speaks more than they should in that circumstance. (Job, from the Bible, had friends who were good examples of friends who didn’t know when to shut up and just BE WITH their friend instead of chattering.)

• It’s being spiritually in tune to those we’re with to know when we’re to speak love, show love, or both.

• It’s being a friend who loves unconditionally and sees beyond their faults.

• It’s being “Christ with skin on” — being God’s colleague in loving this friend as Christ would.

After reading this, if you’ve felt a tug on your heart where you can see yourself, in some way, mentoring or coaching someone else of the same sex (because it would be inappropriate to mentor someone of the opposite sex), it could be that God is impressing upon your heart His calling to invest your life to help guide someone else in theirs.

If you’ve put up barrier reasons why you couldn’t do this up to this point despite the tugging you’ve experienced in your heart to do this anyway, I pray you’ll recognize it as selling God short on what He can do in and through you if you would only yield to His prompting. He can be trusted to be your Wonderful Counselor, despite whatever flaws or short-comings you may think you have. God does His greatest work when we remove our inadequacies from the picture and allow Him to be God.

Don’t look at mentoring as something you do … it’s a way of life. And if you’re open to it and you’re called to it, take down whatever barriers are preventing you from investing in someone else’s life in this way. Mentoring is a way of life. When you’re ready, then God will bring someone your way that will also be ready. And whether you mentor them for a short season or a long season, you will fit into God’s plan to benefit the Kingdom of God in a very unique wonderful way.

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