There are three sides to mentoring . . .
1. The side we hope and dream of, where our impact bears incredible fruit!
2. The messy side, in which nothing goes according to plan and the only hope is for God’s redemptive work to play out.
3. The unknown side, in which we don’t know the results and simply have to trust God to accomplish His purposes, even when we can see the outcome.
I’ve been on all three! That’s what happens when you’ve been at this mentoring thing for nearly twenty years. Can it really be that long? Oh yes, since as soon as I graduated from college I started working with the youth group. A few years later, my husband and I ended up at a Christian boarding and day school as newlyweds, and we’ve worked with teens ever since. Of course, now we have our own teens on who we’re focusing our time in mentoring!
I could share with you dozens and dozens of stories in which my investment of time as a mentor has resulted in such joy and obvious fruit, but I have just as many stories in which the results were less than . . . less than what I hoped for, less than what I wanted for them, less than what my pride could handle in the moment . . . and even as I look back.
Mentoring is a beautiful but messy pursuit.
It’s like parenting, in that your investment and effort doesn’t guarantee an outcome. However, in God’s eyes, the opportunity to mentor is something we’re called to do out of love for Him and a desire to co-labor in His work.
[Tweet “There is such beauty in mentoring, because we get to join God in His kingdom purpose.”]
We also get to be sanctified as we choose to respond with grace and truth even in the messiest of situations. It’s a process for us, in which we get to be transformed, as much as it’s a process for those we’re called to impact.
Join me over at Deeper Waters as I share about a beautifully messy mentoring experience that taught me how to approach all my relationships.
If you’d like to learn how to mentor, check out Impact Together: Biblical Mentoring Simplified.
