At NewPointe Community Church the way in which we help most people is through mentoring. Whether it is couples looking for help with their marriage, or someone struggling financially or someone struggling with addictions, hangups or broken relationships.
The idea of mentoring has been around for a long time, but it has mostly been associated with children and students and not adults. In the business world there is mentoring of new employee’s, but this is usually not a long-term relationship.
There is a difference between Christian mentoring and the world’s mentoring. Christian mentors do not build a reliance on themselves, but point their mentee’s to God. When we point people to God it puts them in a position to make different choices in their life. Mentoring does not change people or heal broken relationships, only God can do that.
Mentoring takes a longer term view of helping people. Instead of putting a band-aid on the problem, we want to help the person dig down into the problem to see what the root of the problem really is. We also want to help them get closer to God, so that He can bring peace, forgiveness and hope into their life.
God’s leadership is transformational. That is why we do mentoring, to lead people to a transformational, renewed life, the God life. God radically and permanently changes His people from the inside out. God never demands conduct that He does not first empower His followers to achieve. Here are seven things that God does on the inside of us if we allow Him full access to our lives:
- He Liberates us – He frees us from our past (guilt)
- He lifts us up – He encourages us and gives us hope
- He educates us – He gives us wise counsel and direction in life
- He fills our gaps – He fills areas where we are weak or lack competence
- He motivates us – He gives us a new vision for our purpose in life
- He renews us – He helps us do things we could not do on our own
- He pushes us – He encourages us to take action, to make a difference.
Mentoring is all about pointing people to God and the possibility of life change. We cannot fix each other, the harder we try to worse it gets. Husbands and wives are not called to fix each other or improve each other, they are called to love each other. The same thing goes for Christians, we are not called to judge other people or fix other people or change other people. We are called to love other people, care for other people, help other people. So let God do what He does best in your own life and the lives of those around you. Just point the way.