Sunday, October 26, 2003

What a weekend. God is good, all the time. This was probably one of the best weekends of my life. It was not at all what I expected and that is a good thing. Going into the weekend I expected to learn how to be a spiritual mentor and to be able to come back to the campus with a easy formula for making a mentoring relationship happen. Looking back I don't know why I felt it would be this easy but for some reason I did.

Now I know that a mentoring relationship is going to take a large amount of work and really depend on God's grace. I am still excited about possibly being a mentor but I now see that God's plan for the weekend was much more than just training me to be a mentor.

One of the first thing that I realized in my track was that in order to be a mentor, I am going to need a mentor of some capacity. I know that in my life there are several people that I can talk to and who support me but none of them are really a mentor. I need someone in my life who will ask the hard questions and be willing to tell me the truth. Right now I don't know who this person is but I do have a few ideas. My prayer is that God will show me who could mentor me and would also give me the courage to ask that person to mentor me. This may seem like something that should be so easy but I am really scared. I know that by having a mentor I am going to have to be vulnerable. This in itself is a scary thought.

Another thing that God really convicted me of this weekend was my pride. I often have wrong motives for many of the things that I do. I know that this should not be and I pray that my motives would be pure and holy. I want to only think of advancing the kingdom and not think of my self-image and what I can get by doing whatever I am doing. I pray that I may remain focused on God and his will. I really want my life to be used to help bring others closer to Christ.

I do feel that once I have my own mentor, this training has prepared me to mentor someone else. I see now that mentoring is an art and each mentoring relationship will be different. I feel that by mentoring someone else, God can use me to help them grow and also use them to help me grow. Right now the main person that God is leading me towards mentoring is my roommate. I can see that he wants someone to answer his questions and to hold him accountable. In a way we already have an informal mentoring relationship but I feel that with some effort on my part I could possibly be a better mentor to Scott.

Another thing that God has shown me is that I need to start a GIG with a couple of my friends. He has laid them on my heart and is really working in their lives. They have already asked me questions and I know that they are seeking. I just pray for wisdom in planning and finding a time that will work for everyone involved. I also pray for courage in inviting my friends.

My biggest prayer for the whole weekend is that I will never be the same again. It is so easy now that I am back on campus to forget what I learned and to not follow through with my commitments. It is easy to go back to the way things were and not allow this to change anything in our heart. I just pray that my heart would be changed and that I would see all the lost souls on our campus and know that I can help them one by one.