None of us want to measure spiritual growth by how many converts our mentee has made or how many hours they have prayed. Spiritual growth is rarely about achieving a tangible target; most often it is about increasing faith, attitudes, habits and motivation. But that doesn’t mean we should give up entirely on trying to weigh up progress and growth.
I once told one of my mentees that with God ‘success is obedience’. What do you think about that as a measuring stick? You could discuss this with your mentee.
Try This
Pray with your mentee, asking God to speak to them about things they can do for him this month. Spend time ‘listening’ and see if either of you get any ideas or pictures. Challenge them to listen in three main ways:
- At any point during the day, as an idea or prompting that is hard to ignore, perhaps in response to something such as someone in pain
- During ‘quiet times,’ seeking God in prayer and expecting him to communicate ideas that require a response
- Via instructions from the Bible such as ‘feed the hungry’ (Matt 25:35).
Encourage them to write down every time they feel a tug in their spirit where God might be asking them to do or say something. After a week or so it will be surprising how many items are on their spiritual ‘to do’ list. Create a visual record of this or an inspirational quote to put by their bed – something to keep them focussed on this month’s task.
Examples of the kind of things God may ask could be: encouraging a friend who is stressed with revision, buying a homeless person a sandwich, tackling an unhelpful time wasting activity or attitude or spending time with a person who often gets overlooked or bullied.
At the next session, go over the list and see what they did and didn’t do and how it went.
Key questions:
- In each case, do you now feel it was God speaking to you?
- How quickly did you respond?
- How hard were the things God asked of you?
- How can you better handle the weighing and reacting process?
- What were the consequences when you did what God asked?
- What can you learn from the times you didn’t do it?
- How much stronger or weaker is your relationship with God now?
Joel Toombs has an MA in Christian mentoring and wrote the Grove booklet Mentoring and young people. He is a mentor in the music industry and a youth worker.
