Would you like a simple way that you and your mentoring team can see God at work in your mentoring program? Just as we know what is close to a friend’s heart by spending time with him or her, we can know God’s heart and where He is moving by spending time with Him.
In his workbook Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby explains that “God has told us that He is already at work trying to bring a lost world to Himself. If we will adjust our lives to Him in a love relationship, He will show us where He is at work. That revelation is His invitation to us to get involved in His work. Then, when we join Him, He completes His work through us” (p. 67). John 5:17, 19-20 tells us, “17My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working. 19I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.”
This perspective has helped encourage me over the years to seek an intimate relationship with God daily so that I can be attune to God revealing to me where He is at work around me. In our present day, God uses the Holy Spirit to speak to us through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church so that He can reveal to us where He is working around us.
When I worked at Youth Horizons mentoring program in Wichita, Kansas, our mentoring team came up with a simple discipline that allowed us to see God at work in our mentoring program. Each of us endeavored to have intimate relationships with God, and we would meet together weekly for one hour to talk about any issues, needs, or challenges that were going on with our mentors, protégés, families, or the mentoring ministry in general. We would then write the prayer requests on a whiteboard and pray for each of them as a team. Then, throughout the week we would individually lift up prayer for the requests. As we connected with the mentors, protégés and families, we would let them know that we were praying for them. The following week we would meet again as a team to add any new issues to the board and take off any that had been resolved.
We were intentional about making the connection between praying and watching to see how God would answer our prayers. We compiled an ongoing list of the issues God had resolved through prayer. It was very encouraging to see! At the end of each year we would meet as a team and review all the prayers that God had answered and take time to give thanks to Him.
This very simple and tangible method allowed our mentoring team to see God work in a mighty way. It helped us stay connected to God, and it was a significant encouragement to our staff and all the people we served. If your mentoring team does not already do something like this, I would encourage you to give it a try for a couple of months and see what God does. He is ready for you to join Him in His work.
-Donnovan Karber, National Training Director
Christian Mentoring 