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A spiritual mentoring relationship can be like no other you’ll ever have, but finding one can be a very challenging task, especially when you don’t know where to begin.

We all need someone to learn from, to be a sounding board for decisions and to help us see our potential. The growing desire for someone further along in the faith to encourage us, teach us and give us guidance in life is easy to detect, but the hard part is discovering who a spiritual mentor could be or should be.

It’s vitally important that you find someone who is able and willing to do life with you. But there’s more to it than just what your mentor will bring to the table. It involves what you bring to the relationship as well.

The greater search is to discover what this relationship will require of you. A healthy mentoring relationship is a two-way connection of giving and taking, investing as well as receiving. Expectations will flow both ways so you and your mentor have a great deal of searching to do and clarifications to make.

Here are a few things to think about as you begin this process…

Do you have realistic expectations? A healthy mentoring relationship begins with clearly defining each others expectations from the beginning. The ones that don’t are usually the ones that end in frustration and disappointment. Both must agree to them and be willing to fulfill them.

Write down what you want out of this mentoring relationship. What time are you willing to commitment to it? How often do you want to meet and where? How do you want your time together to be structured? What type of activities do you want to do together? How will you measure success? It will be important for you to think through what this means to you and to discuss them with your potential mentor before a commitment to the relationship is made. Setting expectations and boundaries and solidifying them through positive dialogue will create a more enjoyable and fruitful journey together in the long run.

Am I teachable? Are you ready for someone to speak honestly and truthfully into your life? Are you willing to be a student (Phil. 4:9)? Can you humble yourself and admit when you’re wrong or is your pride and ego too big? Most mentors can smell a haughty spirit right away, so don’t be surprised if they graciously take a pass. God will, too (1 Pet. 5:5).

A teachable person is one who is willing to learn, who is quick to take responsibility for wrong decisions and actions and who leaves the “blame game” behind. They are comfortable with being a pupil, listen more than they talk and are eager to give respect and honor to those in the position of leadership, because one day, they know they may be sitting in a similar seat of responsibility.

A teachable person is always seeking to learn something from anything and everyone, even if they don’t have an official mentoring relationship established.

Are you willing to submit your life to their authority? In this postmodern culture, authority is seen as evil and the mindset that is fostered is to rebel against it (Rom. 13:2). God says clearly that all authority is His (Matt. 28:18)(Col. 2:10).  We’re just borrowing it from Him in the first place. The Biblical model for healthy, spiritual relationships is one of submitting to one to another and to our spiritual authorities (Eph. 5:21)(Heb.13:17). To follow Jesus means that we must submit to His authority over our lives. In the same way, we must be humble enough to submit ourselves to mentors who can help us move beyond where we are to where God desires us to be.

If you don’t serve well under authority, the you won’t lead well with authority!

If you really want to get serious about it, ask your spouse or your closest friends to help you answer to these questions with honesty and transparency. But be careful, you might learn something about yourself.

Pray and ask God to begin preparing a mentor for you and to prepare you for a mentor. As the old proverb says, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

More to come…

What do you think?