How to Choose a Spiritual Mentor

Growing up as a Christian is hard, and is not something that a person can do alone. The Christian faith challenges every part of your life. Sticking with it and learning to be like Jesus requires input from the Bible and from older and wiser people around you.

Finding the right people to give that input is sometimes even more difficult. We are made to learn from each other, and if we choose the wrong people to emulate we begin to find ourselves pulled into places and patterns of behavior that we were trying to move away from.

One caveat: always in the Christian faith our pursuit should be after Jesus, not after people. We must put more value on the example of Jesus than we do on that of other people, and therefore the Bible and Jesus serve as our rubric for how we should live first.

Mentors serve an incredible role in providing us feedback on our actions, our attitudes, and our trajectory. The right person will push you to live more like Jesus, to dive into His Word, and to live out your faith in your interactions with others with greater impact.

Choosing a Mentor
In looking for a mentor, a number of things should be considered:

Choose someone who lives like Jesus. You know those people you respect because you think that their lives reflect that of Jesus better than most. These are the people who love those around them, who are patient and graceful, and who know their Bibles. These people also live upright lives, and avoid sin, and when they do sin they are quick to own up to it and seek forgiveness.

Choose someone who is older than you. No matter how smart you think you are, you haven't seen nearly as much life as those who are older than you. Those people who have been around the block a few more times than you have will provide you with much more wisdom than those who are your peers, and certainly have more perspective than you do. Seek out wisdom.

Choose someone who loves you, but who isn't impressed by you. If the person who mentors you doesn't really love you, you know it. You also will not be willing to take the advice that they offer you. The converse is also true: if the person who mentors you loves you, but loves you so much that he or she is willing to constantly overlook your failings, then that person will never challenge you to become more like Jesus. An effective mentor requires both sides of that coin.

When you find this person, don't be afraid to ask him or her to mentor you. Don't be surprised either when this person is surprised by your request and tries to tell you that they don't think they have much to offer you. Often these qualities result in a humility that feels inadequate to the task of mentoring a person.

Their feeling of inadequacy is right on the money, because they aren't adequate to mentor you. The fact that they are humble enough to recognize that they don't have what it takes is the very thing that will allow them to be a mentor that God will use mightily in your life. God is the one who wants to grow you, develop you, into the person He created you to be. Above all else, let God be the one who is sanctifying you through your mentor.

For more on mentoring, please read the Six Important Roles of a Spiritual Mentor