Incite

As you begin to think about the story God is telling in your own life, what experiences have incited wonder? What moments have stirred awe for God?

As you think about a college-aged mentee, isn't that what you want that person to feel? Isn't that sense of God you had, however long ago, part of the "agenda" you have for the time you spend together? If that person walked away from his or her time with you and had nothing but a sense of awe for who God is, very few of us would feel like we missed the mark.

How do you incite that? As a mentor, being honest about your pursuit of wonder for God can be the thing that incites it in someone else, even if it's not your current reality.

Too often we present God as a problem to be solved, not a mystery to treasure. To incite wonder, we have to realize the role of the mentor isn't to draw conclusions and answer questions, but to help mentees know there is a God who loves them, is for them, and died for them, but that much else about God is beyond our capacity to know. The moment we think we know, we realize we don't. We can't predict what He will do, and He isn't a formula we can manipulate to draw the results we want.

Our job isn't even handing off our particular picture of who God is. Our job is to incite them on the journey as they develop the picture for themselves.

Provoke

Through every part of your story, there are probably incredible lessons learned in the midst of the good and bad that have shaped who you are for good. All of those moments have been critical in helping you discover who you are and perhaps what God is like.

When we begin walking through life with someone, we have to resist the urge to direct that person out of what we perceive to be harm's way every time. Of course there are exceptions, but we have to remember mentoring is about trusting God to tell a story in a person's life, and as He has shaped you through moments of success and regret, He will do the same for your mentee. Your benefit to that person is that you come alongside as someone who has been through many of the same fires; and as the story of his or her life unfolds, you can provoke discussion and questions to help filter through experiences.

A win for you is when you have asked the questions that have led to conclusions, not when you have given conclusions. Effective mentors may sometimes think the decisions college-aged people make are not good ones, but they don't try to rescue them. These mentors ask questions that help people move out of harm's way. Often at this point in life, college-aged people have an aversion to wisdom unless it comes from within. In not giving answers, these mentors provoke discussions that lead people to their own conclusions, decisions that stick with them. Ultimately, somewhere in those discussions, college-aged people are able to figure out what they believe and think for themselves. They discover truths about themselves and who they are that, had their mentors merely given opinions, may not have happened.