Dear friend, welcome back to the mentorship course.
We remember that the three key elements to mentoring are 1) sharing your story, 2) sharing the gospel and 3) praying for your student. These can be in any order, we just want to make sure we are including all three in every student's lesson we respond to.
In the previous lessons we talked about sharing parts of your story, today we want to talk about the ministry of prayer. Then in the following couple of lessons we want to discuss the importance of sharing the gospel.
In various counseling offices all around the world, people are meeting with counselors to share their problems and find solutions. Maybe they have an unhappy marriage, are living in habitual sin, are experiencing emotional problems, or any one of a host of other difficulties. They talk to their counselor, their counselor talks to them and gives advice. It is a two-way conversation.
But that’s not how Christians are to minister to one another, for the above approach to counseling leaves out God, the One Who is called the "Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6), Who alone is able to change the heart of any person. Christians minister to one another by deliberately seeking the Lord together, and purposefully listening to Him in His Word. It is a three-way conversation.
“Biblical counselors define man as both created and dependent but also desperately lost and sinful. We see man as being responsible to 'give an account of himself to God' (Rom.14.12), but we also see him as enslaved to sin and unable to save himself ( John 8:34; Acts 4:12). So we refuse to point man inward toward himself or outward towards us as counselors. Rather, we direct him to the Scriptures and upward to the Lord of those scriptures.” Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnston, “Counsel from the Cross: Connecting Broken People to the Love of Christ”, p. 188.
Think of the following story as an illustration of your own mentoring of students here at Setting Captives Free:
Luke 5:17-20 NLT One day while Jesus was teaching, some Pharisees and teachers of religious law were sitting nearby. (It seemed that these men showed up from every village in all Galilee and Judea, as well as from Jerusalem.) And the Lord’s healing power was strongly with Jesus. (18) Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a sleeping mat. They tried to take him inside to Jesus, (19) but they couldn’t reach him because of the crowd. So they went up to the roof and took off some tiles. Then they lowered the sick man on his mat down into the crowd, right in front of Jesus. (20) Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the man, “Young man, your sins are forgiven.”
Question 1. What do we see in this story that shows the earnest intention of the men to get their friend to Jesus?
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These men were unstoppable. If the crowd was too thick to get the paralyzed man to Jesus they would go up on a roof. If there were tiles in the way, they would remove them. They would do anything to get their friend to Jesus, as they recognized that He alone could heal the paralyzed man.
In our mentoring, we have accomplished nothing unless we get our “paralyzed” student to Jesus. Fortunately, we don’t have to climb roofs and remove tiles, rather, we take our students to the Lord in prayer.
Question 2. According to Luke 5:20 whose faith did Jesus see that brought about the paralyzed man’s forgiveness and subsequent healing?