God never meant for us to do life on our own. We all need help and encouragement from time to time. The Bible says: ‘Pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.’ But we need to be careful who we turn to. We shouldn't go to someone who can’t handle our problem. It might make us feel better to share our problem with them, but if they’re not mature enough to handle what we’ve told them, we might find it actually causes more problems in the long run. They might decide to share it with someone else. The Bible says: ‘A troublemaker plants seeds of strife; gossip separates the best of friends’ (Proverbs 16:28 NLT). They might even make our problem worse by giving us immature and unhelpful advice. If we know we can trust someone and that they’re spiritually mature, it’s a good idea to talk things through with them. That person could become our mentor. This is usually an older, more spiritually mature Christian who will walk alongside us. And they could be our accountability partner if we’re struggling with a particular issue. That means they can ask us how things are going, and we can honestly tell them the answer. Someone who truly loves us will pray for us, and walk with us until we have the victory. It’s really important to let trusted, mature people into our lives, however we mustn’t forget that we should turn to God first. It can be easy to take our problems to other people rather than taking them to God. He has the wisdom we need. And when we admit that we’ve gone the wrong way, He’s willing to forgive us.

What Now?

Do you have a mentor? If not, ask your church leader to help you find one.