An End and A Beginning-What I’ve Learned Through 5 Years of Mentoring Teenage Guys

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MW. Editor’s Note. Mentoring Warriors welcomes back Justin Wells as a guest author. Justin is passionate about mentoring and it shows in his story of mentoring teenage guys for the past five years.

Welcome back, Justin!

“Who in the room has a father at home?” was the question I asked the small group of twelve middle school boys I was leading. Looking back now, I don’t know what gave me the boldness to ask such a borderline-inappropriate question, but the answer I received was even more shocking than the question. Three hands shot up, three hands out of twelve kids. You have got to be kidding me. I was not asking this question in a juvenile detention center or even a school but in a church. There have been a few defining moments in my life that were as potent as that one was. Before that day, I wanted to lead men; after that day, I was called to help make them. At the time, I would have never had the maturity to ask Jesus to break my heart, but that moment was precisely what I needed. What would come in the following five years of mentoring and leading these young men are some of my life’s best and most difficult seasons. You see, love is like that. It is only when you truly love something that you are willing to suffer for it………… I do not say that lightly. I don’t want to paint an overly dramatic picture here. There were indeed a lot of good times; it was mostly that. The story we live in has a real enemy, the kind that hates kids, and to take a stand on behalf of children causes Satan’s hatred to burn hot. I’ve seen it firsthand. In these five years, I have made calls to Child Protective Services at midnight, I have held crying kids who couldn’t comprehend why I’d show them love, I have talked to boys who had been rationalizing how much easier it would be to take their own life and put a stop to the pain.

On top of that, I haven’t mentioned the state of my soul through all of this. If you’ve gotten the impression that I had it all figured out at any point in the story so far, I can assure you that I DID NOT. As much as I’d like following Jesus to be like a highway where you can see for miles without bumps or curves, it is not. Following Jesus is more like hiking a small trail weaving through mountains and wilderness. When we stumble or scrape our knees on that small rocky trail, it’s easy to assume we are not progressing. I have shed so many tears on behalf of these boys. I have screamed in my car and asked God why it doesn’t feel like it is working, and I’ve had to ask a few of them for forgiveness and tell them that even though I’ve let them down, Jesus won’t.

Faith works at its best when you have no control over the outcome or, in other much wiser words, “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see – Hebrews 11:1” So many times I questioned myself, or the state of the church, or whether my words or action had any impact at all but I still showed up. I showed up and loved the boy while believing in the man he would become, and over time, I got to watch a true work of God. It is not a work of God like a revival or camp-high experience but rather the kind of work that I believe God is primarily up to. Work that looks like making sure seeds land on good soil, and houses are being built on the rock so these young men can withstand storms; its work that takes time. In that time, I saw these boys turn into one of the finest groups of young men I have ever had the opportunity to know. They grow tired of the world, and they want Jesus more and more with each passing day. They are getting ready to graduate this year, and most of them are now the age I was when I started leading them (18). Whenever I realized that, it hit me hard to think back on the journey God has taken me on. Earlier, I mentioned that following Jesus is like traveling on a small trail in the wilderness. I believe that to be true, but every now and then, Jesus leads

you to climb up a mountain, and from its peak, you can see just how far you have come…………… the view is incredible.

And that is not all; the thing that brings my heart the most joy is that many of these young men I’ve been blessed to lead for all these years are eager and willing to become small group leaders. I’m conflicted about this because of my deep love for them. I do not want them to experience the pain or heartbreak that can come with leading students, but at the same time, I know deep in my heart that these young men have what it takes to change the world in partnership with Jesus. Undoubtedly, this must be something that any good parent must feel as their kids grow up. They love them so much that they want to shelter them from hard things, but at the same time, they realize that hardship creates the kind of person who not only thrives in this broken world but changes it and starts to make things in some small way right again. So, with as much faith and hope as I can muster, I bless these young men’s desire to get in the fight. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about sending them into this dark world. However, it will do them no good to shield them from the world they have been tasked to take back for the kingdom of God. So, if shielding them from this world would be useless, I’ll choose to equip them instead. If I had the opportunity to go back and give my 18-year-old self some words of wisdom for the road I would take in the five years of mentoring young men and becoming a better man myself , it would look something like this:

God loves you more than you can fathom. More than your mistakes, more than your last success, more than your greatest effort. His love for you is without end and without condition. In this life, you will no doubt face the stabbing pain of grief, doubt, and betrayal, and it will be easy to point the finger straight at God and assume he was the perpetrator of your deep pain……………… He was not. It was not his will that you were wounded. If you are brave enough to be vulnerable and face your pain, the God who breathes stars waits for you with arms

wide open. He is waiting to grieve with you and begin the process of healing your broken heart. The best way you can offer Jesus to this world is to let him heal your heart. Put down the mask and become everything God made you to be: a healed man, a strong man, a kind man.

You would be surprised how just this will start to rattle the people you are in contact with. More than any street preacher or theological debate ever could, it impacts their hearts when people come into contact with genuine joy, forgiveness, and love without condition.More often then not they approach you with questions regarding what makes you different. Make no mistake, you will be different, which can be very lonely, but never forget that your God is with you and has not abandoned you. Your path with God is less like a highway and more like a small trail through the wilderness: rough terrain, sore feet, beautiful views, and unexplainable peace. Even though there are many ups and downs, and it’s scary because Jesus is the only one who gets to see the map, it is the life you were designed to live, and the purpose you feel while on that trail satisfies a need in your soul that money, sex, and power could never fill. In the end, you can have control, or you can have God. You never get both.

Warrior On!

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