Reflection Options  

Journal  (reflect on one or more of these questions)

• Think of four questions you could ask a trusted friend or mentor that would help you know where you need to grow.  What stops you from asking those questions?  Choose one and actually ask it.  Journal about your response to their feedback.

• Journal about a time you were able to grow from someone’s negative feedback. Now journal about a time that still “stings” where you feel resistant to the feedback you were given.  Don’t analyze the way the feedback was given, instead reflect on what was different about your attitude or actions as a receiver.

Quote Interaction (Agree, disagree or otherwise engage with the quote/quotes)

• One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.   (Morris West)

• Let us look at our lives in the light of this experience [in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10] and see whether we gladly glory in weakness, whether we take pleasure, as Paul did, in injuries, in necessities, in distresses. Yes, let us ask whether we have learned to regard a reproof, just or unjust, a reproach from friend or enemy, an injury, or trouble, or difficulty into which others bring us, as above all an opportunity of proving how Jesus is all to us, how our own pleasure or honor are nothing, and how humiliation is in very truth what we take pleasure in. It is indeed blessed, the deep happiness of heaven, to be so free from self that whatever is said of us or done to us is lost and swallowed up in the thought that Jesus is all. (Andrew Murray)

• A sensible friend who will unsparingly criticize you from week to week will be a far greater blessing to you than a thousand undiscriminating admirers if you have sense enough to bear his treatment, and grace enough to be thankful for it. (C.H. Spurgeon)

• Why do any of us get upset or tense when confronted? Why do any of us activate our inner lawyer and rise to our own defense? Why do any of us turn the tables and remind the other person that we are not the only sinner in the room? Why do we argue about the facts or dispute the other person’s interpretation. We do all of these things because we are convinced in our hearts that we are more righteous than how than we are being portrayed in the moment of confrontation. Proud people don’t welcome loving warning, rebuke, confrontation, question, criticism, or accountability, because they don’t feel the need for it. And when they do fail, they are very good at erecting plausible reasons for what they said or did, given the stress of the situation or relationship in which it was done. (Paul David Tripp)

Reading & Reflection from the book, Shaping The Journey of Emerging Adults: 

• MENTOR: Read “The Christlife in Identity and Purpose” (pp. 114-117).  How does your willingness to provide feedback help the young adult toward maturity?  How can you help them learn to receive that feedback even when it seems uncomfortable for them?

• MENTOR: Read “Talk Less, Pause More” (pp. 160-161).  As you read about Holly and Bianca, think about how the mentor’s approach might pave the way to the young adult learning to receive feedback. Practice receiving difficult feedback yourself by asking the young adult for two positives and one negative of how you have been as a mentor to them so far.