1. Enter

I used to think the best thing to do as I start walking alongside someone was always to open my home to them, to be generous in providing for them. I want to open my life to help them feel like they can do the same. Yet, I have come to recognise that doing this at the start of coming alongside someone can be unhelpful. I am comfortable in my home, my space, but it does not mean others will be.

Interestingly when Jesus sends out the 72 disciples (Luke 10:5-8), he encourages them to go to the homes of others and ask to be shown hospitality. They didn’t have an opportunity to host. They had to be humble enough to receive. In British culture, it can feel obtrusive, even rude, to expect or ask that of people, but perhaps in order to come alongside people well at the start of their journey, we need to be humble enough to allow others to feel comfortable and to enter their lives.

2. Pray

I remember when I first started coming alongside people intentionally. I had this clear plan in my mind of where I wanted to get someone to, whether that was leading them to Jesus or helping them grasp how God’s character might impact their lives. I just remember in those early days how awful some of my relationships and conversations were, and how no one was going in the direction I wanted them to. 

I came to realise that maybe what God was doing was not what I had planned. The only way to combat this trap, which I can still fall into now, is to pray. I pray now in order to listen to God, to see if there’s a direction in which he is leading. If there is something I want to bring up or see happen specifically I pray that God will provide an opportunity for it. It’s hard to tell you here how simple yet transformational doing this has been as I walk alongside people.

3. Listen

As well as listening to God, we listen to the person we’re drawing alongside. I have experienced times when I’ve felt listened to and times when I haven’t and it often makes the difference between me wanting to spend time with someone or not. Good listening involves removing distractions so we can give someone our full attention, nodding to affirm them as they speak, asking follow-up questions and even repeating/summarising what they have said back to them to ensure we’ve understood.

In practising good listening, we hear people. We hear them for who they are, hear and experience their story, their likes and dislikes, their passions and hates. By listening well we enable someone to be human, to be seen and heard for who they are, or at least who they want to tell us they are, not just who we think they are. We are then better equipped to pray for them and to see what God is doing in their lives.

4. Share

In our western culture, knowledge is prized above many other things – people want to be ‘in the know’ and to pass on whatever new information they’ve learnt. If this idea is applied to walking alongside someone, we may seek to give someone all our knowledge and understanding of God and the world. This can create a teacher-student relationship, which shifts the power dynamic and puts you in an authoritative role. One of the consequences of this is that it puts pressure on you to know everything. In your own times of questioning or doubt, of not knowing, you might feel paralysed and insecure in your journey with this person.

The alternative to teaching and passing on knowledge is sharing your story and life. As you engage with God personally and openly share about God at work in your life, they will see and hear truth lived through you, and when those you are alongside do have questions explore them together, open the Bible, find podcasts or books to go through together, and discover God in the questions.

The truth is that, whilst these four steps can stand alone, they link together beautifully. They are all about having a posture of humility. As we seek to walk alongside people and show them who God is, we look to God instead of ourselves, we seek the other person’s needs and comfort instead of our own. I encourage you to start your journey with humility, so you can run alongside someone with Jesus in full view:  

‘Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.’ (Hebrews 12:1-2) 

I also encourage you to seek someone to walk alongside you – someone who is prepared to humbly enter your life, to pray for you and listen to you, and to share their story and life with you.