In this Q&A video, Pastor Bill shares examples of spiritual mentors in his life and encourages us to receive the fathering influences God has put around us by examining their walk with the Lord.
have there been um any particular people
in your life that have been significant
mentors or spiritual fathers yeah yeah
a lot of them my dad of course is he’s
the greatest
was the greatest encouragement in my
life because he just really believed in
me always did
and he just was always he just so
delighted in
in in my successes you know anything
that i did
you know he just celebrated with me and
and so that was huge for me
um i’ve had several others you know
through the years dick joyce who is a
uh prophet friend of ours that
ministered to us to us so often
in weaverville and still today in
reading uh
he would just call out of the blue and
just check up to see how i was doing
dick mills and do the same
there was a associate pastor here on
staff at bethel when i worked under my
dad
named darrell blunt that was a
tremendous help to me
and there’s just a lot of those kinds of
people five or six of them i suppose
in the last 40 years that i’ve had just
great impact on
how we live how i think you know how i
how
how i act towards other people you know
i
i learned a grace from my friend daryl
and he really fathered me in that
subject to grace and because i was
very hard on myself wanted to grow
wanted to you know to see great things
happen
and and he just illustrated grace and
helped me save me from destroying myself
i think so um i i just really live
indebted to these people randy clark is
while he’s a just a dear close friend
you know i’ve learned so much from him
and just i i just received from him
constantly and
so there’s many there’s many many people
like that in my life yeah those
relationships are invaluable and i think
there’s a lot of young people in
particular who really desire to position
themselves as
sons or daughters are there any keys
that you would give young people
wanting mentorship in their lives um
that would help them position themselves
well and
in a posture to receive yeah you know
it’s it’s it’s difficult because every
uh
most everyone wants a good
uh close relationship with the spiritual
father where they can spend a lot of
time with the person and
eat in their home and vice versa and
be able to call them at the drop of a
hat and there’s just
you know you know i i can’t do that for
everyone and nor can
anyone else on our team we can do it
some but we can do it to everyone
and so what happens is young people will
look at somebody they admire and
rightfully so they will pursue
a relationship and feel rejected when
they can’t get that time
so the first thing i would say is
receive the fathering influence that is
already
in the ministry in the atmosphere in the
culture receive from that number one
number two
examine who god has put in your life
that may not be
famous may not be behind the pulpit but
really walks the walk
they walk what they say they they do
what is taught
they live the culture they live the
experience they have a depth and
maturity
and draw from those folks and don’t
worry so much about titles
as much as we concern ourselves with
function
that i want to be a son i want to i want
to respond to the leadership that
god has placed in my life and if you if
you
celebrate and utilize what god’s given
you there’s a good chance he’ll give you
access to the more that you
that you cry for but if we you know if
we despise
the hand that god’s already brought into
our life because i’m looking for this
one
it’s that’s not smart it’s not smart
because people
usually want somebody who’s written the
book or pastors the church or
you know travels the world or something
some some famous person to mentor them
well that would be nice but there’s not
enough of them to go around