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