Episodes
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The Mentor as a Teacher is someone like Paul, who passed on his knowledge and his understanding to somebody like Timothy. In 2 Timothy 2:1-2 Paul instructs Timothy to “find reliable people who you can trust, to teach others.” This is the power of knowledge. This is the power of truth. This is the power of teaching. Become a teacher of teachers.
There's a saying that says that “leaders read”. Well, yes, leaders are always hungry for knowledge, hungry to learn and never give up learning. But I say leaders teach. Leaders write. Leaders of leaders actually capture what they've learned, write it down so they can teach others
In this talk we ask - Who are your teachers? Who are the people that have mentored you and taught you? And not just in school, but in life, who are the people that have passed on their knowledge, their know-how and their practical understanding? Who are the people that have enabled you to do things you might never have dreamed or never have imagined?
But we also flip the question around, and ask, Who are the people that you are teaching?Who are the people that you're passing on your knowledge to? What is it that God has given you an understanding of and a richness of that you can pass on to others?
#ModelsOfMentoring #Mentor #SundayTalks #MattBird #Teacher -
When you think about a sponsor think about someone who gives you access to People, access to Places, and access to Provision. Think about them as people who sponsor you financially, and enable you to do things that you wouldn't otherwise have been able to do - perhaps the things that Jesus has called you to do. This is the Mentor As A Sponsor - the mentor as a benefactor.
In the book of Romans, Chapter 16:1&2, Paul writes,
”I commend to you, our sister Phoebe… I ask you to receive her in the Lord, in a way worthy of his people, and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me…”
Who are the sponsors in your life? Who are the people that have mentored you, and sponsored you? Who have given you access to people, have given you access to places, who have sponsored you financially and enabled you to do things you wouldn't have otherwise been able to do? Also ask yourself - Who can you be a sponsor to? Who can you help? -
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When we hear “mentoring” we tend to think about somebody who's more experienced and more knowledgeable working with someone who is less experienced and less knowledgeable. When we look at Mentoring as a Sharpening Stone you will see that it is a peer to peer relationship, where people who have a similar level of knowledge and a similar level of experience have a friendship.
When a chef’s knife is worked hard, he gets out the sharpening stone and sharpen it up to make it effective and fit for purpose. Some mentoring relationships are like sharpening stones, where in a relationship with somebody, you’re learning from each other in a peer to peer kind of way.
A well known saying from Proverbs 27:17 is “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” This is a great image of two pieces of iron, instead of blunting each other, they sharpen each other. This is a picture of a relationship where one person sharpens another person, and makes them more effective, more fine-tuned and more more impactful, and influential.
In 1 Samuel 18:1-4 we see that David and Jonathan had an amazing relationship just like this… There were moments when they saved each other's lives and other moments when they just sat and talked around the fire. They were were peers, and each sharpened each other. It was a great, great combination, and a great friendship.
Who are those people in your life? Who are the people for you, who are like sharpening stones? So it doesn't matter how blunt or ineffective you may feel - when you spend time with them, you come away feeling sharper and more effective. We all can have people like that in our lives - not just people who do that for us, but people that we do that for - who are you, a sharpening stone for? -
Really good mentors are people who hold up a mirror to us and say, look here, this is what you look like. This is how other people experience you. And this is really good. And this actually has a detrimental impact upon you and your influence and impact on others.
In the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42, we read that Jesus held up a mirror to Martha. Martha had invited Jesus to their home and her sister Mary happened to be there. And Mary just sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to him, whilst Martha was busy, busy being busy. And Jesus said to Martha that Mary has chosen the right thing - she has chosen to sit with me.
The Mentor as a Mirror, holds up proof to us, holds up honest feedback to us. It could be your spouse or your siblings or even your children. It's the people that you spend most time with and are closest to, who can actually give you the most poignant and powerful feedback.
In this talk we ask - Wh holds the mirror up to you? Who do you give permission to give you candid feedback? But also, who are the people that you hold up the mirror for? Who are the people that you love enough, and believe in enough to actually be honest with about the impact they have on other people? This is the Mentor, as a Mirror. -
The Mentor as a Springboard is the idea of helping others excel and achieve even more highly than we have done.
In 2 Kings 2:1-9 we read that Elisha asked Elijah for a double blessing, so that he could do more than Elijah had done. And in John 14:12 we read that Jesus promised His disciples that they would do even greater things than he had done.
The Mentor’s commitment to being a Springboard for other people is to enable others to succeed. We see an example of this in all those coaches who coach athletes in the Olympics and also the coaches in other competitive sports. And it doesn't just work in sport, it works in business, in family life, in church life and in community life. It’s all about excellence, it's all about our lives being as a worship to God. To aim at anything less than excellence is really not an act of worship glorifying God. Every day we should be committed to excellence. We should see our prayer life, our Bible reading and our reflections as a springboard into a day of excellence! -
In this third talk in our series we look at Luke 10:1-17 where we see that Jesus sends out, not just his 12 disciples but he gathers 72 people and sends them out ahead of him into the places where he will be going, to kind of prepare the way and break the ground for the coming Kingdom of God.
But what is powerful is that he doesn't them out on their own. He sends them in pairs, He sends them out in twos.
He knows that doing anything in isolation, doing anything alone is going to be so much more difficult. Whatever we do in life, doing it with somebody else, doing it together, doing it in partnership will always be more impactful. It will always be more enduring and will always create a greater legacy. Because in that pair, in those twos, there is mutual encouragement, mutual support, mutual challenge, and mutual accountability. Jesus sent His disciples and the 72 in pairs, because he knew the power of that mutual accountability.
Question: Who do you report progress to? Who reports their progress to you?
#ModelsOfMentoring #Mentor #SundayTalks #MattBird #Accountability -
We all benefit from people in our lives who guide us. In the book of Ruth we see that Naomi became a mentor guide to Ruth. (Ruth 1:16-17) Everyone benefits from having people who guide us and help us navigate both opportunities and times of crisis.
The question we ask today is, who is it that guides you and has guided you? Who are the people who help you navigate the twists and turns of life - because we all need people like that.
But just as important as that question is, the other the question we must consider is who are you a guide to? Who are you helping? Who you listening to? Who’s asking you for advice and perspectives?
At the heart of biblical mentoring is this role of guiding others in the way that they should go. Not telling them what to do, but actually, making wise, suggestions and giving wise advice and perspectives.
Who are the people that do that for us?
And who are the people that we provide that guidance to? -
In our latest Issachar Sunday Talks series, we’re going to be looking at what we call #ModelsOfMentoring, one-to-one relationships through which people are developed and grown to have a greater impact.
In this first talk we focus on #Mentoring as a #RoleModel. Role models are people that have gone before us, that have accomplished what we want to accomplish have done what we want to do, and we can look to them for help and support and comfort and guidance.
This Model of Mentoring as a Role Model, means we dedicate to spend time with people that we want to learn from, and we dedicate to spend time with those people that we want to impart something to - to help them learn, develop and grow so that they can be enabled to become everything that they can possibly become.
Q: Who do you look up to? Who looks up to you? -
This is the finale of our series called Visions and Dreams, in which we looked at people in the Bible who had a vision or a dream, and what it meant to them. We then discussed what it might mean for us today, because we believe that God speaks through the language of dreams and visions. What better finale, than to focus on the final book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, the finale of the Bible. It is a book recording the visions and dreams of one of Jesus Disciples, John, when he was in exile on the island of Patmos.
John records that one Lord's Day he got caught up in the spirit and he had a number of visions and dreams which he details in the Book of Revelations, He had a vision of the future where there's no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, and no more pain. Can you imagine a world without those things? That world is heaven.
When you think back through Jesus' life, all that he said and the miracles he performed were about the kingdom of heaven on earth. The whole of Jesus' life’s work was about heaven coming in the here and now. Jesus not only lived that life but he taught us to live that life and when he first taught the disciples to pray, he said pray your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Question: Inspired by Jesus, what are you doing to bring heaven to earth? -
Saul, AKA, Paul was a Roman citizen from Tarsus and a religious zealot who persecuted new religious movements. He later had an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and was transformed from someone who persecuted churches to being someone who planted churches. He was formerly known as Saul until this encounter when Jesus renamed him Paul and he went on to be key leader of the early church.
One night on his missionary journeys he had a vision which caused him to change his travel plans away from moving east, and to head west to Macedonia. This was a significant moment in the development of the early church as ‘the Spirit led them’ away from the Asian region towards the West and Europe.
From this moment on Paul followed the Spirit of God not the Spirit of the Age.
Lesson: Do WITH God not FOR God - stop doing stuff for God do stuff with God!
Question: What is God doing and how are you joining in? -
Pete - formerly known as Simon until Jesus renamed him - was a fisherman with his own fishing business - Simon & Co. One day they experienced a turn around at the hands of Jesus and Pete became one of Jesus most trusted disciples and later, a key leader of the church.
In the early years of the church, as it grew, it became more and more uncomfortable for the Jewish community. Clearly God was doing something in them but beyond them as well, and there was certainly some resistance in some parts of the early church. One day Pete, after praying, fell into a trance and had a vision which proved to be crucial in the life of the church. Pete was clearly shown that the church needed to become more inclusive of everyone, both Jew and Gentile. With this vision God challenged the young church to EVOLVE and not ENTRENCH, to become inclusive rather than exclusive.
Lesson: Welcome! The Church is welcome to all! It is Inclusive not Exclusive!
Think: If Jesus were physically on earth today where or how would he do church?
Question: Are you forever evolving or making the case to remain unchanged? -
Joe was a highly skilled craftsman probably specialising in carpentry, skills he learnt from his father who in turn learnt them from his father. He lived in a small town called Nazareth near the large lake of Galilee.
Joe was engaged to Mary but learned that she was pregnant. Deeply troubled about what to do. One night an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream’ and said ‘do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife’ and explained that the child she was bearing was part of God’s extraordinary plan to save mankind.
Joe learned to Trust and not Doubt.
What irrational thing do you need to trust God about in order for your God-given visions or dreams to come to pass? -
Amos was a shepherd, To be a shepherd was one of the top professions in the Middle East in his time, Patriach St Augustine called him a ‘minor prophet’, not based on importance but the size of his recorded works. He had a passion for justice and a concern for the disparity between the haves and the have nots. He had a vision ‘concerning Israel’ which led him to proclaim that God was saying, ‘I hate, I despise your religious festivals’.
The Covid19 pandemic has killed lots of religion - the ‘outward forms of faith, but lacking alignment’. Before pandemic we tended to deify Sunday meetings. Perhaps they were our sacred cows? The pandemic has helped us prove that we really are community.
How do we kill our sacred cows and keep the main thing the main thing? -
This is about Neb’s Dream and Dan’s Vision. It will help you to have a transforming impact in your neighbourhood.
Neb was the King of Babylon, used by God to conquer Jerusalem. He decapitated the capital by exiling leaders to Babylon. Dan was born into nobility and privilege in Israel, and was chosen as a young man to be trained with the ability to interpret visions and dreams.
At a certain critical point Dan was not only able to tell king Neb what he had dreamed but also the meaning of the dream. King Neb was so in awe that he placed Dan in a high position and lavished many gifts on him, and made him and Dan’s friends his chief advisers.
Be encouraged to be the sort of follower of God that Dan was - that doesn’t stick your head in the sand and feel like you’re continually on the back foot in your community and society. Be encouraged to become front footed as a follower of Jesus; to be confident in your faith, to be confident in your God and lift your head up high and engage with the highest authorities, even the leaders of cities and nations - just as Dan did.
Stop thinking, ‘what am I able to achieve?’ Lift your head up and ask ‘what is God able to achieve?’ -
Zek’s Visions: Zek, AKA Ezekiel was known as a prophet of doom, often warning God’s people to stop idolatry or else God would punish them. One day, what he had warned the nation actually happened, and they were invaded and overcome by their enemies. Once this happened Zek became a prophet of hope.
Ezekiel 1:1 "In my thirtieth year . . . while I was among the exiles . . . the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God."
“Today I want to speak hope into any hopelessness you may be feeling. Just as in Zek’s vision God breathed life into the dry bones. Sometimes the situations we find ourselves in are life-sapping, life-draining, life-taking. Yet I believe God always brings life, always brings hope.”
“Choose life-giving relationships rather than life-draining relationships.” - Matt Bird -
If God was to offer you anything you wanted what would we ask for?
Would you ask for something that fulfilled your ambition or desire or would you ask for something for the benefit of humanity?
In 1 Kings 3: 5 we read ; ‘At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”’
In response David asked for “a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.”
’The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honour—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. - 1 Kings 3: 10-13
Meaning: God gave Solomon wisdom - and because he asked for that and not wealth, he gave him wealth as well.
Lesson: We need to learn how to live For the good of humanity and not just for the good of ourselves. -
How do you know when God is speaking? How do we discern between the divine voice of God and the human voices around us?
“The reason I believe God led me to this Visions & Dreams series is that I believe that He wants to speak to you in profound ways. He wants to speak to you through visions and dreams about your NOW, your TOMORROW and your FUTURE. Visions & Dreams are the language of the Holy Spirit and we need to learn how to discern the Divine Voice.”
- Matt Bird
‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening…’ 1 Sam 3:10 -
How to be saturated in faith not dominated by fear.
We hear about Deon, AKA Gideon, an Israelite, and the sequence of three dreams sent to him by God. These dreams guided Deon over time towards helping the diminished Israelite army defeat their enemy, the Midianites. These dreams also helped Deon overcome his fear of failure and grow stronger in his faith.
Lesson: How can you live your life saturated with faith and not dominated by fear? -
In this episode we hear the story of Mo, and the apparition he saw in the desert when God spoke to him from within a burning bush. God asked Mo to go to Pharoah and say ‘let me people go’, and Mo found plenty of excuses about why he couldn’t do what God was asking. Exodus 3:1-11
‘Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”’
- Exodus 4:1 -2
Lesson: Step into your visions and dreams with God’s limitless strength, and not with self limiting beliefs -
We commence this series by hearing about the story of Joe and the two dreams he had when he was just 17 years old, and what unfolded in his life afterwards. Genesis 37:1-11
“The most important thing we learn is that when God gives us a vision or a dream we need to remain humble, and not allow it to make us big headed. We need to ensure that the vision or dream makes us big hearted. Because when we’re big hearted and remain humble that is when God will use us, and that is when the dream will come to pass.”
‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’ - Genesis 50:20 - Show more
