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Well, good morning, Echoes Church. You can take a seat. If I have not had the chance to meet you yet, my name is Daniel. I'm one of the pastors here. And, man, just so excited to get to be with you. I don't know if you're excited, but today is officially
football Sunday. Come on. Somebody excited to watch some football today? You're like, that's why we're at the 09:20 service, man, so we can get home and watch some football. So, hey, if you have a bible, open them up to first Samuel chapter 16.
We're looking at the life of David and looking at some of the key relationships that God brought into his life and learning some of the relationships we need in our own life if we wanna see the potential that God has put in us come to fruition.
So first Samuel 16 is where we'll be today as we look at the relationship that David had with the guy that the book of Samuel was written by. It's it's Samuel himself, the mentor
that God used to bring the greatness out of David. So you turn there. I'll pray for us. We'll jump in. Father, God, it is with hearts that are already stirring towards you that we open up the holy scriptures today. God, would you right now do what you do? Would you speak specifically and individually to every single person here? God, there's no way that I can know all the things going on in every single person's heart this morning, but, Lord, I trust that you do. And as we open up your scriptures, father, we give you permission, not that you need it, but we give you permission to speak. In Jesus' mighty and holy name, all God's people said,
amen and amen.
I don't know if you've ever worked a retail job before, but, man, you just you have some bizarre encounters. Do know what I mean? Because, like, I don't know what the percentage of, like, the normal population that's weird is out there, but there's just a lot of bizarre people. Right? And so when you work retail, you you gotta work these weird hours, then you gotta deal with these weird people. And I have stories for days about the bizarre humans I used to have to work with when I was doing a retail job. But there was this one day this guy came in, and his wife had broken her phone. I was working for AT and T, selling cell phones back when they were the only one with the iPhone, and she had broken her phone. I would soon learn that this was the second time she had broken her phone in the last, like, ten days, and there was no more upgrades available. Remember you used to be able like, steal your sister's upgrade, then you move it to your line and do all that stuff? Well, all the upgrades were gone. They were out of options, so all they could do was buy another phone for, like, a thousand dollars. And to say that the husband was upset would be like the understatement of the year. Right? Like, you just know that drive from the house to the store was not fun. And now I'm in the middle of them. Right? I'm in the middle of this encounter,
and I in the back of my mind, I remember, like, way AT and T was trying to push this thing called U verse, which is, their version of TV services. And so I was like, okay. If I sell them TV services, I know I can get them a phone. So I try to broach the subject about TV services,
and this dude just jumps down my throat. He's like, don't try to sell me anything right now. And I was like, alright. And so eventually,
I remember he had a tattoo on his arm, and so I just said, hey, like, what's the tattoo on your arm? Just trying to figure out any way to diffuse the situation. And I I got lucky, and the tattoo wasn't like my tattoos that I got while I was in prison. It don't mean anything to me. I'm just kidding. They weren't from prison. That's
a joke for another day. But his tattoo was to memorialize his best friend in college who had died from cancer super young. And so all of a sudden, like, you just felt the tension
in the conversation drop. And all of sudden, it's just another human connecting with the human. And he starts to talk about his his friend who had died, and I'm able to have a little bit of breathing room and just say, hey, man. If you if you just give me a second, like, promise you, I'm not trying to sell you anything, but we there's a creative solution that we can we can work out here. At the end of this whole encounter, he buys everything. Walked out of the store, he's like the guy's got, like, sucker written on his back. You know what I mean? And the amazing part was at the end of the encounter before he leaves, he says, hey, when I was your age, I met somebody that was in my season of life that offered to mentor me. And he begins to tell me how he's a he's a national sales trainer, and he wanted to offer me an opportunity to to kinda learn from him. So he gives me his card, and I'm like, I don't know about this, but eventually, I take him up on the offer, and I go to lunch with him, and he literally was one of the top sales trainers in the country. And that relationship
single handedly altered the course of my sales career in ways that I I never could have dreamt possible. That guy, he he brought me under his wing and mentored me. He opened up doors for me that I could never have opened up myself, and and truly, still to this day, changed the financial future of my family all because
he had been a recipient of the power of mentorship, and that guy had told him, hey. At some point, you will get to do this for somebody else. And at 19, 20 years old when we first met, I I learned the power of mentorship.
And the part that's amazing that you'll see all throughout the Bible is this principle is played out everywhere. K? Again, what we're looking at is this that this relation all these different relationships that David had that helped him get to who he was supposed to be, to see the calling that was on his life come to fruition. We looked last week at Jonathan and David's relationship and what what a friend can do for us and how you might be one friend away from changing the course of your destiny.
Today, what I wanna talk to you about is the power of a mentor.
Somebody that's in a season ahead of you that can begin to help call the greatness that's in you out of you. See, Samuel was that voice for David. And and again, if you go and look at his story, if I had time, I would walk you through Samuel's story. Samuel only did this for David because somebody had done it for him as well. Samuel was was raised by this guy named Eli that was a priest that helped him realize who he was. And Samuel was he became a prophet for the nation of Israel, which was a a huge deal, but he only walked in his potential because of the mentor that he had. And you start to see this kingdom value played out time and time again,
where somebody who's been poured into
is willing to then, in turn, turn around and help somebody else do the same thing. And I'm telling you, every single person in here, doesn't matter what your job is, doesn't matter what your vocation is, doesn't matter if you're a stay at home, it doesn't matter what it is. All of us need mentors in our life, people who are guiding us into where we want to go and where we wanna be. Again, here's kind of the the main idea I wanna try to convince you of today that I believe that every David needs a Samuel because gifting without guidance,
it usually ends in disaster. Why do you need a guide? Because gifting isn't enough. I would actually argue that gifting can become really dangerous if it isn't guided really well. That some of the greatest disaster stories that we see in the Bible were people who were really gifted,
but they never had any guidance to help the gifting turn into
more than just potential and then actually step into their calling. So David and Samuel's relationship, it starts in first Samuel chapter 16. Here's where we see there this this encounter start. Verse one says, and now the Lord said to Samuel, you have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel, so fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem. Find a man named Jesse who lives there, for I have selected one of his sons to be my king. But Samuel asked him, how can I do that? If Saul hears about it, he he will kill me. K? Here's the introduction to this story. It starts by Samuel
having to come to terms with the realization that the person that he had just spent the last season of his life mentoring,
Saul, it actually didn't go well. In all of Samuel's advice, because Saul didn't listen to it, it didn't actually do anything for him. And this tells us where sometimes this mentor mentee type of relationship can break down. And sometimes the reason that we don't step into
helping somebody else is because we go, well, they're not gonna listen anyways. And sometimes you can't control what people do with it. Our responsibility is to understand that, hey, all of us who've been given something to steward,
all of us have a responsibility to help pour into the generation that's coming up behind us. Samuel has done that for Saul, and it didn't go well. Saul didn't listen. It's a sermon for another day, but Samuel's having to realize,
okay. I've gotta do this again. This one didn't work with Saul, but now God is asking me to do this thing again. And notice what Samuel is. Samuel's afraid, which tells me that God doesn't need perfect people to be mentors.
He just needs people who are willing to be mentors. He needs people who are willing to say, okay. With the the little bit of knowledge I have, the little bit of experience that I have, I'm willing to go and pour that into somebody else. God tells Samuel to fill a flask with oil. Go to this town, and he's gonna find the future king. Now, again, the oil, it represents the anointing and the calling of God that has left Saul
and is now going to be handed to we'll eventually see here in a second. It's David. Samuel asked, how can I do that? If Saul hears about it, he's gonna kill me. So God says, take a heifer with you, the Lord replied,
and say that you've come to make a sacrifice to the Lord. Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you which of his sons to anoint for me. So Samuel did as the Lord instructed him, and when he arrived at Bethlehem, the elders of the town came trembling
to meet him. What's wrong? They asked him. Do you come in peace? Again, you gotta understand when the when the prophet of the lord showed up to your town, it was usually because there was some really bad news the prophet needed to deliver,
and there was usually some really scary consequences on the other side of it. And so the prophet,
the voice piece of God shows up to this town, and they're terrified. They're like, bro, are we good? Alright. Cool. You can come in. Right? Samuel says, verse five, yes. I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. He says, purify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice. Then Samuel performed the purification rite for Jesse and his sons, and he invited them to the sacrifice too. And when they arrived, Samuel took one look at Eliab, and he thought, surely,
this is the Lord's anointed.
But the Lord said to Samuel, don't judge by his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn't see the things the way that you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord the Lord looks at the heart. And then Jesse told his son, Abinadab, to step forward and walk in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, this is also not the one the Lord has chosen. Next, Jesse summoned Shemaiah, which just imagine being in junior high, and that's your name is Shemaiah? Like, that's that's a tough season. Right? But Shemaiah said, this is not the one that the Lord has chosen. Next Jesse summoned Shemaiah, but Samuel said, neither is this the one that the Lord has chosen. In the same way, verse 10, all seven of Jesse's sons were presented to Samuel, but Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen any of these. And then Samuel asked, are these all the sons that you have? And Jesse replied, there is still the youngest,
but he's out in the fields watching the sheep and the goats. AKA,
I didn't even think he was remotely close to being possible to be chosen as the future king. I didn't even bring him in. I brought every other son that I have, but not but not this one. And Samuel said, send for him at once. We will not sit down to eat until he arrives. So Jesse sent for him. He was dark and handsome with beautiful eyes, something that said a lot about me as well. So
and then the Lord said, this is the one. Anoint him. So as David stood there among his brothers, Samuel took the flask of olive oil that he had brought and anointed David with the oil, and the spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David from that day on, then Samuel returned
to Ramah. David and Samuel's relationship starts in this really wild ceremony
where Samuel is told that the future king of Israel is one of Jesse's sons. Now, again, we we don't really know exactly what happened and why Jesse despised David so much, but we think that something took place where he potentially had an extramarital affair, and David was the byproduct of that. And so Jesse Jesse never really wanted him to be a part of the family. He knew that he couldn't get rid of him, but he just he kind of kept him on the fringes. He kept him hidden. David wasn't a warrior like Jesse's other sons. He literally, in almost every arena of what Jesse thought a son was supposed to be, David was not. And because of that, he was often left outside. And again, it's a sermon for another day, but David, because he never deals with these wounds that happened from his dad,
because he never deals with the trauma that happened in the home that he grew up in, he later will make some terrible decisions specifically connected
to how he interacts with women. And it's amazing to me how undealt with father wounds will end up producing things where men, instead of protecting women, you end up also you you end up actually hurting women.
David was a guy who'd been wounded deeply by his dad. And this is one of those things that tells me it tells me that your and I's ability to be used by God is not dependent on the families that we grew up in. See, some of you sitting here, man, this is your, like, that's the level of dysfunction? Like, that's it? Like, man, my families will beat that all day long. You know what I mean? Like, my wife and I always joke and kind of laugh back and forth of, like, which one of our families is crazier? And then, like, her family will do something. We're like, man, they're they're in the lead for sure. You know? And then one of my siblings will do something. We're like, my family's coming back strong. And our family's joke is that we put the fun in dysfunctional. Right? And to some degree, all of us sitting here, though it it it's different based on the family you grew up in, all of us come from brokenness to some degree. Right? It's an unfortunate reality of the broken world that we live in, but this is the good news of the gospel is that your family upbringing, your family dynamics,
they don't have to define the calling that God has put on your life. It it's not contingent on you coming from the right family. Your calling, your anointing, and your potential is not dependent on your mom or your dad seeing the gifting that's inside of you.
A lot of you grew up in homes where you didn't have an affirming dad or mom telling you that you can do great things. And I'm here to tell you that it doesn't mean anything about the actual potential and calling that's on your life, that God wants to use you in powerful ways just like he did with David,
and this is where the kingdom principle of mentorship comes in. Notice what Samuel did for David that nobody else had done up until that point. Samuel saw the greatness that was in him.
What everybody else had overlooked, there was one person that said, no, man. There's greatness inside of this guy. I know externally he doesn't have all the attributes that you think you're supposed to have, but there's greatness in him. There's calling on him. There's there's anointing that's there. This is why I think that every single person here, you need a mentor in your life. You need somebody that's a season ahead of you that can begin to pull the greatness out of you. The first reason I think everybody needs a mentor that we'd learn in this relationship between David and Samuel is mentors can see what other people miss.
One of the unique vantage points that God will give mentors is they will see the things in you and call the greatness out of you that other people have overlooked in your life, and you don't need everybody to see it. You don't need every single person out there to agree that you have greatness and potential in you.
But I'm telling you, it's amazing to me what happens when somebody believes in your gifting, when somebody believes in your potential.
Again, just because it's the first week of the NFL, I had to use a football illustration to prove this. Right? I wanna read you a list of names. Okay? Help me if you've ever heard of any of these names. K. Giovanni Carmizzi,
Chris Redman, Tee Martin, Mark Bulger, Spurgeon Wynn. K. Raise your hand if you know who all five of those guys are. There's two of you who are probably, like, super football nerds. Alright? The rest of us, we've never heard of that list of names. You know why? Because none of them ever did anything.
But you know what's incredible? Those are the five quarterbacks that were drafted in the two thousand NFL draft before this guy was drafted. K?
If you don't know who that is, that's Tom Brady right there. And if you're wondering why five quarterbacks were drafted before him, it's because that's what he looked like at the draft. Like, of course, I'm not gonna pick him. I'm gonna pick anybody else but him. Right? And
yet here's what's incredible to me. Here's what's mind blowing. And if you try to say it's Patrick Mahomes, you can leave the church today because he's not the greatest of all time, not even close. Alright? The chargers beat the Chiefs week one in the name of Jesus. Come on, somebody.
Here's what's amazing. This guy is now arguably the greatest quarterback to have ever played the position, and you know what helped him get there? If you go back and you talk to the the the coaching team for the Patriots in the February,
there was one quarterback coach that was insistent to Bill Belichick. I'm telling you, this kid out of Michigan,
there's something about him. He's got these intangibles. There's leadership in him. His arm is stronger than we think that it is. I know it doesn't look like it on paper, but behind the scenes, there was somebody
there was somebody that was arguing for him. And even though a 198 people were drafted before him with the 190
pick of the NFL draft, the New England Patriots took a guy that one person saw the potential of. Here's the principle that all of us need to understand. You potentially are one voice away from stepping into the calling and destiny that's on your life.
Some of you are already in the season where you've walked through a lot of the purpose that God has given you, and the beautiful opportunity that you now get to play in the kingdom of God is you get to be a voice piece a voice piece to the next generation,
helping them begin to see the calling and anointing that's on their life. This is the beauty of how God has designed our connections with each other. We need each other. Again, I wrote it down this way if you're taking notes. You don't need everybody to see your potential. You just need somebody to see it.
You need somebody that sees the greatness in you. You need somebody that calls you to something higher to go, man, just because this is what you've always done, it doesn't mean this is who you always have to be. You can get through this. This divorce doesn't have to finalize who you are. This failure
doesn't have to be final. You can get through this. We we don't need the whole world. We don't need our family to see the greatness that's in us, but I'm telling you, you need somebody to see it.
You need somebody that sees the potential in you that can call the greatness out of you. It is part of our responsibility as followers of Christ. Those of us who've been given much, the scripture says, it there is much to be expected of us. It it's the responsibility of resources. It it's the burden of blessing
that when God has blessed you with much, there's an expectation that you are turning around and helping the generation that's coming up behind you figure out the same thing because there are people who will never walk into their calling without your voice of confirmation on them.
And I'm telling you, the reason that so many of us are afraid of getting into communities because we think community is gonna tear us apart, and and I'm telling you, it's the complete opposite. God's community is the thing that will sustain the calling of God on your life.
The greatness that God will start with you, I I I promise you, it's a it's a person and it's a community that will help you see it through. I'm telling you, I'm only standing on this stage because sitting as a high school leader, there was one youth pastor that looked at me and said, I don't know why, man. I just think you have a gift to teach. And I was like, me? He's like, yeah. I think you should teach in three weeks. And I was like, teach on what? So I literally the only sermons I was listening to was a guy named Mark Driscoll who teaches for like an hour and who's really smart. So I tried to stand up on stage and just preach one of his sermons. It was horrendous, and I praise God that YouTube wasn't a thing then, and you can't find that sermon anywhere.
But I remember walking off of that stage, and I felt like for those twelve minutes, though it was terribly done, I felt like I was doing what God had built me to do. Yet I never would have stepped onto that stage had somebody not said, hey, I see this in you.
And I'm telling you, all of us are are one voice away from greatness
coming out of us. All of us all of us need a mentor in our life. The second reason that I think all of us are going to need a mentor is because difficult times are gonna come in our life. If you look at David's life, this interaction with Samuel happened. At 14 years old, he's anointed the future king of Israel.
And then eventually, Samuel actually introduces him to king Saul. And David gets a role inside of Saul's kingdom, and eventually, Saul realizes
that God's anointing has left him, and David is the next king. And so Saul tries to kill David. He makes it his mission to kill him. There's the kind of this crazy scene where David's wife, at some point, she does the thing that you did in junior high when you were sneaking out at night, and you took the pillows and, like, put them in your bed to make it look like you were in the bed. She'd like that's in that's in the Bible. That's where you got that idea from. Right? David's wife literally does that because they know that Saul is coming to kill him, and eventually, David has to go on the run to get away from Saul. And I wanna show you in first Samuel chapter 18, flip over a couple chapters,
I wanna show you where David runs when life begins to fall apart. Look at first Samuel chapter 18 verse 18. It says, so David escaped and he went to Ramah to see who? Samuel.
When life was falling apart, where did David go? He went to Ramah to see Samuel, and he told him all that Saul had done to him. And then Samuel took David with him to live at Nayoth, and when the report reached Saul that David was at Nayoth in Ramah, he sent troops to capture him. But when they arrived and saw Samuel leading a group of prophets who were prophesying, the spirit of God came upon Saul's men, and they also began to prophesy.
When Saul heard what had happened, he sent other troops, but they too, they just prophesied. The same thing happened to a third group of people. Verse 22 says that finally, Saul himself
went to Ramah and arrived at the Great Wall in Seiku. Where are Samuel and David? He demanded. They're at Neauth in Rama, someone told him. But on the way to Neauth in Rama, the spirit of God came upon even Saul.
He too began to prophesy all the way to Neauth. He tore off all of his clothes. He lay naked on the ground all day and all night, prophesying in the presence of Samuel. And the people who were watching are thinking the same thing you're thinking right now. What the heck is happening? Right? Is even Saul a prophet? This is one of those stories you're like, well, they didn't teach me that in Sunday school. Right?
Saul sent three different groups of people. They got slain in the spirit. They prophesied all day long. So Saul said, I'm gonna get him myself. He gets filled with the spirit of God, lays naked, and prophesies for two days. You're like, what is happening? Right? This is one of those things you gotta understand that there is a there's an element to God's plan on this earth that you can either get on board with it or you can get run over by it, but it's gonna happen. Like, are certain elements of how God works on this earth that are going to take place. David was going to be the king. He was going to be protected. Didn't matter how badly Saul wanted to kill him, God was going to protect him. But notice how he protects him in this season of his life. He protects him with a mentor.
He goes to a guy that he trusts that creates a safe place for him where David doesn't have to be a warrior. He doesn't have to be a leader. He doesn't have to be a future king. He gets to just be a human that's scared, that's afraid, that is anxious, that is worrying,
and a and a good mentor will give you a space a good space to do that, a place where you can process. The second reason I think every single one of us needs a mentor is because mentors are designed to be refuge in the middle of a storm. All of us in this life, the Bible says we're going to walk through storms.
I think that the way that storms affect us will be determined based on who you run to in the middle of your storms. When life begins to fall apart, who you run to, I'm telling you, who you go to for advice, I'm telling you, is more important than you could ever realize. Because who you run to will either allow
the storm to be something that teaches you and makes you better, or it will be something that turns you just more bitter towards God. What David did is he ran to the one guy that he goes, man, I know this guy. He always he tells me like it is, but he knows who I am.
And I don't have to be anything important when I'm around him. And when the storms of life come comes raging, David runs to Samuel.
All of us need a mentor that we can go to when things are falling apart. This is part of the burden of mentorship is to create a safe place where somebody is willing to just be able to to be a human with us, to just be able to process,
that not every interaction is going to be an incredible one. Sometimes a lot of what we need to do is help somebody walk through a really difficult season.
Again, if I had three hours, I would walk you through all the different encounters that David has with Samuel. It's David never becomes the king of Israel without Samuel's intervention.
The moment Samuel dies, David goes off the rails, and we see another prophet come in and start to bring him back. David's relationship with Samuel was pivotal. It was pivotal in helping him become who he's supposed to be. And yet the sad reality is sitting today, we have people who don't have many relationships.
This is also part of one of the sad truths of just how churches function today. You realize that on Sunday mornings from 08:00 to 12:00 is the most divided time in our entire country?
We still, because of how we think we're supposed to do church, we divide based on race. We divide based on ethnicity. We divide based on preference. In a lot of times, we divide based on generational beliefs and generational stages
because we'll go, well, the music is just too loud in that church. And so what ends up happening is people that think it's too loud, they go to a different church, and they wanna sing hymns. And what's happening right now across the country, if you look at the big c church,
is churches are dying off at rates that we can't plant them fast enough to replace. And the really hard part is most of these churches are owned by big denominations,
and this is their growth strategy. Their growth strategy is to sell that building to a developer that can pay more than a church could ever pay for it, and then they take that money and they invest it into a different denomination or a different congregation
somewhere else that is also just slowly dying off, and that's their growth strategy. And I'm telling you, part of it is because we haven't learned how to have intergenerational church to figure out, hey. At some point, church stops becoming about my preferences,
And the reason that I would ask you if you are more seasoned to invest here is because we are reaching families. Last week, we had 400 kids on a Sunday morning. It tells me that we're reaching our target demographic of young families, but those young families, they need somebody that can begin to pour into them.
They need somebody that can affirm the calling of God on their life. They need somebody that can invest into them so that their marriage can look like your marriage at some point. Every single one of us, every David needs a Samuel, but every Samuel also needs a David.
I'm telling you, it's how we we continue to walk in purpose. I got five minutes left for you. I got three things you need to look for, three things you need to be if you're going to be a godly mentor. The first one, the first thing you should look for in somebody that you want them to invest in you is they got to be a person of integrity.
And you would think that that's like a no duh, but I'm telling you we're living in a world where integrity is a dying art. It is a lost art.
And sometimes, the people we think that we should aspire to be like are people who are somehow successful in an arena of life. And I don't know what it is. The older I get, the less I'm impressed by success. The more I'm impressed by success that didn't come at the cost of your character.
The people that I look at and go, man, I wanna be like that are people who who mastered a craft. They built a successful business. They they built a great family, but it didn't come at the expense of their character. They are a person of integrity. Integrity just means the root word is integer. It just means one.
Who you see at church on Sunday is the same guy that you see on Friday nights at the football game. It's the same person that you see when you go to lunch on Wednesday. It's somebody that has integrity and character. I love Paul. He says this in first Corinthians chapter 11. He says, and you should imitate me just as I imitate Christ.
What a powerful invitation of a mentor. Here's what you should do. Model your life after mine as I follow Christ. And I look at my own life and I go, man, could I sit could I sit down with somebody in in in integrity say that? Hey, man. Here's what to do. Follow me. Do what I'm doing.
That's the gold standard of what a mentor is supposed to be, is somebody who doesn't have it all figured out, is not perfect, but there's somebody who is following after Christ, and they're trying to model these things. They're not just talking about it. Again, here's the good part for all of us that are like, man, I'm not qualified to be a mentor. Let me just remind you, you don't need to be perfect. You just need to be consistent.
Consistency over a long period of time, I think is the best definition of discipleship. Consistency, doing the same thing over and over and over again over a long period of time, that that is discipleship. And, eventually, that thing will lead to maturation. That thing will lead to
perfection as the scriptures talk about it, right, where your your your your faith becomes perfected. The thing I love most that David is recorded in scripture, he's recorded as a man after God's own heart. And I promise you, the reason that that is true is because he spent so much time watching Samuel,
and Samuel's relationship with Jesus rubbed off on David.
You need a mentor in your life that reminds you, man, you don't pray enough. You need a mentor in your life that is constantly talking about how much they fast so that you can remember, oh, yeah. I should probably fast. Right? That you can't be the holiest person that you know. You need somebody that's pushing you to go further and faster. Here's the second thing you wanna look for in a godly mentor. You need somebody that's got some wisdom. K? I didn't put knowledge. Knowledge is available online. You can buy it for a couple $100. Right? If you want knowledge, go to the Internet. Everybody has a course. Everybody has a mastermind.
But wisdom, knowledge that has been applied, that is lived out, man, that is worth its weight in gold. Job chapter 12 verse 12 tells us where to find it. It says, wisdom belongs to the aged and understanding to the old.
You want to know where the wisdom in the church is? It's all the people that have no more hair. And if they have some, it's barely holding on and it's gray. Okay?
And you ask them, when you ask them, hey, I'm considering having you mentor me, how old are you? Their birth date should start with a or their age should start with a six, a seven, or an eight. Okay?
The scriptures say that there's value in people who have lived through some things, who have walked through some things. Now again,
you can't make the mistake of thinking just because somebody is more seasoned that they have wisdom. That that is also not true. The bible says that you can be old enough, be a fool as well,
but we've got to remember that sometimes the reason it can be hard to somebody that's in the same season of life and the same stage of life as us to mentor us is because they're too busy competing with you to mentor you.
They're still trying to prove to the world who they are. You need somebody that's already gotten through that stuff, that now has capacity both relationally and professionally
to give of themselves to you, so they can freely give you advice because they're not trying to compete with you. The third thing you need to look for in a mentor that can help you become who you're supposed to be is you need somebody that has some backbone.
What I mean by that is sometimes it can be hard to tell people what they need to hear, and so what we end up doing is we just tell people what we think that they wanna hear, and that's not helpful. A lot of us have friends in our life that tell us what we want to hear,
but we need a couple people to tell us what we what we need to hear. The one thing that I see that Samuel did time and time and time again, even though it was hard, even though at times he was afraid to do it, he didn't like doing it, Samuel always told the person that he was pouring into the hard truth that nobody else would tell him. Remember first Samuel chapter 13?
This is David talking to Saul, who at this point is the most powerful person in the nation of Israel.
But Samuel knows that God is gonna leave him. Because Sam Saul's not listening, Samuel has to go and tell him this in first Samuel chapter 13. He says, how how foolish, Samuel explained. You've not kept a command that the Lord your God gave you. Had you kept it, the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.
But now your kingdom must end, for the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart. The Lord has already appointed him to be the leader of his people because you have not kept the Lord's command. He went to him and told him the thing that nobody else would tell him.
You and I need people in our life like that. If you are here and in any capacity, you go, man, I want God to use my life. I wanna get to the end of my life and say, God, I did everything I could. I leveraged all the equity that I had with my life to build your kingdom.
I'm telling you, you will not stumble your way into a life of purpose. God will start it. Yes and amen. But I promise you, it's people that sustain it. This is why crews are such a big deal for us. Relationship
is so important. And sometimes, again, even with us, a brand new church, we're already too big for you to know everybody here on a Sunday.
But you've gotta find an environment where people can invest into you, where there are people that you are pouring into while you are being poured into. It is the beautiful plan of God for his people on this earth.
And I love that the scriptures say in first John chapter two that this is actually what the Holy Spirit does for us as well.
And I know some of you are like, man, I just don't have a relationship like that today.
Make it a prayer request. Go, God, would you bring somebody like this into my life? And secondly, remember that you do have the person of the Holy Spirit in you. The Bible says that the same spirit that rose Jesus from the grave is alive and active in you. In first John chapter two says one of the Holy Spirit's jobs
is to mentor you, to develop you into all the things that Jesus was trying to teach on this earth. You are not without a mentor even if you don't have a human in your life. You have somebody. So here's my hope. Here's my prayer for us as a community, that we would be people who take serious the charge,
that too much has been given, much is required. It's the burden of blessing. It's the responsibility of resource
that God has given you much so that you can be a blessing to other people. Amen? Let me pray for you. Father, God, I thank you. God, I thank you for a group of people that would show up this morning seeking your will for their life. And, God, I know that there are people here who are more than willing
to give up their time, and there are people here who are looking for somebody to invest in them. And so, father, I just pray for divine appointments.
God, I pray that you would nudge the hearts of people to join a serving team. And on that serving team, they would accidentally bump into somebody that they could go, hey. Can I I get coffee with you? Father, would you show us people? Would you bring us into relationship with people
that have marriages like we want our marriage to be one day? Father, would you begin to just make divine appointments happen? Father, we thank you for the gift of a good mentor that can help call out the greatness that's in us. Father, give us all a heart to be like you were on this earth, freely giving of our time, freely
moving towards the people who are seeking the things of God. So, father, we just thank you in advance for all the divine appointments. God, we ask that you would do what only you can do. In Jesus' mighty name, all God's people said. Amen and amen.