Heather Bellamy spoke with Mark Birch-Machin, the founder of Speakers of Life, about the importance of hearing from God and sharing that with others.

Mark Birch-Machin

Mark Birch-Machin established Speakers of Life in 2009 as a Prophetic Training Network, he is part of the leadership team at St Luke's in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and he is also a PHD Scientist with an international reputation, co-founding two company's and co-inventing commercial products. Having now released his book Speakers of Life Heather Bellamy caught up with him to find out about treasure hunting, how to hear the voice of God and what Speakers of Life do.

Heather: What is Speakers of Life?

Mark: Speakers of Life is a prophetic network. So before you understand what a prophetic network is, the first question I guess is, what is prophecy? Prophecy, in its simplest terms, is listening to God and the words of life that God speaks to us each day and then speaking them out to others. It is passing on the good news that God gives to us and so Speakers of Life is a way of teaching and encouraging us to listen to God more clearly and then find ways and opportunities to express that to people who are believers and people who are not believers, because we all need to hear the life and the love of God.

Heather: So can everybody hear from God?

Mark: Yes we can. God does speak to all of us whether we are aware of Him or not and whether or not we believe in Him or not. The Bible talks about showering down rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, in other words, those that believe and those that don't believe. God wants to bless us all, whether we believe in Him or not. He's got all our best interests at heart; He loves all of us equally, whether we believe in Him or not. The Bible talks about Jesus coming to die for all of us, not just for some of us. So in terms of believing in Jesus, it's like when you want to tune into a radio station and you're skipping through the wave bands and you find a particular radio station that you like and that gives you life and you chose not to tune into anywhere else. By believing in God and through what Jesus has done, it means that we tune into God and we stay there all the time so we can, as it were, be connected to God 24/7, rather than from time to time when things are disastrous.

Heather: What does He sound like?

Mark: Different to different people. Our prophetic networking started in our house with a few people from three different churches and it's now grown to a 110 churches in England and Northern Ireland and includes churches of all denominations and because of that we're used to people who receive the signal, as it were, from God, in different ways. For some it can be a great sense of peace; for others it can be a pictorial impression; for others it could be a visual image and for others it could be the audible word of God. Different people listen to God's voice in different ways, which is why it's important to get together with other people to learn. It's not one size fits all and we can't put God or the Holy Spirit in a box. He can constantly surprise us.

Speakers of Life is a way of encouraging each other and sharpen each other's prophetic gift. We aim to serve the Church and the churches in the city and to serve the city, region and the nation. It is really about taking all the good stuff that happens in churches, out of the walls of the churches and onto the streets and cities in order to bless people.

Heather: So when you take stuff on to the street and you share something with a stranger that you feel God has said to you, how do they react?

Mark: Very positively. We train people up and we say, "This is too good to keep inside your own church. You get out and bless people". That doesn't mean hitting people over the head with a Bible; it doesn't mean being rude; it doesn't mean pursuing people who are not interested, so you don't chase them down the street and say, "You've got to believe in what I believe in", it's nothing like that. It's going and being life and speaking life and having fun.

There's various things that we do, but one successful thing is called 'Treasure Hunting'. This has happened in different cities in the UK, where as a group we meet together and we have four categories, we have a person's name - so we ask God for people's names - and then we ask what they want prayer for. We might ask for particular features of the person, like what they're wearing. Then another category is anything unusual, in other words if it doesn't fit into the top three it goes in the bottom one. We combine our clues and then we go out looking for the 'Treasure'. The 'Treasure' are people. I'll give you a real life example.

In a group we had various clues: one was a lady carrying a polka dot, black and white, suitcase; and somebody else had the clue of a railway station; someone else had a clue of the phrase, "Always rains never sunshine's".

As a group we thought, we've got these clues, so where do we go to first? Obviously you would go to the railway station, so we walked to the railway station and we stood looking around. Within three or four minutes a lady walks past us with a black and white polka dot suitcase and she disappeared into, I think, WH Smiths. You don't run after people and disturb their daily lives, but we waited until she came out and we went up, very none threateningly, very friendly and said, "Can you help us with our treasure hunting?" and she said, "Yes, I like treasure hunting, what's the treasure?" And we would say, "Well, people are treasures, you're God's treasure." And at that, I would say 99 times out of 100, when people hear that they're God's treasure, they smile because to have strangers coming up to you and saying, "You're God's treasure" is very disarming. Then we would say, "We've come up to you because we have got these clues" and we would show the person the clues we have. This lady said, "Wow. The railway station and I'm carrying a black and white polka dot suitcase that is amazing!" Because they see the clues, they know we're not making it up. Then she read our clues and she started to cry. She pointed at "It always rains never sunshine's" and she said, "I have just used that very phrase three minutes ago". She had a particular stressful situation with her partner that she was separating from after 17 years. It got so bad and that was their last farewell and she said, "I just said to anybody who is listening and even God, everything seems to go wrong, it always rains and never sunshine's in my life." She said, "I didn't know anybody was listening, let alone God". To cut a long story short we ended up praying with her. She said, "I'm leaving today knowing that somebody actually cares for me".

Heather: That's amazing.

Mark: It was probably three years ago. The emotion of that encounter stays with us and there are many stories like that. I'm thinking of another time where we had a picture of two ladies in pink jackets and then we had something to do with hip pain and they were near something like a coffee place. So we went to the coffee place and low and behold there were two ladies there with pink jackets. They were handing out leaflets and one of our ladies went up and showed them the clues and asked if there was anything relevant. She pointed and said, "I've got hip pain" and she said, "What do I do about this, this is amazing, how did you know?" We said, "We don't know, but God knows all about you and he wants to bless you today". She said, "Well I don't want this hip pain". And we said, "Well can we ask Jesus to help you?" So we made a little circle, very none religious, just very chilled and stood there with our eyes open, smiling and laughing and we said, "Jesus take the pain away. Hip be well in Jesus' name". Within 30 seconds she was completely pain free. She's had this bad hip problem for years and she said, "This is really freaking me out, in a good way. This is fantastic". She wanted to know more about Jesus and so we were be able to tell her more.

Heather: What is your book about?

Mark: The book is about listening to the life of God and the love songs that he sings over us each day and during the night. It's about being aware of that and then speaking about other people. This book helps you to tune in to God. It talks about the history of Speakers of Life and what we do. It's about listening to God and speaking out that life to encourage and comfort other people. The chapters are what is prophecy? How do we receive it? Living a prophetic life style. I talk a lot about soaking or resting in God's presence. When we walk around our daily lives, we can't help but pass on that perfume of God because we've been soaking in his presence and it becomes a natural life style. The first four chapters are about getting all the tools; listening to God, being trained up and being full of his presence. There's also a chapter on Treasure Hunting. There's a chapter on dreams and Biblical dream interpretations.

I do dream classes and we have events in pubs. A lot of pubs like us to come, and people come and say, "I've got this dream" and we help them to interpret their dreams and tell them the love of God. We also put on our own events, what we might call 'Spiritual Fairs' from a Christian point of view. We would speak life to people and interpret their dreams and we do prophetic art, where we can get people to paint and draw and we interpret that. People can also just come and soak and just be. It's a great environment.

The last thing is how to nurture the prophetic and about finding you're calling and destiny in life, whether or not you believe in God. At some point in your life you're going to think, "Why am I on this planet?" and, "What's the purpose of me being on this planet?" It's at those moments that this book will help you to find out your God given calling and destiny. The fact that you are important, you are special and you can make a difference, not only in your own world, but in other people's worlds, for the better.

Heather: If people want to get in touch with Speakers of Life, how can they do that?

Mark: The easiest way is to contact me by email, speakersoflife.tic@hotmail.co.uk and we have a website, which is www.speakersoflife.org. You can find us on Facebook too.

You can buy Speakers of Life from Cross Rhythms Direct for £8.54.