Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. It's the most wonderful time of the year. Welcome back, Life Group leaders.
It's Christmas, how insane is this? That was so surprising, I love that you started that way. I just, the Christmas cheer, you know what I noticed this year? I think people say it every year, but for some reason I'm saying it now this year, I think that people decorated their houses way earlier this year than ever before, did you two?
I was gonna say exactly that. I started putting my decorations up, pulled out my Christmas records and stuff. Yes, records, final records. Pull them out right after Halloween.
Like November 1st, I was getting up on the roof, pulling out the Christmas records. So I got some lights up early, I just did the wreaths this weekend, but yeah. I did the same thing. I never do, okay, that's exactly what I thought.
I'm like, this has been a hard run. And I think people need the light and the joy of Christmas more than ever. And I'm the Grinch that does not want to put anything on my house or hear the music until after Thanksgiving. I broke my own rule this year.
Yeah, same. I got my records out as well. Give me one record recommendation. What do I need to buy this year?
Okay, so the greatest Christmas record of all time is a Charlie Brown Christmas. Of course, already have it. So that's the best. It's not on vinyl yet, but shameless plug for Mariners Worship has a new digital album, right?
I did try to get it on vinyl. I asked everybody involved in that project and they said it takes an entire year to get vinyl pressed because there's like some shortage. Yeah, supply chain backups are, it's a big deal this year. Yeah, in everything.
And so I said, great. Well, now I'm on record saying put my order in now so that next year I can celebrate with you guys. All right, that's enough of that. I hope leaders you guys are enjoying this Christmas season as well.
I know that this series is good for my heart, it is good for my soul. And so the overarching picture of week two, the second message from an angel, don't be afraid, you can have great joy. Yeah, so this week we're not gonna go chronological. We're gonna do Joseph hearing from an angel next week in week three, but in week two, we're gonna stay with the Gospel of Luke.
So last week we looked at Luke chapter one and the message to Mary. And now baby Jesus has been born. And if you were like me and you grew up in a household where like I grew up memorizing this as a little kid and you would recite it at Christmas Eve dinner and all that kind of stuff, this is the Christmas passage where the angel appears to the shepherds. Well, just like in the Charlie Brown special that I mentioned.
I was just gonna make that comment. Sweet Linus comes to mind. That's right, I actually linked that and we use that as an illustration last year. We used the same passage from last year, the Christmas passage in Luke two.
And but this year rather than focusing on peace, we focused on peace last year. This year we're focusing on the good news of great joy and that they received a message from the messengers, angels, literally means messengers. And so the shepherds received this totally unexpected news to totally unexpected people, the shepherds and at first they're terrified, right? And who wouldn't be if you're seeing this?
But then the text is just so clear that they were just overflowing with joy. They were so excited to rush and go see Mary and Joseph and find the baby. And then after they see baby Jesus and worship him, they go and they tell everybody in town, like they had received the good news, the gospel. Like the king was finally here and they couldn't stop talking about it.
And so that's gonna be our emphasis for this week. What I love about this passage is what I love most about the Philippians two passage that just talks about Jesus not hanging onto his position at the right hand of God as something to cling to, but instead he came and was born to be like us, right? And when you continue reading that passage, the contrast that is what makes it so beautiful, the good news is so beautiful because they live in a world surrounded with a lot of bad news. Life is really, really hard, which feels really similar to so many of our lives today.
Life feels really difficult. And so for most people, any good news is welcomed news. Do you know what I'm saying? Absolutely.
Did you ever see any of the stuff that John Krasinski did during the whole quarantine? He had a thing called some good news because we all needed some good news, right? I've started following all kinds of social media accounts that are just that are just good news into my Instagram feed to give me, I don't know, maybe I'm getting more emotional as a dad a little later in life. But yeah, I need that good news.
And this is the best news, like this is capital. Good news, you know? And so even as life groups, one of our encouragement to you as you're thinking about how to make this passage feel fresh and new because we've all heard this passage a whole lot, we've actually discussed it as groups before like Jeremy mentioned. You know, if you were here the weekend after Thanksgiving and you were part of the Irvine or North Irvine congregations, you heard Steve teach on a passage from Zachariah that I've never heard a teaching on before, this is the opposite, right?
Luke too is a passage we've all heard. And so Jeremy, is there, how can we hear it fresh? How can we approach this thing with new eyes and new ears, perhaps even some new understanding that might just enhance our group discussion this week? Yeah, well, one of the things that I try to encourage in the leader guide is for leaders and for group members to think about, one, ask yourself that question.
How many times have I heard this story? And what does it really mean for the gospel to be good news for me today? Not just do I know the Christmas story. And I don't mean this in any way to downplay the ultimate good news of our eternal salvation and being made right with God.
But what does that look like very practically for us in our day-to-day lives at the end of 2021? What does that look like for this to be good news? And to think about where in my life do I need to be reminded that God can be completely trusted? Because one of the things that makes this such good news, it was certainly surprising.
But at the same time, God had been promising this. Through the prophets, he had been promising that this day would someday come. It wasn't gonna look exactly like people expected, but he's been promising and he proved himself faithful. And we see that with the shepherds.
They run and one of the lines is that they found everything exactly as it had been described as on by the angels. And so one of the ways to think about this from a fresh perspective is to think about where do I need to be reminded that God can be completely trusted and that everything he says is true. And that doesn't have to relate directly to this Christmas season, but just think, where do I need to know that I can trust God? It could even be a great exercise as a group to say, where are some places in your life where you felt like God made a promise, right?
And I'm kind of doing that in air quotes because there are sort of scriptural promises. There's like promises of identity. There's promises of who God is. Where have you felt God made a promise or pointed you towards a scriptural promise?
And he has delivered on that promise because what that does is it reminds us, man, what God says is real, God does what he says he's going to do. He is the single bat's a thousand, when he makes a promise, he delivers on that promise. And when I'm hearing you say, Jeremy, is when we can think about how promises have been delivered in our own life, meaning that they've come to fruition or completion or something like that, that allows us to hear the promise of good news and to actually feel like good news. Is that right?
Yeah, absolutely. I heard just this past week the idea that in the Hebrew and the Jewish tradition, the word for praise and remembering that those root words are similar, that ultimately are praise for God, the way we give glory to God is rooted in remembering the things that he's done for us. And so that's a perfect application there. Oh, I love that.
I had never heard that before. It reminds me of just how God always says, I am the God of the Father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, right? He's always saying, remember the story, like remember of where we've been, spanning generations. That's the promise I made to them.
And it really does, Jesus is the fulfillment of the law. He's the fulfillment of all of those beautiful promises that God gave. And so when we hear the good news that Jesus is born unto us, a promise given to these shepherds, my gosh, that's a gift that not only do we praise, but we remember. Now in this leader guide, we also have one of our rhythms that we're going to be practicing this week.
And so Jeremy, why don't you just talk to us about this rhythm of sharing our story? Yeah, so after we kind of look at the gospel and how it applies to our lives right now, as we look up and look at God's, the relevance of God's word in the world, we want to think about like the shepherd's model for us and in this passage, how does Jesus give me great joy? How has God proven his faithfulness? How have I experienced the truthfulness of God's word?
And so a lot of times we think of sharing, sharing your story as kind of your big picture testimony over the course of your life. But one of the things we try to help people see both enruded and we want to remind people to these life group guides with this rhythm is that it's not just, it's absolutely the big picture of how God has saved you and brought you into his family, made you part of his kingdom, but also just in your day to day life. What does that ongoing faithfulness of God look like? How have you grown?
How have you seen God at work even recently? And learning how to talk about that just conversationally. So it's not, okay, I need to work up the courage to share my faith with somebody. I need to talk to this person about Jesus.
The easiest way to talk to someone about Jesus is to tell them what he's done in your own life. So when someone says like, hey, how are you doing? Most of our response is like really busy. And we say busy like a badge of honor.
Like it's a really good thing that I'm really busy. But when we say that we're really tired, right? So next time someone says, how are you doing? You can go, you know, God's been really good to me and my family this season.
Really? Well, let me tell you why. Like that's a really easy little entry point to just tell a story about what God has done in your life over the last month or several months, whatever it is. That just allows you to start sharing a story of what God is doing in your life today, right now.
I also want to just highlight a point here that, I know last week we talked about taking those invite cards and inviting people to the series, which feels like another very courageous thing to do. To go up to somebody in your family, perhaps, your neighborhood, your workplace, and then invite them to Christmas service. Yeah. There's a difference between inviting people to church and sharing your story.
Jimmy, you want to give us a little bit on that and I'll probably jump in there as well. Yeah, so I'm so glad you brought that up. And we touch on that. The very last line of the leader guide is a reminder about that.
At least the way I grew up, one of the easiest ways to kind of, I don't know, share my faith, so to speak. As a student, I grew up, I know our stories are a little bit different. I grew up in the church. And so I was constantly trying to bring all my friends to church with me because I had to be there.
And I believed it. So I wanted them, if I'm going to have to be there, I'm going to bring as many friends as possible. And I also wanted them to believe it. But the easiest thing to do in my mind was bring someone to church, bring them to a youth group activity or whatever, and let the preacher, let the professionals be the ones to share the gospel.
And I just bring them. But what I want to remind everyone that it's not just our responsibility. We've all been given the great commission to go and make disciples. But it's this week in particular, we're reminded that we have good news of great joy.
And so not in a way that we want to kill people into like, you should share the gospel, but invite people to experience worship in the big corporate setting, something that's beautiful. And then we get to celebrate weekly. But don't let that be a substitute for talking about what Jesus has done in your own life, personally, because most of us, we may be able to point to some big events, and God moves in those moments. But for many of us, if not most of us, there's also, or even more influential in our lives, was there was somebody who he said, there's something about their life that's different.
And when I found out what they believed about Jesus and saw how they walked faithfully, I wanted what they had. So leaders, an easy way to think about this is, everybody is very familiar. When you are given a gift that is cool, is exciting, it's memorable, it's meaningful in some way, you're gonna talk about it. Like people wanna talk about the things that excite them.
And we are given a gift in Christmas, that is the presence of God, it is the incarnation of Jesus, Him being born like us as a human. That is the great gift of Christmas. And so if that has been important and meaningful in your life, we talk about that. That's the kind of thing that we wanna celebrate and talk about.
So as leaders, I would just encourage your groups that this would be an easy thing for you to take a couple of minutes and just say, God has been really good, God is good in my life. Who might I take a minute and share something with? And I do find that in my own life, if I can put a name to who I'm gonna share my story with, that starts to make it way more personal. So there's identifying the story, but then that person, like just call out someone's name in your group that you wanna share something with, that may need a bit of encouragement and would be impacted in a positive way by hearing how God has been good and faithful and all that kind of stuff to you.
So with that in mind leaders, we are excited for you to dive into this week to conversation. I believe that if you approach this week of the forefront of your mind, that this is good news, that this is the best news, that Jesus is with us, that that will lead you into a really great, healthy conversation where you will praise God, keeping in mind that our praise is connecting to remembering what he has done in our life, and it also has a future implication too, that this world is not our home, but that eventually he will come again. How beautiful is that? So we're praying for you, and we look forward to seeing you next week in at church.
Take care.