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Your support of the ministry at Mariner's equips us to reach our world with the hope of Jesus and serve those around us in His name. Thanks for your generosity and God bless you. Welcome to the Mariner's 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.
Well, we're so glad that you joined us for this week's Life Group Leader Podcast and every week is helpful and resourceful, but we're especially glad that you're jumping in with us today as we are at the start of a new three week series titled Are You There God? This is going to be an amazing series where we take a look at the book of Esther. And you know, many have commented that, you know, scripture sometimes is hard for me to engage. I don't quite get it.
It is one of those books that is just jam fulfilled with ups and downs and twists and turns. And it's a really beautiful, complex story that I am just really looking forward to you as a Life Group Leader having the opportunity to unpack with your group. I should say this for the start too. My name is John.
This is not Jared, but I get a chance to host today. And I have so loved this resource and hope that you have as well as a Life Group Leader. We're looking forward to beginning this journey, this new series through the book of Esther. So we've got Jeremy here as always.
Jeremy, walk us through a little bit just to set up some things we should know as Life Group Leaders as we begin this new series. Yeah, John, this, this little mini series, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Like you said, for leaders, it's going to be something different. It will change your pace coming off weeks and weeks of looking at the different teachings of Jesus.
And kind of before we get into our long summer series, we're doing this little book of Esther. And really what we want out of this first week is prayerful reflection for our groups. That Esther is a really sobering yet inspiring story. And you mentioned people engaging with scripture.
What's so great about the book of Esther is that this is how so many of us, probably most of us, it really experienced God's activity. There's no voice from a burning bush. No miraculous sign or vision from heaven. But it's seeking wisdom and boldness in our earthly circumstances and relying on the council of trusted people around us and just kind of paying attention to the opportunities that we have and really looking to make the most of them.
People may have heard before and I'm sure it'll be in the sermon right off the bat. But the book of Esther is unique in that it doesn't mention the name of God at any point. And this is a literary device to kind of show us that just because the Lord is silent does not mean he's absent. He's always working kind of behind the scenes so often.
And typically through that just what appear to be normal circumstances in our lives. So this is, it's going to have some pretty outrageous extreme situations. But in a lot of ways, I think people are going to see this is actually very relatable. Even though I might not live in this, obviously the same time period, et cetera.
But it's a very relatable story in that God's just kind of working behind the scenes. That's right. And I love that it's relatable. It's honest.
It's very thoughtful and intentional as all of scripture is absolutely. We all have the desire. We want to learn to hear God's voice and we believe primarily and principally that God speaks through his word. Even a book like Esther, all of scripture is God-breat.
It's useful for us. Like Esther, as you mentioned, where God is mentioned by name, begs the question, okay, in my life, sometimes God feels silent. I pray I don't hear him. The theme seems to be fatalistic.
Does the Bible address that? And yes, it does. It's in pretty beautiful and profound ways. Yeah, that's a great point.
And that's something that I would really encourage leaders to do as they prepare for this week in particular. One of the things we want to help people do is kind of think through their own life stories of just maybe they're in a season right now, maybe especially with the past 18 months or so with everything we've experienced socially and politically and economically and with COVID and all those different things. But certainly people have been asking the questions. If never before in their lives, there's certainly people who have been asking the question lately like, how are you there?
And times where it's really just hard to figure out maybe even hear conflicting opinions or voices but thinking through our own life story of when have I really wondered? Like, has God there, if he is real, if he is there, does he care? Is my life insignificant? You know, there's just, there's a lot to think about and a lot to relate to and we really want to help people get to that point this week of asking those questions of when have you experienced that seeming silence or absence of God believing that he's always there.
But there's those times where we either ask, is this really true or at least we feel like it feels like you don't care or it feels like you've gone away. So yeah, I think thinking through that as a leader is going to be kind of a first step in helping set that tone for that. That's great. That's great.
Yeah, that's a great reminder that as leaders we set the tone with the not only the stories that we share personally but how we intake and listen well to the stories that are being shared. Knowing that not every story has to have a nice tightly wrapped bow on the end of it. But it's in the process of sharing where actually God comes and does some of his most beautiful work. So knowing that every book has got a different emphasis or maybe even a quality to its genre.
What would you say might be helpful tips for leaders to know as they look at leading through the book of Esther? Yeah, so you pointed out that not all stories have a nice neat bow. Esther, by God's grace and design it does. But this week is a group where only this is a narrative.
So this is going to be different to teach through for some leaders especially. So remember this is a story. It's going to be descriptive, not prescriptive necessarily. And what I mean is that it's describing events, not providing specific teaching, like explicit teaching.
It's more just kind of an example of here's a person who is faithful and how God worked in their lives. So this week we're not going to get to the end of the story. We're going to look at the first five chapters of the book of Esther and really kind of introduce all the key characters, set a lot of tension. So we're going to be covering a lot of ground.
So a couple of things I would encourage people to do is if you can sit down and just read through the story, it's just 10 chapters but it's a quick read. It reads just like classic literature. It's just a beautiful, often funny, ironic, full of all kinds of intrigue and mystery. It's a great story.
This week we're going to cover the first half. But what we want to remember is that like you said, this is scripture. It's not just a story. It's not just a fairy tale.
And actually a lot of these events up front especially but really throughout the book are pretty traumatic. And it's easy for us to gloss over this and make it kind of the Disney princess version of a Bible story. So really put yourself into the shoes of the different characters, Esther and Mordecai and some of the people imagining, okay, real human emotions, real human situations. What would it have been like to kind of be living through some of these experiences?
Yeah, living through some pretty unbelievable circumstances in their present day but also if you trace it back to the history of the Jewish people, the people that were familiar with suffering and exile and having a closeness and a nearness to God but that in seasons sensing like that closeless and that nearness was absent. Though we know that he's never absent, that he's always there. He's always working. But when we look at our everyday circumstances, sometimes there is that tension of, you know, I used to be a youth pastor and I remember the classic, the youth retreats.
I love those youth retreats, those mountain top experiences where we're so close to God and we come down the mountain and then we hit the realities of life and it seems like, well, actually what happened? And you know, I love those mountain top experiences but actually we're not designed to live for those, we're designed to live from those. And it's actually in the middle of difficulty and where we feel trials and we feel the circumstances of life that are crushing down on us where in a unique way God uses those out of his goodness and a sovereignty to draw us closer and closer to him. But that's not an easy process.
That's not an easy process because Jesus followers, we have a high view of suffering because we believe that suffering actually, in a way God uses that and he fosters hope within us. And so we have a different view and approach of it but we don't make light of the present sufferings that we experience. We don't pass over them. We certainly don't belittle one another for the things that we face.
And so again, in your groups, this is a great opportunity to not only share with vulnerability but to listen really well to the stories that are going to be shared. Yeah, that's a great point. And this story, really, this week, these first five chapters especially, can really help open that up in our groups because this isn't the exact opposite of the mountaintop experience. This is like hitting rock bottom after hitting rock bottom after hitting rock bottom.
You mentioned Israel's history and they've been exiled. That kingdom has now been conquered by another pagan empire. She, Esther, is an orphan who's then taken from her cousin who raised her after losing both of her parents. It's just one thing after another, just keeps piling up.
But we see how in the midst of all of this and surely had to be wondering from the stories that she had heard from Mordecai or whomever, what must God, the God of Israel, will be doing. Because if anything, it looks like the God of our enemies seems to be showing favor to the people over and against us. But what we do see in Esther, though we don't see any explicit teaching on spiritual practices or the name of God, we do see prayer implied through mourning and fasting. There's several mentions of sat cloth and ashes and not eating for a certain period of time and people weeping and lamenting.
And so what's implied there is that they're crying out to God for deliverance. And so that's really kind of step one for our groups this week is as we identify those moments in our life, either past or present, take time just to pray over those things that we're aware of. And there's prompts both personally in the kind of the looking at our own lives. And then as you wrap up and you look out in the world, there's prompts for how we can pray for our neighborhoods and community and county or state or nation or world.
Like for people who aren't experiencing God's activity, they don't recognize it, they're desperate for it. How can we intercede on their behalf for the people in our group and the people kind of around us. So we want to follow that example that we see in Esther of be honest about what's happening and then just take that before God in prayer. And we're going to have a couple more weeks to begin unpacking that as a group and individuals.
But this week, just identify those things relate to one another and cry out to God on behalf of one another and with one another. And the key phrase that you said, right? Pray with honesty and vulnerability. That's what God invites us into.
Our prayers are not just empty, hollow reflections of what we think may happen or if the prayers are actually directly going anywhere. Psalms, right? A great book. 70% of Psalms are Psalms of lament.
Where are you God? It seems like you're silent. You're far off. And it is in that crying out where actually our relationship with him is could be fostered, can be fueled and uniquely can draw close to us even during difficulty.
So I love that you're hitting on that. So this week, this is going to be a great start to the series. We encourage you guys as Jeremy said, read through the whole book of Esther, even prior to your first group meeting, get familiar with the passage. There is a lot to be read this week in your conversation.
So be creative about how you read the passages, break that up, take it in turn, and then certainly lean into that spiritual practice of prayer, knowing that God wants to meet you in that place of honesty with his hope and with his comfort. So we're really believing that God's going to use you and speak powerfully through you as you host these conversations with your life group. So we're praying for you. We can't wait to pick up the series with you.
And we'll be back here same time next week, right, Jeremy? We're going to do it. That's it week two. That's awesome.
All right, you guys, go for it. Have a great time with your groups this week.