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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 you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. We're so glad that you're here for us for week two of our series which is entitled Are You There God.
Last week was just an amazing time to look at the book of Esther, the first half of the book of Esther, in all of its complexities, its twists and turns, its ups and downs, mostly downs to be honest at this point. And I hope that it generated a great conversation of vulnerability within your groups to acknowledge what we all know to be true. The circumstances of life often can be confusing. There can be great difficulty and trials that we all face.
And it's often during these times where we wonder the great questions of why suffering and where is God when He seems to be silent. And many of us have stories where we've been on the other side of that. We've seen God do great things. And many of us are still in the middle of these stories and are waiting and long expecting to see hope revealed.
But the great thing is that God is there in the middle of all things. And so as we turn the corner here to the second book of Esther, excuse me, to the second half of Esther, our hope again is that this is just going to generate great conversation and this is where you guys have just a great action within your group. So Jeremy, why don't you kick us off here. We're going for the second half of this book and lead us through, as you always do, so brilliantly what we need to know and how we can navigate this conversation within our groups this week.
John, thanks, man. This book, this little mini series here, I had so much fun working with the team to put it together. And so I really pray that groups really get as much out of it. It's just such a different book that I'm really hoping that the rhythm of just kind of shifting into this narrative, this is just such an epic story, really causes us to kind of step back and reflect on our own relationships with God.
And last week, like you pointed out, it was kind of all the lows. We were setting all the tension, kind of how things came to be where they were, and then we left the story in the middle. And this week we get to cover the second half of the book of Esther. And then in our third week, we'll kind of jump back just to look at a main point and tie it all together.
So this week, we really want to look at the hope and the celebration that we have individually and that the Jewish people get to have in the book of Esther through this great reversal. We see God work. Everything seemed to be going wrong. Like everything that could possibly go wrong was going wrong.
And then we see him intervene in a way that only God can. If this wasn't a book of the Bible, it would, I mean, it reads almost like a Shakespearean play, but almost in a way that's outrageous. It's just everything, though all the little loose ends are tied together so neatly. And the way that we can see where if you've been asking the question, God, are you there?
Are you there, God? That by the end of the story, there's no mistaking that God has been present and have a plan. And he chose to work through Esther and Mordecai in the story. So this week, we really want to look at that hope and that celebration.
Yeah, and I love the point that you just made to that God chose to work through them. That it was his willingness, his sovereignty to work through, which surprise, surprise, just like you and I, very broken humans. This is not a picture, Esther is not a picture of moral perfection. This is not a picture of people who got everything right and who abandoned all the commandments.
I mean, you read the book, there really is a lot of moral ambiguity. There's lots of drinking. There's lots of other things. There's lots of verd, there's lots of violation of God's decrees and his commandments.
And again, this is two people that are in exile, but yet still seemingly through that God uses their brokenness, their circumstances for their greatest good, which is so, so good. Because sometimes when I go through difficulties, I wonder, is this my lack of faith? Is this my sin? Is this circumstantial?
Do I deserve this? Is God punishing me? Is this because I did something? And you know, yeah, sometimes our choices do lead us into destruction.
Sometimes there are things in life that are circumstantial, but the great thing, again, as we keep saying, this God is present through it all, not because of our perfection, because of his perfection. And so what we see in the second half, I think the sermon title this week is a great reversal. It's something along those lines of things that we saw that went wrong and conflicting. God actually goes and redeems and flips all of them on their head, which is beautiful.
I just love that. Yeah, he reverses their situations and renews all these things. And we see celebration. Like we left last week talking about how prayer was implicit in the morning and the sackcloth and ashes and crying out and weeping before God.
But by the end, we're going to see that it's not just the enemies of the empire. It's not just them having these parties, but by the end, the Jewish people themselves are celebrating and set up really a feast that they continue annually, even to the present day. And then in February, it was when they celebrated this feast of Purim. So it's still something that's recognized to this day as a great moment of God's provision in the darkest of times and really in an unexpected way.
So hopefully leaders found the scripture being broken up. There's some big portions of scripture. Hopefully they found it helpful to read a portion of scripture and then ask a question. But again, this week, be familiar with the whole story and put yourselves in the shoes of the people, the different characters.
And really, this week as leaders prepare, we want to encourage people to have fun. You mentioned there's a lot of moral ambiguity. Like should we celebrate some of the mass violence at the end or the death of an enemy or this and that. But what we see is that in the Jewish tradition, this story is one of tremendous celebration because of the way God saved people from really what was just a hopeless moment of despair turned into a tremendous blessing and victory.
That's right. That's so good. And that practice of celebration is so key. It's so key.
That the joy of the Lord is our strength. And when we often look at different spiritual practices, sometimes we're a little bit more measurable, my devotion, my prayer life, a fasting, but celebration sometimes is one of those that I think can be taken for granted. And just a few weeks ago, we did a life group leader gathering where we talked about the power of celebration and how it's something that God invites us into. I love this.
There's a quote from Richard Foster, the celebration of celebration of discipline where he said, celebration brings joy into life and joy makes us strong. Scripture tells us that the joy of the Lord is our strength and we cannot continue long in anything without it. And so we had a great exercise just looking back at them last year, the pandemic and seeing these timelines, but still seeing where God was present and filling our hearts with gratitude, where we saw him work, even through difficult situations. And so this is a great moment for you and your groups to be intentional about celebration.
You know, of course, we've got Fourth of July just around the corner. And you may think about me, maybe during that weekend, that could be a special time to gather and even invite others into your gatherings just to have fun and celebrate what God has done in and through during this last season. Yeah, that's a, so there's a, there's a little note for leaders that if they do kind of that icebreaker activity, this week is just sort of like kind of a rapid fire style question, just to kind of get to know different personalities. And there's a note that could get lost there in the commentary to be thinking ahead, like, yeah, if you have some neighbors or you just want to kind of take that moment to rest Fourth of July, weekend, whenever your group typically meets, like pay attention to these things.
And if someone mentions that they enjoy hosting or baking or whatever, like take this opportunity to plan those things specifically this week as we celebrate, you know, probably not gathering around the barbecue or whatever. But we do want to think back on either the stories that people shared last week. So if as a leader, if you took kind of notes, either mental notes or little notes of the stories that people shared from where they maybe wondered, God, are you there? Like what's going on when it was hard to see and trust maybe that God was at work?
This week we want to look at those kind of those turning points. Like we see in the Book of Esther, we see that through a series of events that the fortune of really her own life and the people around her were changed because of the action that she took that was part of God's will for her life and that he wanted to work in and through her. And so asking those questions of what were those turning points in my own life and sharing those and celebrating those together as a group. And for those of us who maybe feel like I'm in that season right now, I haven't had the turning point yet to not be ashamed to share that honestly.
And as a leader, I encourage people to recognize like maybe you're still in the middle of that season of wondering, are you there, God? But know that God works all things together for the good of those who love them and are called according to his purposes. That doesn't mean all things are good or very real and painful things that happen in our lives. But he does work through all of those things for his good purposes.
So we can look forward with hope and anticipation of knowing that God will ultimately make things right. That's so good. That is so good. Absolutely.
And the way that we share our stories can generate that kind of hope and faith within others within our groups. And so I love that. I think back to Rooted for many of us that have been through it, that moment that our group usually sticks and we know that we're going to go on is when we're hearing each other's stories. And it's a shame that sometimes we take for granted that regular practice.
Man, let's revisit that. I want to hear it again. Like tell me your faith, Drew, tell me what God is doing right now. Let's celebrate what he's saying because it really is through celebration that we can find the vibrancy and its celebration, not in our circumstances, but in the celebration that ultimately points to Jesus, his cross, his resurrection, he's a living hope within us.
So we have much to celebrate. All right, guys. Well, go for it for week two for Are You There? God, we're praying for you this week.
Again, believe in that God wants to use you as you shepherd and care for your groups to change and disciple not only your groups, but also your communities.