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. All right, welcome in. I'm not gonna tell you who my co-host is today.
I'm gonna give you some interesting facts listeners, and you've gotta be able to guess who this person is. All right, so this person is a New York Mets fan. This person is my go-to for restaurants in Orange County. This person's a foodie.
This person, what else can I say about this person? Good looking. Oh, good looking. Modernly good looking.
This person, let's see, what else do we know about you? I feel like we're good. This person sounds like this. Yeah, I sound like this.
All right, it's Dallas. Dallas people. What's up? I know about it.
What's happening? We did not know we were doing that intro, but yeah, it's great. New York Mets are coming to town. Are they?
You know who cares about that? Me. Yeah, it's pretty much it. It's also been, are they playing at the big A, or are they playing at the daughter stadium?
I think they're playing at all of them. We're going to Angel Stadium to watch them next weekend, and then there will be in San Diego at the end of August. Oh, I'm so happy for you. That's great, man.
It's always good to have something look forward to it. Yeah, even though my kids and angels fan. Yeah. Yeah.
Things to look forward to. Hey, I also know, things to look for, but things to look forward to. We're recording this on a Thursday afternoon. Yeah.
And you're about to teach this passage tonight on Thursday night. So we've just wrapped up our study through the book of Colossians. Next week, we're beginning our brand new series, How to Pray Like Jesus, or Senior Pastor, Your Guy Grew's Back. We can't wait to launch that with you.
And so tell us what we're talking about only on Thursday night about this weekend. Yeah, it's our church verse. Yeah, I think that there's something special about walking around the lake. I spent some time this week walking around our lake because you see all the rocks, all the church verses.
How many laps did you do? It's not a massive one. It's not a massive one. So when you say time, meaning like one slow walk.
OK, great. That's what you were doing. All right. I thought you were just lost.
No, no, no. Just walking in here. It turns only. Yeah.
NASCAR joke. But there's something about legacy and what got us down. You look at some of these verses. You remember some of the story.
You have been here for a couple of them. And just to see how God uses this verse. And you open it up and read it. And like, how are you going to use it this year?
Totally. And spending a lot of time in it. You're just just going to do this to Empire. Men just continues to stick out to me because right after this, we're going into a brand new series.
It's rare. Colossians ended with prayer. So it's three weeks of beautiful prayer. I'm excited to share with your community.
Yeah, you're so right. It's beautiful, because we believe that God stands outside of time. And so He sees this moment in the next 12 months with simultaneous absolute clarity. And we do see that time and time again.
Through His Word, through the church verses that's not just like some random throw a bunch of verses on the board. People may ask like, how do we get our church verse? It's real happens during an elderly treat but there's amongst other things a lot of time with just consecration and prayer. God, what do you want to say to our community this year through your word and with such beauty you're able to look back.
Okay, that's totally why that made sense. That's totally it. We could have known that at the time. So I love that you're highlighting that because you never know and we can't wait to see how God is going to use his word in a unique way, particularly this church versus you.
I'm excited for you to teach it tonight on Thursday night, man. So good. Let's get it. I can't wait.
Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to jump in. We'll start with our, excuse me, our lean in question.
And then we will read the church verse in its entirety. It's Romans 12, 10 through 12, Romans 12, 10 through 12. So you got to lean in, remember the lean in just to get your group talking and chatting here for the beginning. It is what would you say are the essential, essential for a healthy family?
What would you say are the essentials for a healthy family? Mm hmm. We got buddy for us. It's rhythms like we're establishing rhythms.
Hey, this is what we do on this day, like Wednesdays when we do soccer practice, we come home, we eat the meal together. We have a certain amount of times a week that we really save and savor for our, our family time. We do fun things together. We do them as a like last weekend.
We got away as a family. Yeah. It's parenting in a different place in my season of life. Just establishing those rhythms.
We're going to church together. We pray every night together. I really think those consistent rhythms is one of the things for us as a family. Yeah, that's awesome.
That's great. And so lead your group to that discussion, you know, and you might want to highlight, I think most families would probably say the same, great communication, fun. But what are the things maybe that might be unique for your family? It's like, hey, this is something that's been unique for us, a tradition or something that we've elevated to just keep us on the same page, on the growing together as a family.
And so why are we asking that question? Because those essentials or you could say like the values, they create the environment by which your family grows and thrives. And so it's the same way, not only in our new curial family, but in our spiritual family, and the family and family of God that there are elements that are key. That's right.
So we're going to look at some of those key elements through this really jam-packed verse two, two verses. There are so many things in here. In fact, your look down says Paul notes the instructions, eight instructions in this passage. And so you look down, it's just simply this.
And write it down. What are those eight instructions? What are those eight things? What are they?
Why are they necessary? What do you learn about them? Note them first and then what do you learn? Why do you think Paul included those?
Why are they necessary? So I'll read it and then we'll highlight what those are. So Romans 10, excuse, Romans 12, 10 through 12, it says this, Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not lack diligence and zeal. Be fervent in the spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope.
Be patient in affliction and be persistent in prayer. All right. Did you get all eight of them down? So what do you got?
I got all eight. Let's see. We got love one another. Honor.
Honor one another. Honor. That's two. Don't lack diligence.
Fervent in the spirit. Uh-huh. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope.
And be patient in affliction. Persistent prayer. And persistent in prayer. We did it.
That's awesome. Wait. That's all it is. So what do we learn about them?
What's the correlation? Why do we think those are necessary? What do we learn about those eight essentials from the passage? I think with the when you do the lean in question, you know, you're talking about family values.
So it's us being the church. But I think for some of these, they kind of go together. Mm. Love and honor go together.
Don't lack diligence. But be fervent and zeal those go together. Rejoice in patience and affliction those go together. So just seeing it's a well-rounded family.
That's right. And I love that there's, um, there's realism in these things too, because I love one another deeply showing honor. I mean, this implies what that there's going to be situations where it might be difficult. Like we're being in it's not saying, hey, this is going to be so easy.
Yeah. There's no problem. You know, love is just going to overflow. I don't know why I'm even mentioning it, but you know, just in case it's remote.
No, this is like, because this is the value sets and in community, things can get difficult. Things can get hard. It can be in your life group. Things can get hard.
So I think there's a right size reality of the difficulties that could come. Rejoice in in hope. And it's, and it doesn't say like, you know, in case affliction comes. It's like very matter of fact, be patient in affliction.
Wait, hold on a second. We're talking about that part of it. Like what's going on here? Um, and then persistent prayer, right?
Like prayer undergirds the entire thing. Next week, we'll we start our how to pre like Jesus series, such a key part that really bonds it together for the bond of the spirit. Yeah. Yeah.
What else? What else do you want to call out? I would say if a group you were doing all of these really well, you would have a really healthy life group. Yeah.
Um, but it's that idea. We do this in new leader train that your group comes out of rooted and you, you want to do like, I'm going to read the Bible on a week. Yeah. You know, you have all these, we're going to do every serve event that you could possibly think of every single week.
And that's what you think. And then disillusionment hits. And it's in the disillusionment that you need to lean in and have possibly hard conversations where you might need to love one another, like to honor one another, you might need to be patient, you might need to be persistent prayer, you might need to serve the other person that in the life of your group, it's not just your group doing this, but it's individuals doing this and seeing how that flushes out and produces health of the family. Yeah.
Yeah. And that do not lack diligence, right? Even in my life, we're coming through the summer months and we didn't need very much to the summer because I traveled everything else. And I'm like, okay, diligence, it's time to be intentional.
It's time to regather here. It's time to get some things that get scheduled and get back on back on and together, too. So there's so much that we could pull out of this. It's a very passage.
All right. So then we moved to the lookout section, a couple of questions here if you kick around. What does it look like when people are part of a healthy community? Where have you seen it?
What are the barriers that people face from either entering in or living through healthy community? So it keeps people from healthy community. And then what are the barriers of like actually living it out once you once you found that so many things that you can rip out in your group, right? So many different areas.
So yeah, anything stands out to you of how much to leave that or response to those questions? I mean, keeping people to look out like there's so many, so many things. So immediately when I was thinking through this passage, I was like, where are people going to find this family? Like, and a lot of people are really into a run club right now.
I've seen that. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah. So many people.
Yeah. And for me, I look at run club and like, I don't run. That's a barrier. Yeah.
So I want to be a part of that. I don't want to. I don't want to run. Yeah.
Like, it looks really cool, though, seeing everybody together. I'm so cool. It's so bad. But I don't want to actually run.
Yeah. So like that for me, that would be a barrier. You can join my run club, Rob. It's just me, myself, and I.
That's it. You can do it. We can share an air pod and everything. It'd be fantastic.
Yeah. Yeah. That's it though, right? Or maybe sometimes people even have an idealistic view of community.
Yeah. And it's like, well, it's the church, right? So everybody, same value set. It's going to be perfect.
Everything's great. And then you come to find out. Oh, actually, no surprise, because I'm broken. Other people are broken.
And it's often that point of what do we do when your expectations are met? Yeah. You can hit the record and eject or you can right size your expectations and you could push through be patient in affliction and then the health is on the other side. Yeah.
Other side of that. So as I was prepping for this, I went to wise council to can be sure. Yeah. Never heard of them.
Was was ran into them as our senior as our pastor. Emeritus. Everybody's sure he's also ran into him and he said, Hey, what's the next time you're teaching? I told him told him the passage and then he started grilling me like, Hey, what does it mean to be patient affliction?
Oh, and I started talking and he said, no, you can stop. Yeah. You got it wrong. Yeah.
He's like, that's what you need to go read Roman five. Oh, yeah. You read Roman five about patients and affliction. Yes.
When affliction hits that we're patient, we invite Jesus in. We have endurance endurance produces character character produces hope. Right. And I was just everything that I needed to understand what patients and affliction really is so good.
And awesome. I would find that my show up in your message tonight too. In my Oh, see 99. Yeah.
So good. Yeah. Great guy. So then in the look in it's this.
So looking back at the eight instructions, eight instructions, you've run down, you've numbered them one through eight, you've taken some notes about them. So not really easy from this point, right? Okay. Talk about in your group.
All right. Which ones stand out to you? What's the one that you need to hold on to and why? Yeah.
And man, you can go so many different places in that and pray over each person, even as they cite what that thing is and pray, yeah, I pray for this person that you would do this thing and would you say different seasons that you might have thriving in this area and then in a different season, you might be thriving in a different. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think so.
I mean, obviously we want all of these things in our life. It's like, you know, it's not the fruits of the spirit. It's the fruit of the spirit, all these things together. And it's like this, all these things are together.
It's, you know, the integration of formation for sure. But there are moments where it's like, yeah, I mean, this season, I need this. I'm going through something. I need to be reminded of hope.
There's a conflict. I need to be reminded about love. I need always to guard myself in prayer. But I think like as I pray for myself and for our group leaders to, you know, the season that we're in, that's always a catch for race with the cultural moment that we're in and everything that's happening in our world and in our nation and it's going to ramp up more.
We're in an election cycle. There's going to be lots of opportunities for disunity and discussion around certain things. But just that man, love one another deeply show honor, love deeply and show honor, even when you disagree, have humility and grace and how you hold your thoughts and opinions about things. Of course, pointing to the truth of God's word, but not for taking like the value set of existing and healthy community.
That's one for me. I think in the group setting to a leader, you can challenge your group as, Hey, we don't just do this in group. Okay, it's easier to probably love the people in your group. Is to love the people outside of your group.
Yeah. So the challenge is, Hey, how can we do this with every person that we encounter? That's right. And you didn't beat the church even when we're not in the church.
Yeah, that's good. Yeah. It's right. Yeah.
It's not just the Christian ethic of existing and Christian community. Yeah. It's beyond that. And if you if you read the continuing of the passage, I mean, Paul talks about if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he's thirsty, give him something to drink for in doing so, you'll be reaping fiery clothes on.
It's this idea of not just those that you agree with, but those that are opposed to you as well. So that's really good. I'm glad you called it out. Awesome, dude.
You're going to preach it up tonight. Preach it. That's fantastic. I would be there, but my daughter invited me to hang out with her friends, which is incredible and go see Twisters.
So I've heard so too. I'm going to do that. I just don't do the 4D one and you got hit with a block of wood. The plank in his eye.
That's fantastic. All right, you guys, this can be a great weekend. Looking at the church verse and then again, reminder the next weekend, we begin that series, how to pray like Jesus, a senior pastor, Eric Geiger is going to be back. And then shortly after that, life group leaders, you should have already received an invite to our equipment Wednesday, August 14th.
We'd love to see every single one of you there. Hey, just a quick note on that. It's been in our leader emails. Life group leaders, we love you.
And we know that many of you serve in multiple capacities. You're a guest service, you're a kids, you're an outreach team. And so if you're a life group leader, that serves a multiple roles, right, roles, during a quip, we encourage you to go to that other ministry breakout. Go to that other ministry's breakout.
If you're a life group leader, and this is the thing that you do, and we love that. This is the thing that you do, then we've got a specific breakout for you as well. But make sure that you are super that we'd love to plan accordingly to serve you well that night on August 14th. All right, guys, thanks for your time.
We'll see you later.