Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practice the spiritual rhythms and changes the world together. Hello, elected leaders to the new edition of our podcast. This is Scott and I'm here with Esther and we are both the membership pastors if we have not met here at Irvine.
That's right. So I'll be the host for today and glad to have you Esther. Thank you. So, talk to me with you guys.
Talk about our next group discussions. So yeah, we were at week three of our Exodus series titled as part at C's in the Song of the Rescue. And I know Kenton Bishore is something that you deeply respect. I do.
Yeah. So we're so thankful to have him continue to be our teaching pastor. So let's lean right into our discussion for this week. Okay.
I love the first question. Once again, it goes right into it. Like, have you ever changed your mind about a big decision? What made you change and what was that like?
You want to go first Esther or I can go first. Yeah, go ahead. I'm really indecisive. You are?
Very indecisive. You do not come off as a leader. Good. My wife is very decisive.
Wow. And so a lot of little things like what to eat and with big decisions, I can make more of a decision. That's great. I guess for me, when I was looking at this question, there was a time, I told you before I think I went through many transitions in terms of work and ministry.
And that was a point when I was at one church for 16 years and serving as a worship pastor for many years, and God had called us out. But we didn't know a call to somewhere. And so there was an opportunity where I could work in the marketplace. I found this opportunity where I could be a web project manager, things like that, because I had some experience after graduate college.
But at that moment, it was one of those things where I could take this full time job, pretty good salary benefits, or go back into ministry at another church, local church setting for 15 hours, part time job with no benefits. We had mortgage payment, all of that, yeah, alones. And I remember it was that season where it was this one pastor. His name was Pastor Jerry Rupp of Long Beach.
He was just a random pastor's breakfast. And he had this message, all the pastors there, he said, you know guys, if this was a job I would acquit a long time ago, but this is not a job. This is a calling. And that's why I'm not going to quit.
And remember at that pastor's breakfast thinking, I was almost in tears because I was like, God, I need to hear that because I think I wanted to just entertain or think about this good job marketplace, but God had a calling on my life. I didn't want to compromise taking this job, even though it would have been more secure, more comfortable. So that's how I remember the change in the decision I made at that time. That's huge.
Yeah, mine's not as grand. And I'm sure you have a family. And so you think about what it means to actually live life here on this side of attorney, which means it comes with bills and taking care of people. So that's kind of a weighty, you know, a fork in the road.
I remember I, you know, college, at least, I don't know about now, but when I was in college, like going to college and making the right decision on a major felt like a lifelong decision. Like during my time, like there wasn't like people went into the occupations that were similar to their major. You know, nowadays it's not like you could be an English major and then you can go into, I don't know, engineering. And that's like totally okay nowadays as long as you have the training.
But for me, I changed my major five times in undergrad. Oh, yeah. And it wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted to do. I actually now looking back, I could see myself doing so many different things.
Yeah. And so I was, I went into a bio-only university as a business major because I wanted to do business like my dad and then I wanted to do philosophy and then I had a really awesome psychology professor and so I wanted to do psychology and then I later on wanted to produce like Christian conferences and concerts and so wanted to do communication and PR like public relations. And then the Lord, you know, he got a hold of me and just reminded me that I'm called to ministry. And so that's when I officially changed my major to Christian ministries, which has kind of led to me going to seminary, getting my masters and still 10 plus years later being in ministry.
So wow. That was kind of a big decision. And for me, yeah, I've stayed the same in that same field. Yeah.
Yeah. Wow. That was the journey that you've been on for some time. Yeah.
That's great. Well, let's look down into the passage and read the two passages that are here and I'll read that first section read reading Exodus 13 verse 17 to 22. So this is the route of the Exodus. When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them along the road to the land of the Philistines, even though it was nearby for God said the people will change their minds and return to Egypt if they face war.
So he let the people around toward the Red Sea along the road of the wilderness and the Israelites left the land of Egypt in battle formation. Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph made the Israelites swear a solemn oath saying, God will certainly come to your aid. Then you must take my bones with you from this place. They set out from succoth and camped eath them on the edge of the wilderness.
The Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day in a pillar of fire to give them light at night so that they could travel day or night. The pillar of cloud by day in the pillar of fire by night never left this place in front of the people. The question here is how does God provide for his people as he leads them out of captivity in Egypt? Yeah.
That was, this passage is insane. I'm like shook right now. I feel like I need to go do a devotional laugh at that. But we see, I mean, you guys see in the passage that he leads by fire by night and a cloud by day and the scripture says that the cloud never left its place from the people.
Yeah. And the cloud and the fire obviously represents God's faithfulness and his leadership and man, how crazy do you think that it's still true for us today? Yeah. We're going to see a lot more of God's insane, incredible power.
And the miracles that we see in the desert and they're wondering, you know, I know we both read this passage during times. Yeah. We've seen the movie. Yeah.
Yeah. As I was reading this again, like reading verse 17 when Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them along the road to the land of the Philistines, even though it was nearby for God so the people changed their minds and we turned to Egypt. So like God was even thinking about it from that, yeah, from the very beginning, yeah, where he didn't want them to go and battle and face war against this. And I mean, nation Philistines.
He knew that they would crush them. It would make them change their mind. It would just change their mind. 100%.
And sometimes I think we're going to this later, but sometimes like we don't realize that at that moment God's fingerprints, God's hand and moving in our lives. Only in hindsight. It's so crazy. Yeah.
He was in it. I was actually whenever this in preparing for this in Deuteronomy chapter one, there's actually theologians say and there's a verse that says that that route could have actually taken 11 days, but it ended up being 40 years, you know, and I think the Lord, he wanted to prepare his people to steward the Proms land. Like he's not as eager to just get us from one destination to another. Wow, you know, he's more concerned about us following the cloud, you know, and then the numbers that actually later, you know, talks about sometimes the cloud would stay there for like two days and sometimes it'd be two months or sometimes it'd be two years.
And all the erzurites needed to do was to travel based off of how fast the cloud was moving. And sometimes the clouds stayed too short and sometimes the clouds stayed too long. But that's how God's leadership works. Yeah.
In his wisdom, he knows he knows the timeline. And so I even think about it. Yeah, again, we'll get it later. But even the frustration sometimes we feel maybe like we did like our life groups should be all the way here or we should be better here or, you know, and I just invite you, whether it's your life or your job or your family or your finances or your group or your friend group of just the learning from God's wisdom, like, yeah, are we following the cloud really essentially, you know, and maybe it's not exactly the way that we thought, but his leadership is good as we see in the just so.
Yeah. I want to continue to read this text. Yeah, great. So there's 15 11 13.
There's so much I think in this text that the group is just us and we, you know, one of our values is that the word is central. And so spending the majority of time in your group, like in scriptures, such a few. Yeah, don't skip it. You know, sometimes in our life group, you know, we're like, should we should everybody knows it?
You know, we heard it. No, don't do that. You know, the word is living and active. So when you read it again, it'll feel such as so, so fresh and new and maybe even pick up something like I saw your eyes when you've read the text, you're just lit up and like leaders pay attention to when God's doing that in your group.
So let me read X 15 11 to 13 says Lord, who is like you among the gods who is like you glorious and holiness revered with praises, performing wonders, you stretched out your right hand and the Lord swall of them with your faithful love, you will lead the people you have redeemed, you will guide them to your holy dwelling with your strength. Yeah, so amazing. And the question that is presented is this is part of a song Moses sings to praise God. What do we learn about the character of God in these verses?
Yeah, man. So obviously like through verse 14, we see the Egyptians pursuing and then Israelized escaping from the Red Sea and now they have crossed the sea. Yeah, it's a good point. The context.
Yeah, praise the God. Yeah. I see so many characters about these verses. He is holy.
He is a wonder worker. Yeah, faithful, loving, powerful. He is a guide. All those things are in there.
How about you, Esther? What else do you see? Yeah, that he's a redeemer. He's worthy to be praised.
The first verse says, you know, who is like you among God? So he's like no other, you know? And so man, if this doesn't rereading this doesn't cause you to praise, I'm going to pray for you. You know what I was thinking is like I love in page 65 of the series magazine, Elliot Moon or junior high director writes the Christ connect.
It was right outside the door. Yeah, that's so cool. But how this is the character of Christ? He talks about it.
He talks about how it's connected to Christ. That's amazing. This whole, you know, with the first Corinthians 10, 12, establishing the connection between the Red Sea crossing and baptism. And so that's powerful.
I would encourage you to read through this and how we can see God the Son. Wow. And we've got the Father in these passages. So, looking out, looking at more of how this impacts the world, what makes it difficult to trust God when life is stressful or seemingly out of our control?
Whoo. What makes it difficult? I think humanity, our nature does not do well with feeling like we're not in control. Yeah.
So I think the unknown scares us. And I actually was thinking about how there was this video of these young kids and they would take out reptiles, like transgillus and snakes and these little infants are like enjoying them. And then basically the video was saying like fear rises as we get older. And I think that's a little bit of true on this side of eternity.
Like we get exposed to betrayal and disappointments. And so I think sometimes we rely on our experiences and wisdom, not necessarily apply to trusting God, but wisdom applied by our own strength to make sense of something or to make something happen. That makes sense or even to run away from something, right? To not face it.
And I think it is scary to face uncertainty. And I think that's also if you read all through the Psalms, the godliest people have always struggled with the unknown or not making sense of things. And so I think maybe even the first thing is just like admitting like, Lord, I feel out of control. And I think we're afraid of even saying that.
That's really good. I think for me to be honest, like sometimes I doubt there's got care about some of the issues and struggles and challenges that are going in my life. I just had a recent conversation with my wife. And I'll be totally honest.
It's like, how come God doesn't answer? We know what theologically we've been a follower of Christ for many years, but we pray for a lot of things as a life group, as a family, and a lot of things. Why doesn't God intervene in those areas? For some people, while not others.
And so this is an area that sometimes we struggle. I struggle as a pastor, as a father, as a husband, just as a person, as a human being. 100%. And so I think as group leaders, for us to really be vulnerable in not giving stock answers and kind of Christian-ese answers, but we wrestle with it.
We enter into the struggles, the unknowns and the doubts, all of those things. Yeah, sorry, we just encourage leaders to really do that. The second question is, what are some common ways that we try to take matters into our own hands when we experience hard times? What have you seen others or even yourself?
What are some common questions, common ways? So maybe it's a general way that we try to... Yeah, I mean, for me, I often get impatient. I worry, anxiety, fearful.
I've seen people sometimes compromise and even reject God. Like I said before, why didn't God rescue and save? We pray for America. We pray that healing would take place and why didn't it?
And so I think sometimes when tough times come, it's like that's how we take control of it. If God's not doing it, then I'll either reject him or take it in my own flesh, in my own ways. So yeah, how about you, as well? Yeah, I think what are some common ways?
I think... Okay, this is what I thought of. I actually shared this in the Gospel everyday podcast too. But I think the goal is to love God until others, right?
That's the greatest commandment. And I think the opposite of love is not hate. I think the opposite of love is apathy. Yeah.
I see that in my marriage too. Like, when you don't... When you stop caring, when you stop, when you start numbing yourself, do not take it seriously. That is the opposite of love to me.
So for me, I'm not, for me personally, I'm not necessarily concerned about hating God. I'm concerned about my heart growing cold. And I can't let... I have to admit that like, yeah, when things happen, when we're disappointed in the Lord and things aren't happening the way that we believe that it would, yeah, it's like with your spouse, you can turn into roommates and difficulties.
And I think with the Lord, you can become a Sunday Christian. And I think that that's the bare minimum of the Christian life. Yeah. It's the lowest way of experiencing God.
Like, as in like, you know, there's so much more of the Lord. So I think maybe a common way is for us to just kind of like become apathetic about our relationship with the Lord. Yeah, that's great. And it's not always out of like your own, like, un-apathetic, but just like it even subtly happens.
I think that that could be a common thing that happens. What is, what do you would just say is like the antidote to apathy? Like, how do you curb against that? That's great.
I think it's worship. Worship. And what I mean by that is like, when our life group leaders, no, I'm sure you've heard sometimes, but in March of 2022, our son Jacob was born at 37 weeks. And he was with us for 10 hours and then he went to be with the Lord.
And the last thing that I wanted to do was spend time with the Lord. And I felt in my spirit that God actually called me that it was okay, that I didn't want to be reliable. It's weird. I wouldn't really encourage that.
I feel, I don't feel like pastor to say that. But after a few weeks, it was in my, in my muscle, my spiritual muscle to know that I needed to go to church. Yeah. That's just like who we are as a family.
And that's how we grew up. And that's how that's a value of David and I. So we showed up to Sunday and as soon as it was Mother's Day, which was even harder for me. Yeah.
And then I remember a worship leader was saying like, God is good. And I remember thinking, dude, shut up. Like, you don't know, you can't say God is good when you're in my shoes. And I remember feeling all of the cynicism, the bitterness, the apathy, but I just kept showing up.
And I gave him my worship in the sense of I gave what little I had and I kind of shared this with our women's team, but there's a story in the Bible about a woman with two copper coins and it's not a lie. And Jesus actually says to the, I think the Pharisees with the disciples like, Hey, you gave out of your plenty, but she gave out of her lack, which meant her two copper coins may have been like two pennies, but she gave everything. You know? And so for me, I think it's knowing that Lord, I'm so disappointed.
All I could do is literally show up to worship. And I can't like fully engage, but that two copper coins have showing up. You have no idea how God can rekindle that match, rekindle that flame just by showing up and saying, I'm here for you. You know, so yeah.
And then being with your life group, like being with the people of God, they're like faith is interesting. It's an appetite. So, but it's an appetite where, sorry, I'm getting like so preachy. Sorry.
Faith is an appetite, but it's like, you know, in the physical when you eat, you get full in the spiritual when you eat, you get more hungry. So the more you show up, the more you listen to worship is the more you show it to life group. Your heart actually stays so much tender to God by every time you do show it to life group. So if there's a time where like me or David, we're like, I don't really want to go.
We really challenge each other because we tell ourselves when you miss one week, you have no idea how much time your heart has get hardened when you're not with the people of God. So, yeah, I hope that's encouraging for you guys, like leaders, like be vigilant and showing up and encouraging everybody else to show up and following up with them. Like don't be overly cautious and being like, hey, it's okay if you're tired, but follow up with them because you have no idea how that those two copper coins of reaching out is such a beautiful offering to the Lord. Yeah, that's so great.
You know, Kenton in his message that he said, rescue people follow in faith. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever circumstance season or going through that we choose to worship yeah and choose gratitude. Yeah. And another article right here the in the magazine, the Nyeokie, the Anaheim Lee pastor, he writes that he says gratitude forces you to look back and remember God's faithfulness as proof that his promises can be trusted.
Wow. And I think gratitude, worship 100% and community are to those two. It's simple. It's everything.
It's everything. And so yeah, I love that. How about we close with this? Yes.
Last question as we look in. That's the second question. Let's do it. What attribute or character quality of God brings you the most peace when you find yourself in a difficult season of life?
It's not what I mean. I would say it's his faithfulness. I was meditating on that verse in Numbers. I think it's 2319 that God is not a man that he should lie.
Yeah. He's not a human being. You know, that he speaks and he doesn't act that he promises and not fulfills. He keeps his promises.
Yeah. He keeps his word. We don't see it. And we may not even see it on the side of the earth, but to know like he is faithful.
He's given us his son. He's a wife away or sin and shame. He's given us strength for this life in spite of the pain and the hardships in his face. Yeah.
And he gives us hope for eternal life. For that, wow, we should give him worship and praise and thanksgiving. And I think for us in our life group, as my wife leads, we start every life group with worship. Whether it's just listening to a song or watching a YouTube worship song and singing along, it really helps us to fix our eyes on Jesus.
Who's the one who's going to help us in our pain, in our joy, in whatever we go through in our lives. So I think I would say it's his faithfulness, his character that has really given me peace through the most difficult times, interest times in my life. You sound like someone who's been rescued. I have.
I have been rescued. So good. Yeah. Yeah.
Are you guys doing the words? The word keeper, he's been my keeper. He has kept me from going crazy. He has kept me from from falling away when after we after Jacob passed, my heart got so hard and I didn't I didn't know how to come back.
Yeah. But he kept me. Yeah. His grip on me was so much stronger than my grip on him.
Yeah. And so but yeah, like group leaders, I think like a this is like an exercise we did with our at like a women's appreciation brunch that we had in June. And but I think something that could be a fun activity is like if you guys like printed out the attributes of God or maybe did a screenshot and kind of sent it to everyone. And because I think not everyone can immediately think about an attribute of God.
And so if you guys kind of like pulled out a list and or read it out loud and kind of had every single person from introverts to the introverts to somebody who said nothing to somebody who said so much, like everybody has a moment of participating really in worship as they say who it is. Like I see words like loving kind, compassionate, strong forgiving, healer, refuge, shepherd, sovereign, caring, one who saves powerful helper like doesn't your heart like worship as even here like the names of God, you know, and so maybe that could be like a great way to close the night. That's great. If you guys are meeting and that's your way of worship, it doesn't necessarily have to have a melody but but it's your it's your profession and your testimony of who he's been.
So I think that could be a cool exercise. That would be awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you Esther and thank you all of you group leaders for joining us.
We are praying for you, sharing you on. Yeah. And so we hope that you have a wonderful meeting together as you talk about God's people and heal low and the rest of you will say.