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 leaders and welcome to week 10, the final week of fighting for joy, our study through the book of Philippians. Get believe it, we're here at week 10.
Can't believe that from the standpoint of that's the end of the series. But also it's the end of July when you're in the end of that. Summer's kind of flying by which is crazy to think about. My friend Dallas is nodding his head in agreement.
I'm in agreement. Yes, you guys can see me not my head, but I'm in agreement. He's doing what he is. Eyebrows head nodding and the whole thing.
It's been a great summer though, right? Give me a couple highlights for you. They have the family over the summer so far. Going to Israel.
We went to Israel. I remember that trip to the rest of my life. My wife and I got to do that. That was such a special time for us to give us a passion for God's word that we are waking up loving to jump into God's word.
Like what it has done for our soul. It has been so good. What it did for our marriage, our relationship. That was a highlight that we will hold on to for the rest of our lives.
Same for me. I was in my wife. I was in this week of the has a day that's gone by. I haven't thought about it.
I'm sort of way whether engaging in God's word or a memory just pops into my mind over it. I would say life group leaders we would love for every single one of you. Say how that experience. We're working on plans.
We've got some dates that are in the works for fall and 24. You're going to hear more about that. It would be a great leadership experience. It would be a great leadership experience.
It's not just life group leaders. We're a horror life group. We're all going to go. We're going to speak with you.
Amazing. A couple of things before we jump into the questions. First, this is the final of this week. A couple of things we wanted to highlight for groups is a good practice for when we end a sermon series.
I'm going to say to all of you, maybe two things to consider as we go into series. Ending a series, I want to tell the group how proud I am. Hey, you made it all the way through. I'm so proud of you.
Thanks for jumping in. Thanks for being there. And it calls us to celebrate. That's a rhythm that we do.
We celebrate. So have some fun. Like celebrate people's faithfulness to it. But also with the end, you have to have the next thing planned.
You can't just end and leave it there. So with the ending comes a launching of something new or hey, here's what's coming up on the horizon. Here's our game plan for the next couple months, the next season. That's good.
So we have a lot of things with ending. Yeah. And one of the things that could even be a surf experience, right? Yeah.
We've got on the leader resource page, we've got so many sort of options for you to look out for August. Really important rhythm to have groups that serve together. Find the thing, get out there, experience your faith in that kind of way. So I love that.
Celebrate and serve it in the plan piece, right? So what's happening with the next couple of weeks? Well, next week we've got Stephen Lee that's teaching. And so you're not going to actually get questions as we traditionally give them out weekend a week out.
I was not going to talk about that in a minute for that weekend. And then the next week after that, Eric Agres back and we begin a brand new series. What's that series called? If liking the most of it.
That's right. So we're going to have to make the most of our relationships, our career, our finances, a few other things and we can't wait to jump into that series. Eric's going to be on this podcast. We're going to release a series overview on Wednesday, August 3rd.
So look for that as he helped set the pace and the language for that new series life. And then as mentioned, after this weekend, the following week is Steve Bingley. You won't get the traditional set of sermon questions that week. And so what else I thought we'd do for this episode is you have your sermon questions for this week.
And you can see those in a great resource, a great springboard for you. We've got those. We're looking at those now. It's kind of workshop a little bit too of a way that you can approach.
What do you do when you don't have sermon questions? And actually you are capable of writing these questions. And so what we're going to do is we're going to walk you through the model of what that looks like based off of this week's message, how we might write those. We're going to do that live on the spot to help equip you for the topical week with Steve Bingley.
But just also weekend and week out to give you a framework for how we write and approach these questions. That sounds good. Yeah. And this is something that I actually do.
I do almost every morning. Yeah. Is whatever passage I'm reading, I write my own devotion for that passage. Part of it might be an unhealthy fear of what I get put on the spot and I need to get the motion.
Yeah. Only I work at a church. But the reality is I really want to live out the passage and I want to apply it to my life. So I write questions every morning in my journal.
That's right. I want to read. That's good. So we're going to do that.
So again, you have questions. Use those springboard. But the questions we're going to give you now are a bit of a combination of those. But also us kind of wordsmithing and nailing them down to give you that model the framework so you can do this going forward.
All right. So we're in Philippians four. This is the last passage within Philippians. We're looking at versus all the way 10 through 20 or so and the real meta theme here.
It's about contentment and generosity. So lean in question here. A couple of ones I think will be fun that you can ask. What's the one that you're thinking?
Like a gift as a child. Have you ever, did you ever want a gift as a child? You're like, if I get this thing, then my life, everything else will be, I don't even do anything else. This gift will fulfill everything.
Right. Do you have an answer? Do you know what that would be for you? Oh, I wanted one of those portable PlayStation PSP.
And I thought once I had that, I could, I could, I could sit in my room and I could play video games. I could go anywhere I wanted mobile and play video games a little PSP. And did it work? It did not work.
I'd sell life works and we're going to tell the generational gap here. But I remember a young kid and what I wanted when Christmas was, you probably didn't even know with the 18 this, you know, the 18, 18 Murdoch Mr. T. Yeah.
I wanted the original, the 18 of van. It was like a large van that you can go inside and play as a kid. I got a picture of it and everything. It fulfilled that 18 van hole shape in my heart.
But that whole gets, um, uh, vacant by other things. And so what do we get behind that question? There are things that we think that we want in life that are going to bring us contentment. And ultimately they don't, we get the thing and we find out that it didn't do what we thought it would.
Yeah. And it gets everybody talking. Everybody shares a funny part of their childhood. Yeah.
You learn about other people and you might, it's not something you would share in your story. Right. So it's just cool to like piece together. Yeah.
Right. If you want an optional what I thought of, um, when's the time you were, uh, you were so full that you couldn't walk or something, you know, with the time that you ate so much food that you're stomach or something, something like that, because I, along those lines, I did that just a couple of nights ago and I hopped out of the, and I had a lot of plays at Fashion Islands and some of them. There you go. All right.
Um, show me read the passage. What do you think? I should be a precious next one here. Yeah.
Caught down question that we're interacting with from Philippians four or 10, it says, I rejoice in the Lord greatly because once again, you renewed your care for me, you were in fact concerned about me, but lack the opportunity to show it. I don't say this out of need for. I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I find myself. I know how to make do with little and I know how to make do with a lot in any and all circumstances.
I have learned the secret of being content, whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or a need, I'm able to do all things through him. Who strengthens me still you did well by partnering with me in my hardship during on to 15th. And he fly to it in the early days of the gospel. when I left Macedonia, no church showed with me, shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving except for you alone.
For even in Thessalonica, you set me gifts for my needs several times. Now, not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that is increasing to your account. But I have received everything in full, and I have abundance. I am fully supplied, having received from the paphrodites what you provided, a fragrant offering an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God, and my God will supply all your needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.
Now to our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. That's a long pass. And there's some great questions in there, but I think if you were to summarize these questions in a sort of short way, what do you learn about contentment and generosity? What do you learn about contentment and generosity?
And here is where you want to interact directly with the passage. So sometimes the temptation to look down is to tell our stories. Yeah. Well, I learned this when I gave God to this or this story I heard, I heard this.
Well, here's the barriers, no, actually this is looked down at the passage. What do you learn about contentment and generosity from the passage? Maybe there's just a lot of a couple of things that we see there. Yeah, what do we learn whether we're well fed or hungry?
He's learned the secret of contentment. He calls it a secret. That's a learning order in every situation. Like you can be content in every situation.
Right. That's what I'm learning. Right. He learned, we've learned about the blessing of generosity.
He equates it to a fragrant love, love offering. We learned that he wants them to experience to share in that. There's a joy in generosity that we can learn about from the passage. Anything else to do?
Yeah, verse 19, ultimately God supplies everything. It's good. So you can tie it into contentment is only found in him because he's the one who supplies everything. So if we go to him, we will be content.
Yeah. Same thing, verse 10, I rejoice greatly because once again, you renewed your care for me that there's this communal sets of contentment and generosity. Then it's not sometimes we think about it being an individualistic spiritual practice, but he wants that what he's experienced for others that he's inviting them into that. It's a communal thing.
And as a leader, you're working through this. It's important to read the passage. So when I'm, if I were doing this and I'm all alone, I'm reading the passage and I'm circling, I'm interacting. Good.
And what are all the things that are standing out? Great. Now let's write a question. So we can really hold those answers really.
The ending in mind where you're interacting with the passage yourself. So later you start with the passage and we leave the way, you start looking down at God's word, you start pulling out truths and then you know the answers to begin to help other people see that. Right. And then your answers, your observations can then inform your question.
Yeah. Really good. All right. Also, let's move to the lookout and just a reminder of lookout.
This is now where we take the truth of the passage and we ask the question, where do we see that at work in the world around us? Again, the temptation here is to bring in our own stories and sometimes that's appropriate. But often we're trying to see where we see this at work in the passage. Was it looked like when this is lived out?
Was it looked like when it is it? So how about you phrase a question for the lookout section? Yeah, I want people to look out and see it. I want to find examples of it and even on the flip side like, oh, where have you not seen it?
Right. So where have you seen contentment and generosity in our culture and your life? Like where have you seen other people do it? Where have you seen maybe organizations, companies, people that you know that have not done it well?
So you get an example of both and. What does it look like when somebody is content and generous? What does it look like when they're not? What kind of examples and stories can you share?
Anything set up for you that you might think of people or examples on either side of those questions? I mean, when we take a generous, I just think of our church. I think of the people of our church who are so generous. I think of our church as a whole organization.
I believe the church is inherently good. I'm pro church. The church is the vehicle to do good works in our world. So when I think of something generous, I am immediately brought to the bride of Christ in church and all church, not just mariner church, but yes, mariner church because I'm here, but also other churches.
That's where I see it played out so well. And what does that look like? And there's an impact, right? There's an abundance of like blessing and serving others.
Yeah. When we give away, it was never really ours in the first place and be stewarded well for the sake of others. And you know, I've been around, I'm not to make it out. Just churches that I have seen.
I've been around the churches for, and then I've been for quite a while. And I have seen where metal churches have that equal practice and understanding of generosity, not just to make this about churches. We can do this in our personal and visual life, but when you operate out of scarcity and kind of a self-sufficiency, like I've seen in some of those places aren't around anymore because they were firstly concerned about their needs, their priorities, and needing to chase after those things. And you see the impact that it does not have on them outside of themselves.
And ultimately they kind of cave in on their own desires and wishes. But you guys and your groups, you've probably got lots of other stories that you can share. We're church guys. We're church guys.
It's just a little bit. All right. So look in. This is now where, okay, the application for you.
Challenge the obstacles where this is at work. How might you phrase a question here? I've heard again. Yeah.
I mean, even what is an object off top of our heads? Yeah. What is content look like? What is it like to be more content?
You know, what do you think God might be speaking to you? Like, I always like questions like that where it's not forcing people into a pigeonhole. But I got to get this answer right. It's, yeah, here's what I think I could do this week.
Here's what I think I could start doing in my journey of generosity. I was going to step into greater practice of content and generosity. Yeah. And then what are the barriers preventing you?
What are those things? I didn't even to take it a cut deeper. Because you could say for a lot of us, well, the things are, I'm not going to have enough, you know, scarcity. I got to take care of my family first.
So that's the first question. But then the question under that question is, okay, what's the, what's the lie behind that thinking? What are you believing about yourself and about God with that thinking? If you say, okay, the barrier is I got to have enough of my family, you know, take care of our needs for a first.
What's the lie behind that? Well, it's that God will provide that he won't come through that he's not faithful. As the passage says, he will meet all of my needs and Christ Jesus. And so I got all done because I can't really trust him.
It's a question of his goodness and our trustworthiness and who he is. And so we can give sort of the immediate answer, but get to the thing, the thing that that's what really makes us kind of the deep level of coming to a great facilitator is being able to take that double tap into the deeper deeper deeper. And even a follow up question I ask myself this, yes, morning's is who or what would be impacted if I may learn to be more content? If I learned generosity to be more generous with my finances, who would be impacted?
Who would be impacted in your life? If you did that, and I said there, it gets real when I start putting names. It gets real when I put my family's name on there, when I put my friend's name on there. And I love what you're doing there too, because you're pulling out of the look down, the observation of the communal shared practice thing, you're doing that now in the look in.
Okay, it's not just a spiritual practice for me, but what's the impact on what is that look like, which is a really genius thing to do is to lead through questions, take in the observations of the look down, and then driving them through, even looking at how people respond to the look down and personalizing. Remember how they responded calling them into something out of that. Really good. I hope that's helpful just to get you guys a working framework.
Really good next week. We're not going to have our questions, but you've got a framework to know to do that next week as you lead your groups. Anything else to add on before we sign off? We're fighting for joy.
It's been a great series. It's been a fun book. It's like an encouraging book. Sometimes there's some new Testament books that might be a little more corrective, and this has been just really fun.
I've been newfound appreciation and love of this book. It's been so good. Awesome. Great, you guys.
Well, again, celebrate well the end of this sermon series, plan to serve, and then we can't wait to jump in as we start the new series with Eric Geiger Life. It's going to be amazing. Look forward to that series overview that will be released on August 3rd. We'll see you guys then.