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. Welcome leaders to week four of Fighting for Joy, our study for the book of Philippians. We are here to walk you through the passage of the questions that you're going to interact with this week with your incredible life groups.
I've got Mr. Dallas, we have a joining us on the episode today. Hello, everybody. Hello, live creators.
That was great, Dallas. Hello, Dallas is incredible. He was a man of many talents of many faces. At the time of this recording, we're coming off of a man campus just a few days ago.
I've recorded this one in advance a little bit and Dallas has shed the man mustache that he had just yesterday and he's back to baby face down. So how's the family feel about that? All right. My kids did not care, didn't notice anything.
That's great. My wife enjoys it for a few days. Yeah. It's great.
Then she's very over it very quickly. Amazing. I mean, I have stubble. I've never done the full mustache thing because I'm afraid of what it would look like.
But any time I shave, my kid's sailor too shiny and they don't like it. So I don't think that's a compliment. All right. Great.
Well, hey, you ready to do this thing? Let's do it. Let's do it. This is week four.
I've got a couple of passages in Philippians that great, which many scholars would say, was actually written as a ham that the early church would recite over and over again from Philippians 2, 1 through 11, looking through the Christology of who Christ was and its humility, the incarnation of Christ. And it's a doctrine that they sung, that they reminded themselves of frequently. It's one of the older writings in the New Testament. And it's a very familiar passage that we have the joy to unpack in our groups as Eric again taught it for us this week.
But we're going to jump in straight to it here with Arlene in question. It says this in your life, whom have you looked up to the most? What did you learn from this person or example? And we're kind of breaking our own little rule there.
And just a little later, too. You might want to answer this in a different way, right? Ask this in a different way. When we're asked a question about most, it's hard to answer so the most, I don't know.
So you might want to reframe it. How would you reframe this question in your group? Who's someone you look up to? Beautiful.
I love that. What did you learn from that person? So do you got anybody in mind? Yeah.
Prezi company excluded. Yeah, of course. But I will say immediately when I read that question, my brain instantly felt like I had to think through every area of my life. And I had this moment of panic.
I'm like, who's like, I got a false number one. Yeah. But I look at my grandfather. He has loved the Lord for years and years and years, wakes up early.
If you catch him, he's praying with someone. He is spending time in God's Word. And he's just a gentle, God-honoring man. Right.
Yeah. So you saw that in him and something you want to model after the way that you pursue the Lord in your own life, too, whether you raise your family, right? And I think that's what that question is getting us to do is we look towards the example of others. What is it about that person that you were marked by?
And you might even think about me, am I live enough to that example? You take inventory of what you see and how you're living, living that out now. And I think, so true for many of us, that what we look to, we aspire to. We aspire to that often because there's a gap, an expectation gap in what we see in ourselves.
Yeah. And then that's in the beautiful space where God does this great work, what we see, what we're running after, but we're not presently obtaining or living in. And so that's getting you to expand your thinking on the model, what you look to, what you affirm in other people, and then how you see that working in your life. Yeah.
All right. Let's go down to the look down. And now, lean in, we're giving you to think creatively about the passage. And now we're going to jump in to the passage here.
Philippians 2, 1 through 11. I think in your guide, it only goes to verse 8. So I'll read that over this here. If then, is there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the spirit, if any affection and mercy make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love united in spirit and 10 on one purpose, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves.
Everyone should not look to his own interests, but rather to the interest of others than coming down to verse 5. Adopt the same attitude as Christ Jesus, who existing in the very form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. He had come as a man.
He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even to death on the cross. And the passage goes on, and God gave him the name, which is exalted, of all names, and it goes on all the way through verse 11. A few questions here to highlight from our look down. The first one here is, what four areas of unity did Paul desire for the Philippian believers describe what he meant each phrase?
So we think about unity. What are the four areas of unity that we see in the passage? Do you see those styles they didn't call out to you there? Yeah, in verse 2, united in spirit is one way that they could have the same spirit together.
And as you look at the theme of the book, the title of our series, Fighting for Joy that could be united in God's spirit, I mean, this is a heavy hitter passage. It's beautiful. Yeah, I think it's cool to hit on a couple of those and really bring it out of people. This might be a good time to a call on that person in your group who might be a little bit.
This is one of those questions that the answer is in the passage. So if you look and read the passage, you can find the answer that you can call on someone to really pick something out. Yeah, it's a good question because it's causing you to interact directly with the passage. It's saying, what are the four areas within the passage?
I mean, look down, we get tempted to think about the out, the inward application. But man, really, when we look down at God's work, physically look down and call these things out. So you're hitting on them there, the same love, unity and spirit. They're intent on one purpose.
They're thinking the same way. I mean, all these things are here in the passage. You can call those out and then you can discuss what you think, Paul meant by that. What do you mean by intent on one purpose?
It's interesting that this church in Philippi unique individuals diverse social economic backgrounds from the wrong side, the different sides of the tracks, but you see this unity and spirit thinking the same way, even though culturally they may be worth the same. They might have different expectations, but they're intent not just on their identity, but on how their identity informs their purpose and how they serve one another. So there's loads of stuff in that passage. So that's the leadership principle here is don't rush off the passage, spend time with the passage and interact with what guys were just saying here.
What would happen if a group, you got the overachiever in your group who hits out those four, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, like hits them out. What is something someone can do in that passage to help them engage? Like one of the tricks that I always use is like, okay, like, hey, that's super great that you nailed those. What else stands out to you on the passage?
Like just sitting, I think it's super important to really sit in the passage to get our people there. Yeah, there's like a correct quote unquote answer. Yeah. Jack the Box, I pass the test.
Yes. Oh, here it is. It's in verse here. It's in the 10 on purpose.
What do you think is behind that? How do you think that that community would have would have read that? Yeah. Real, do you see that it worked and maybe some other scriptures, even them created that you interact with the passage is really good.
That's really good. I like this last question to look down. What do you think it was like for Jesus to leave heaven and become human? What did he give up in doing so?
And what do we gain from his action? I mean, this is what this passage is. The incarnation of Jesus and it's a passage that's many have studied for years and years to understand what that meant about Christ who emptied himself and didn't consider equality with God, something to be grasped. How do you interact with that with that question in this passage?
That assuming the form of a servant to think that he is God, but he came down here and took on the role of the form of a servant. Like, is there anything for us to learn from that? God could have he could have come in here and said, Hey, I'm God, he could have done it a whole different way, but he chose to come in in the form of a servant and his actions as you read the Gospels, modeled that and backs us up to. Yeah, and it's amazing.
You think about the creator God of the universe and how he could have introduced himself and his redemptive plan in flash and his redemptive plan was always out working before creation, but in flat to humanity. And he chose to do it through Jesus who of course was born infant, insignificant place, insignificant time to insignificant people. And it's that Jesus willingly outworked that through his life. And you know often I think about the posture, what Jesus posture would have been if I was Jesus and I'm not what I've been sat would I have felt like I'm I'm losing a lot here.
The power line when I'm giving up doesn't seem to be great. I'm leading the heavily realms seated at the right hand of my father, taking on flash, working in obscurity for 30 years. Yeah. My ministry doesn't really come to promise to the last three years of my life and those three years of my life are going to be met with persecution and rejection and washing people's feet.
I'm going to be on a cross. That's surely can't be the deal. And I know that's putting had to you alone on the humanized nature of Jesus, although he was fully God and he was fully human, but his posture wasn't sadness, right? Yeah.
It was the joy set before him, then he adored the cross that he really took that on. That's why he's Jesus and we are not. Yeah. The only like thing I could think of is like I think it's giving like being told to go to the kids table.
Yeah. Like I was like, that's still happening. Yeah. Yeah.
Like the glory of the adult table and I got I got to go down here now and it's like so many times when I'm in situations like that, it's my attitude immediately that gets in the way. Yeah. And those moments where you get it right, it's because you've powered up and you've taken it. Okay, this isn't where I want to be, but I'm going to make it through.
I'm going to make this for Jesus. It was the overflow of who we've got is identity secure as God's son and living that out. It's beautiful. It's humility.
It's God's redemptive plan made known for Jesus for us. So we start talking about humility. The lookout question is getting us to think about this in culture a little bit. There's a couple of questions here.
One of the names able to give our office right, but is humility considered a weakness or a strength? Why or why not? And then though our culture often views humility as weakness, in what ways did Jesus' humility convey and require strength? How might you navigate that question?
Yeah, that's right. I really love that question and culture. Okay. Where have you seen it?
Then like don't just tell me yes or no. Like where have you seen it? Where have you seen it as a strength? Like in what areas have you seen humility be a strength?
To let our people see both sides of humility, a true form of humility and a false sense of what culture thinks humility is and what ways did Jesus' humility convey and require strength? I mean, think about anytime you have to have humility. We're hanging out with our Kenyan partners right now and they just walked us through an exercise where the lead pastor sat down with his whole team and he said, tell me all the ways I've wronged you. And he said it went on for hours and it was tough, but it was ultimate humility and ultimate strength.
And he said, my team is stronger than ever. So in the moment of weakness, the moment of humility, it ended up being so strong for his team. It's serving other people. Yeah.
It's outward facing. It's not looking towards your needs but to the needs of others. And you know, it's that Eric hit on it, his message where he talks about what many are looking at is sort of the failings of the self-help era, this expressive individualism. He coined that phrase there.
I've heard the phrase about project self where we led to two of our own needs and building our own empires. We're not here as a real story. You know, I don't watch Sex of the City, but that character Samantha, her famous quote of, you know, I love you, but I love me more and how true that is and how prevalent is in our culture that self-centeredness will always reject humility and service because it's about you and using people for your own, for your own needs and for your own, for your own good. Yeah.
That's implying that you can pay the price of what it takes on the cross when in reality we cannot. Right. And so then we're looking at it outwardly and then we got to turn it into us and answer these questions with honesty. Why is humility such a challenge and trait to model?
What does this tell us about ourselves? And you might want to make that more personally, but payment for you. Where do you experience the difficulty in modeling humility? What are those obstacles?
What are those things that you tend to run up against? This is where you want to, you know, in an appropriate way. They can't look at the answer behind the first answer because of the surface. It could be a really easy question to answer, but kind of get to the root of things behind it.
What are the alerts you're trying to navigate, like a look at an application and how to get people to go beyond the surface? You set the tone for vulnerability in your group. So as a leader, maybe prayerfully consider, hey, how vulnerable can you get and how can you set the tone for this? And you see it rooted all the time when the leader shares first like night one, night two of rooted and just how that sets the tone.
So you being vulnerable, you leading and saying, hey, let me just tell you how I have struggled with humility. Let me tell you the battle that I am constantly facing. And here's what I'm learning. And here's where I still need to grow because I don't have it all together.
And the conversation that's going to come after that is beautiful because you've created a place where people can be vulnerable. That's good. That's good. I mean, I think if I was going to answer that quick, I think there's something to the like a scarcity mindset of, okay, if I'm going to move from selfish to selfless and serve other people, do I really believe then that guys get a look after me that he knows my needs that if I'm going to pour myself out for other people, how can I be sure that I'm that I'm taking care of that I'm that I'm looked after?
And I know for me that would be a thing of like the scarcity mindset. If I got to protect myself first and make sure that everything's in the row before I can go look at others and the needs of others and I'm pretty glad that Jesus didn't do that for us. But I experienced that temptation that pull. Yeah.
Even like a notoriety, humility is something that's not often praised and not often seen. Okay, well, if I'm going to do that, but I want the accolades. Yeah, I want to be honest, I want to be honored for that. And even that is a false motivation.
And there's a lot that you can impact there. So while it may seem like, oh, we've covered these things, we talked about, no, there's always so much more that you can do get to with your groups that Dallas said as you model that than as you as you navigate through out of your groups. All right. Amazing.
Well, that is it for how to have joy like Jesus from Philippians 2 1 through 11. Thank you guys for joining us. We're going to have Dallas and I again for week five and look forward to joining you all next week. See you later.