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To give now and partner with us, visit Marinerschurch.org slash give or click the link in the show notes. Thanks for your generosity and God bless you. 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, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together.
Welcome leaders to week three of God with us. This is our teaching series during the Christmas season. Can't believe it. We're here at week three, which of course means next week because four falls three is week four, and that is our big Christmas App Mariners services.
We get not wait to celebrate Christmas with you and all those that you're praying for, I'm going to invite again to celebrate the hope of Jesus here at Christmas App Maris. Esther, good to have you guys on this passion with us. Yeah, four is after three. I think that's all.
We're off to a great start. If we get nothing else right, at least we got that. That's right. We can count.
Yeah. Hey, Christmas is that a big deal in your household? You guys are looking forward to it. We are.
We're having some friends over this Sunday at our house and David's making prime rib and we can be doing stuff with family. So we're excited. That's great. Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, we've got my parents coming down and so it's always a fun time of year. Lots of things going on. We had our party today, our disciples team. Yeah, or we did a little white elephant gift exchange.
I don't remember what you welled up with. What did you walk with? I said, I said, okay, yeah, help us settle at the speed here. So you bought a Starbucks gift.
I did. I did a gift pile. That's right. And you walked out with the gift that you brought.
That's right. Because they told us. Bring a gift that you would want to have. You know, you would love to have yourself.
That's exactly what I did. The whole element of gift giving. We're like gift taking, but yeah. I'll be remember what I got.
I wanted that sort of first card for our teenage daughter where they go. Oh, no. The dream crusher. Oh, no.
All right. Awesome. Oh, why? This is a great thing.
The question is before we look at the question, so just a couple of things. Yeah. First, at Irvine, we've got Doug Fields teaching that all of our congregations, we have live teachers, which is awesome. We love that.
We have a lot of questions that we're going to read through that are in your guide. They might be a little bit different than the particulars of the message that you're going to hear in your congregation, still rooted in the shared passage of Romans 5. And so this is a great weekend, right? To have the questions in advance, sit in and hear your live teacher take notes of what they're saying, but they're highlighting and bring that into your group discussion.
Because it might be a little bit different from what you see when we have one of these weeks. And also, this is our last set of questions for the year. And it's our last podcast. I'll have to read a podcast at least for the year.
Because next week is of course our Christmas services. And so we won't have questions for that as we would anticipate many of not all of your speakers are probably not meeting at that week of Christmas. And so we'll jump back in with you the new year. And the first one you should hear is going to be a series overview with Eric Geiger for our On the Table series in January.
Talk about starting the year strong. I don't want to give away too much of it now, but it's going to be so good. So we'll come back with that in January. So for now, we're going to wrap up with God is with in us.
We've looked at God before us, God with us, and now God with within us. Actually, it was God before us, God for us, and now God within us. Right. Here's Lena.
Share about time when your expectations were different from reality. So I went to a team party at Gif's Exchange and I was hoping to get a Starbucks car. But it was from underneath me. Oh, no.
JK. What about you? Anything come to mind for you? Education is on the reality.
I first thought of the first thing I thought it was marriage. Oh, hey. Harder than I thought. Also so much greater than I could have ever imagined.
You know, both in. So yeah. Or maybe even like the holidays sometimes, right? We have certain expectations of traditions.
So I am finding with like our family's blending and creating our own traditions and stuff. Like I do brace myself a bit. I'm like, okay, here's my expectations and I'm excited, but also help me to be okay with the reality of maybe some sticky relationship. Sure.
Yeah. That's just life adjusting to reality when it doesn't meet our expectations. Yeah. I think the reason that question is positioned is because the passage are going to look out about Romans 5, 1 through 5, the cadence to suffering and hope and you know, for some you may think, okay, if I have Jesus with me, but he's within me, this Holy Spirit is within me who's conquered all things, the death of grave and sin and eternal hope, then that everything should be good.
I should have a full life of abundance and there should be no suffering. Let me know that's not the case, right? Yeah. I think the reason why that question is here, which makes sense as we carry on through.
I'm going to read Romans 5 now, 1 through 5. A couple of questions here that we'll interact with. One is how does the passage describe the relationship between suffering and hope? So what do you learn about suffering and hope from the passage?
And then secondly, what roles do we see God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Trinity playing in the passage? What do you learn about the Trinity from this passage? What roles do they have to play? All right, I'm going to read this and then Esther will interact with it together.
It says this, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have also obtained access through Him by faith into this race in which we stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God, and not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character and proven character produces hope. And this hope will not disappoint us because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
All right, Esther, ask you to interact. What do you learn about the relationship between suffering and hope? And then what do you see about the interplay between the Trinity and the passage? Yeah, I mean, I'm so encouraged of the Trinity's involvement in our lives, the midst of suffering and hope and how suffering and hope they go hand in hand.
You know, and I love that through this passage we see that suffering really functions as like God, he's a suffering as a trainer, a teacher, a coach, and ironically, even as a friend to shape us and to mold us more like Jesus. And so I'm just really thankful for God's intentional involvement that He's not absent or deistic like far away, but God's super involved in the midst of, yeah, suffering and hope. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think that's it.
I mean, I love what the through line points to is a hope that will not disappoint us. So if you kind of like start with the end in mind, that's something that we all want. I want to think that will not disappoint because I know what a false hope looks like. I know it looks like I have my hopes not realized.
I don't want to hope that we'll disappoint. We'll be down. That's great. So how does that happen?
Well, it happens through boasting and our afflictions. It happens in enduring through suffering. It happens through perseverance. And our character has changed.
And so I want the result, but I often don't want that trajectory the way to get there. So what do I learn about them as well? It's actually impossible to have a real substantial hope without suffering. And so I want that for my life.
So it's my prayer. I want suffering. Probably not. I would pray that for myself and others, but I would certainly pray through it.
Yes. Got refined me in so that so that I can have a thought that doesn't disappoint. There's a clarification there. And then what roles do we see God Jesus the Holy Spirit?
Well, it's all the passage here. We have peace with God. So that's what we are ultimately after that we can't get by ourselves. And so how is peace with God achieved?
It says it through our Lord Jesus Christ. It's peace with God through Christ. And then what is the role of the Holy Spirit in that? Well, you can see the Holy Spirit is the one that makes that peace and that hope evident.
Experiential. That we can know it. Like the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit so that we can cry out out the Father. Right?
It's like the Holy Spirit reminds us of everything that Jesus taught us, reminds us who we are, encourages us, comforts us, convicts us. It's that experiential reality of God's love and peace in our life and the Holy Spirit makes no. So great. And so what I thought right now is like, I wonder if life groups like Saturn out and said, hey, is, are you, what is the difference between wishing and hoping?
Yeah. And if we want to really be introspective with our trust in Jesus with our, yeah, in the midst of suffering, are we wishing that he's going to show up? Are we confident in our hope that that he is present, that he is near? That's great.
You know, so that's awesome. Yeah. I think that's great. You're writing questions right on the slide.
I mean, that could be a really good lookout question. Knowing now what we talked about hope, how is hope different than wishing? How do you see hope behind the world around us? Yeah.
What do we learn about hope is Jesus followers and different than the hope that others might have? And that's what you can add in here. That's really good. I think we should use those.
Those are great questions. Yeah. And then we can skip it, it skips right in here to the look section then. So there's some questions that are written about the lookout, but I love that.
I was talking about, talk, have a discussion about the difference between what, what's will thinking and hope with hope, the world hopes that we should hope is Jesus followers. That's a good lookout question. And then we get into the look at it. There's a few different questions here.
We're in your life. Do you see the chain reaction of affliction producing endurance, producing character, producing producing hope? What affliction is God who is within you inviting you to boast in? Wow.
That's a good passage, right? Jeez. Beausim because of the hope that it has or will produce. So a couple of different questions there.
How might you answer those, Esther, or encourage other people to lead their groups through those questions? Yeah. I mean, I think about my life and how, you know, anybody can grow and you grow simply by, in a sense, by being alive. But I think as Jesus followers, we're called to mature.
And I think that how we steward suffering and how it produces endurance, character and hope leads to greater maturity in Christ like this. And so yeah, I think how we are perspective and are submission to Christ in the midst of suffering really reveals whether we're maturing and becoming more like this. So maybe there's some people in your life, I mean, holidays are rust, you know, like something can be really rough, like, you know, trauma or, you know, it didn't end up being what you thought it would be or somebody makes a comment, you know, sometimes as small as like about your weight, your job or in the midst of that cycle. Well, you look tired.
Is it a rough? Yeah. Lemonade that phrase. Oh my God.
Yeah. It ever comes off-chairing. Oh man, no way. Yeah.
And so like when you're triggered or offended and defensive, how can I submit to God in the midst of this from place and maturity where it's like, okay, God, how are you building my endurance and character? Right. Yeah. It's really good.
What an opportunity to look to God in response and not reaction to someone comment, which we're totally like, we're an old age. Yeah, sure. Totally. When they still your job is started.
Yeah. Oh my God. Hey, surrender. Submit it to the.
Okay. It's really good. This second question to look in one, I think it's a great question of what affliction is God who is within you inviting you to boast in because of the hope it has or will produce. I think there is a word there on the difference between boasting in your affliction and like formulating an identity around it.
Something that we've been talking a little bit about is what we've been talking about as well for some other teaching series with our team of, you know, kind of this phrase of my lived experience and my truth while there's some good sides to that if we want to, for sure be empathetic to what people experience. Yeah. Yeah. But there is that difference between, okay, I form a complete identity around this pain that I have, reflects the way that I see myself, others, and ultimately the way that I see God.
And so the boasting of the affliction is different, right? It's not boasting affliction because it's like, this is a horrific thing. It's a horrific thing that I went through and it's formulated everything about it going in. Not victimhood.
A little bit, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit. But it's boasting in the affliction because it produces a hope that will disappoint.
Yeah. That affliction leads us to healing, which is only found in Christ. So I boast to it because it leads me to healing in Christ. That's why I'm just doing it.
I think there's a principle in there for us as life-repleters, like we want to hear really, really well the pains and the struggles and be empathetic and man, reflective listening, all of that. And at the same time, pointing towards the hope of the gospel, just that heals all of all of it. So good. The rhythm reminder is to share your story.
Yeah, that's right. And I'm actually really tempted during holidays to bring my best, right? Like, hey, if I'm seeing a relative or a friend, like, hey, how's life? I want to share with them the highlights, right?
Like, this is, I got a promotion or whatever. But I wonder what it will look like if we showed up vulnerable, like our life group actually met last week. And we kind of all went around and we were sharing about, hey, there's some financial strength here. There's some desires for growing a family here.
There is, you know, the last few weeks of pregnancy that's struggling here, like me, you know, and it was actually really beautiful that in the season, like we could be raw and honest about the suffering and the pain, but also to lean into, hey, but this is how we're going to trust in the Lord. And so I wonder if we don't have to package Christmas, like, especially as a life group, like with each other, it's really a safe space to, yeah, be like, hey, here, I'm boasting in my suffering and my afflictions, but again, here's the hope. I'm going to Jesus, you know, so I hope we can, even you as life group leaders, whatever you're going through, you can take off the pressure to perform or to make it the best last life group, 23 gathering, like take that off and let God's presence invade your gathering in the midst of sharing the suffering and the joy. That's really awesome.
I love that you're talking to your little ends of your life group. Are you engaging in a leading man? It's the same for us. I don't lead it, isn't it?
I don't. Yeah. And our life group youth are amazing. Yeah.
Well, great, you guys. Well, we're so glad that you joined us for this last one that sounds crazy to say of 2023. Are you kidding me? 2024.
I mean, flying car out of the air, right? It's got to be incredible. I got last one extra favorite Christmas song. Oh, my gosh.
Ooh, I immediately saw Michael Bubles' album in my head. Yeah. I guess so. Right here, Michael Bubles.
Yeah. How about you? The classics. I mean, Hark the Herald Angels.
Yeah. Well, that. And then I got some other good dots. I don't know about not holding the most recent.
And our car was Taylor Swift's Christmas tree farm. I mean, I didn't know that. She didn't leave that in my life. Gosh.
But here we are. Talk about the afflictions that I do. We'll do not those two. All right.
We're getting off script now. Thank you guys. We'll let you guys on C&A Christmas services. Have a great Christmas.
And we'll see you in the new year.