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. Life Group leaders welcome you're joining us for our special episode. We're doing a series overview looking at our summer teaching series Colossians Habits for a fruitful life.
We're excited to jump into this book of the Bible with you this summer. We're joined as always on these episodes by our senior pastor Eric Iger. Man, I'm so glad to be here with you, JT, and super thankful for all our life group leaders who are going to shepherd the bridge through the summer and through the book of Colossians. Yeah, that's right.
And we're going to equip them with our series magazine. We got these things ready to go for the summer. Hey, Iger bleters, we always give you material to help you lead your group through the teaching series every end, but it is so amazing how we'll give these magazines you think we've done more with them. That's right.
I like your bleters like, wow, this is amazing. I wish you did this every time. The reality is we do it every time. It's just a nice PDF most of the time, right?
That's it. Yeah. And now it's actually in a book. So it feels like it's more amazing than it is normally, but it's always this amazing.
But actually, this one's going to be really special because we are walking through three books of the Bible in this calendar year. We've already walked through Psalm Asylum and we'll walk through Colossians now starting in June and then in the fall, we're going to walk through the book of James, which is I love. I totally love walking through books of the Bible with our church, 66 different books. We'll have long three books together as a church this year and the book of Colossians, four chapters written by the Apostle Paul to real Christians that lived in the city of Colossae and what he writes them matters so much to us today.
Yeah, it's one of four prison epistles. I think if you can hear the microphone, we're sure in a microphone today, just a little behind the scenes here, sure in a bag of four. So it's really great. Usually Dallas is here to help JT use non-technical metal.
Had to put two microphones into a computer, but since Dallas is not here today, we have one microphone in a computer that we are passing across. It's great to table. A little behind the scenes. I'm good at other things.
You are amazing. But the book of Colossians, one of four prison epistles Paul writes this, we think in prison and Ephesus Colossae, not a church that he actually visited himself, but somebody from the church comes to Paul to basically ask Paul, how are you doing? And Paul says, here's something happening in our church, Paul, how would you speak into it? So we get to be good at view of it.
The Apostle Paul has never even met these people. He's heard about how their faith is multiplying. He's heard about their fruitful life and he writes, encouraging them to remember what Christ has done in their life, to remember who Jesus is. That's going to be the foundation of their continued fruitful life.
But also, it's known as the Colossian heresy. He looses his debate. What exactly was the Colossian heresy? So if you Google Colossian heresy, you'll see different opinions.
He doesn't specifically name, here's what exactly the heresy is. But any time that the gospel starts to bear free, there's false teaching that comes in. And so the Apostle Paul without naming it specifically clearly is addressing some doctrinal issues that he wants the people to know. We'll see one of those in week two.
It's really this epic passage about who Jesus is. Colossians 1, 15 through the end of, or the five or six verses there, Colossians 1. And then you can tell that there's some Gnostic thinking that's happening in Colossae. So what's that?
Gnostic thinking would be that there's a secret knowledge. There's people who are worshiping angels. So there's people who want something more than Jesus. They want something other than Jesus.
Gnostics also believe that the body is completely, everything physical here is unspiritual. And therefore, there's the secret knowledge in some other realm that you need to access because everything here is unspiritual. And so the Apostle Paul is going to basically say, you want more power? Well, you already have all the power because of Christ in you, the hope of glory.
You'll see that in Colossae, that famous verse, the hope of glory is in this passage. Also another heresy that clearly he's addressing is there were religious people similar to what we study when we study the book of Galatians who believed you need more holiness and to give more holiness, you're going to have to obey certain religious festivals, certain Sabbath days. Don't eat this. Don't touch this.
So there were more rules. So you had some group of people that wanted more knowledge, Gnostics, knowledge, yet some that wanted more rules, more religion. And Paul is going to say to both of those groups, you don't need more. You already have Jesus whole tightly with you already have.
As you know, Jesus more, you'll acquire knowledge, but it's not knowledge separate from Jesus. And as you know, Jesus more, you won't need more rules because you'll have freedom and yet you'll grow in holiness because of Jesus. So it's not bad. You want more holiness.
It's not bad. You want more knowledge, but you're looking for them outside of Jesus. Hold on to Jesus. That's right.
But the source is in the outward of it. So that's the gist of him addressing what he's been called the Colossian here. Right. And then there's that verse in here where we get to during that week, which I think is actually during our re-celebration is going to be an I believe weekend in Colossians 2, I just got to read it.
I'm a rooted guy too. Right. So then just as you receive Christ, Jesus says Lord, continue to live in him being rooted and built up in him, established in the faith just as you were taught and overflowing with gratitude. But that's it.
That the foundations of our faith is upon the finished work of who Jesus is. And we move from that place. There is everything extra some secret knowledge that we've got to do, but it's about allowing you to say build up in in the house, built separate from it. So you're in Colossae or you're in Southern California, but you're also in Christ, right?
Yeah. Beautiful. They say connected in Christ. Yeah.
And then the entirety of the letter is just the implications of that. Oh man. So amazing. I mean, we're gonna have such a fun time walking through, walking through this letter.
It's just so beautiful. Right. In the other weeks that you want to double click on out of these eight, we've really, we're already thematically talking through the first three or four weeks here. We've won starts off remembering what Christ has done.
Yeah. And you remember, remember in your redemption, there's so many powerful words just in week one. The word that you'll see there is the hope that you have in the word of truth, the gospel. So it all comes back to remembering the gospel.
And from that you'll see as you have been rescued, that's verse 13, you have redemption, that's verse 14 verse 12. You've been enabled. So the gospel has accomplished so many things in your life. So because of what the gospel has done, just remember, remember and don't fear from the gospel at all.
That's the best week one. Week two, you get into, we get into that Christ should have first place in everything. And that's an amazing text. It's it's Colossians 1 and 15 through 20.
It's known as the Christ hymnmns. There's two of these in the letters. One is Philippians 2, 5 through 11. It's very famous.
We actually studied that last year. And this year it's Colossians 1, 15 through 20. Some have said this passage is one of the most important passages in the Bible and understanding who Jesus is. The image of the invisible God, the first one we're all creation.
Everything was created by Him and through Him. All things have been created through Him and before Him. He's before all things. He's ahead of the by the church.
He's the first one from the dead. God's pleased to have all this fullness dwell in Him so He could have first place in everything. So it's an epic song of who Jesus is. So that's week two.
The image of the invisible God. That's right. Yeah. And the week three is you'll have to depend on your strength.
You depend on his strength and a very beautiful verse that we strive with his strength that works powerfully in me, the Apostle Paul says. So what you're going to see is we're going to give eight habits over to the book of Colossians is amazing, but you also see a rhythm of habits that allows you to have a fruitful life. And have one, remember your redemption as week one, habit two, which is week two, so we're in our first place to Christ. Have a three, depending on Christ, strength, not your own.
Have it forward on anyone, continue. Remember that you've been rescued. You don't let somebody continue. Habit five, stitch a mile above.
Habit six, let his peace rule your heart. Habit seven, serve others from the heart for Him and then have a speak to God about others and others about God. So eight habits that will help you have a fruitful life. That's great.
I love that we're looking straight to the scriptures for this. We're such a conversation or culture right now of how do we become the best versions of ourselves with a life hacks and disciplines. Yes. And there's some good principles to learn learned from that.
But all of those are fundamentally inward focused. What's the strength I need to find in myself? What's my story? What's the thing that I can do?
The discipline that I can create so I can become the best version of myself. And I think we just find often those things just let us down. Well, that is, that's the Colossian here, say I repeat. That's it.
Let me become something on my own grit, whether that's religious grit or Gnostic grit. I'm going to find the secret knowledge as opposed to I have all I need in Jesus. I cling to him and these eight habits are going to help me cling to him. But here's where fruit comes from.
Yeah. Fruit comes from him. Where you think that comes from, leaders that are sitting around with their life groups looking through this passage about something that tension that we experience of. Okay.
I've accepted the gospel. There's nothing I can do to contribute towards that. But surely, I got to do something. There's got to be more for me.
That seems to be elementary. Like what's the thing that I got it. I want something deeper and more meaningful, more impactful, something that I can see and achieve. Right.
It comes from everything in our culture tells us to achieve. Right. Everything. And the desire to grow is a beautiful desire.
So someone in your life group, life group leaders wants to grow. That is what you say to them is a life group. No, no, no, don't grow. Yeah.
Don't grow. Yeah. And of course, but how do we grow as a Christian is not in our own strength but ultimately in his strength. The tension that we have is our hearts constantly drift away from grace and towards earning.
Not towards efforts. Good. I think it was the A Carson that said, racist opposed to yeah, racist opposed to effort. It's opposed to earning.
Yeah. Of course we're to have this, this grace driven effort where I'm supposed to, I want to grow, but I want to grow because of what Christ has done and I can only grow through the strength of Christ as opposed to I'm earning something. So effort is different from earning. We want to affirm effort.
We don't want to affirm posture of earning. Martin Luther the Great Reformer, he said it this way. Religion is the great default of the human heart. So think about the default setting on the word document for your job.
You know, it defaults to times and you're relevant. And so you can change the fine, but it lets you change the default. It's going to keep defaulting back. You have to change the fine.
Well, Luther was saying our heart, the default of our heart is earning. The default of our heart is religion. So even we want to grow. If we're not careful, we'll just default to Gnosticism or religion as opposed to defaulting towards our relying on Christ.
So affirm the effort like your pleaters or someone want to grow, but it's going to take us constantly coming back to holding on to Jesus using habits that help us cling to Jesus because our heart is going to pull away from that. We don't drift towards relying on Jesus. We drift away without coming back. You'll drift away.
You don't drift towards. It's like my garage. I don't drift towards my garage being clean. I have to intervene for my garage to be clean.
And for your heart to bear fruit, it's not going to get there on its own. You have to intervene. You have to intervene and bring your heart back towards trusting in Jesus and his grace. That's great.
And we do believe that leading towards grace and the outworking operation of grace, that that's a team sport. You do this in community with others. You serve one another. You do that alongside the plurality of people.
You do that with others. Earning and individualism go ahead and answer. That's right. Totally.
So that's why you leave a life group. It's so important because it's in community that you can remind each other, hey, we need his grace. We can't grow on our own strength. We need his strength.
I mean individualism perpetuates. I'm good by myself. I don't need grace. Community actually teaches you to rely on someone other than yourself, which helps you learn how to rely on God's grace, on the gospel, on Jesus.
It's great. So we don't graduate from grace. We don't graduate from community. It's one of the vehicles that God uses to grow us.
We can grow apart from his grace and we can grow apart from community, really. That's awesome. Well, this is going to be incredible. I'm jacked up for it.
A book for you that's going to help you walk through the book of Colossians with your group. And I know for many groups you'll meet less frequently in the summer, which is totally appropriate. Don't feel guilty about that. But when you meet, you can say, hey, let's cover weeks one and two or let's cover weeks three, four and five.
But I do want to encourage you to together go through the book of Colossians this summer. It's only four chapters. It doesn't take a long time to read on your own. It's so rich.
It's so good. I hope that you'll love Colossians. If you love Colossians this summer, it's likely that your group that God has made you the shepherd over will be more likely to love Colossians. If they see you blake staring at Colossians or not jacked about Colossians, they won't be excited about it.
Your level of fervor for the book of Colossians will impact your group this summer. That's right. Enthusiasm is tangible and you get this at the space with that and the pace with that within your group. So we can't wait to jump in with this together.
I'm going to jump in with my life group. Can't wait to hear your stories around studying this book together. Not just studying it but putting it into action. Pay attention to the emails that come out weekly.
Talk to your life group coach about all the different opportunities to outwork this. We're going to have a moment to call you into serving, joining a ministry team during this sermon series. We've got loads of great opportunities of local outreach to put this into practice. So stay engaged over the summer and we can't wait to see how God continues to form us through being people of his work.
That's it guys. All right. We'll see you on here next week.