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. All right. Welcome to Life Group Leaders.
We are on week one of our brand new series looking at the book of Colossians Habits for a fruitful life. Thank you for joining us today. And if you haven't already gone back and listened to the series overview we did last week with Eric Geiger, make sure you check that out. Walks us through the entirety of the series gives us a 50,000 foot deal that also really helpful as we jump into our summer study through the book of Colossians.
God ask your channel with us again. Hey, hey. Good. How are you?
Well, how do you know that? I just know that. Do we have more views or just or in faith? Yeah, yeah.
That's what it is. Thank you for encouraging me in faith. Yeah. And now we're just talking last night at least the time we're recording this.
You just wrapped up week five of how we studied the Bible. We did. Yeah, we have one more week last and it was kind of cool because we were able to give our participants the magazine early on for Colossians. So they I know they felt super special and like it was a treat.
So that was cool. Yeah. Yeah. And we had to sum up to at our last year of your bleeder huddle here.
That's right. And so yeah, we got some leaders on the ground that already got their series magazines. That's right. If you don't have it yet, then you can get it on Saturday and Sunday.
You're invited across all the congregations. We'll be passing these out. Yeah, we'd love to encourage you group leaders. You set the tone of enthusiasm with leaders.
Show up magazines in hand taking notes, listening in and tentally. And as it's going to make you better at facilitating your questions during the week two. When you have your magazines, you're making notes. You're looking at the questions ahead of time.
And so we're excited to walk through this with you now looking at week one of the series Colossians one. Why don't we go ahead and well, actually we got to the lean in first, right? I almost went out of order. So starting at the first week, what's the title of this week's message?
Remember your redemption. Remember your redemption. So you can see there's a motive remembrance here. So we got a lean in here.
It says, what's a powerful memory you retain from your child? Wow. Oh boy. Who wants to go first on that one?
Have you thought of one for yourself? Yeah, I think it's closer to mine. So I have to go far, far, far, far, far. Unbelievable.
That's hilarious. I think it's interesting with the questions as powerful memory. It's not just a memory, but powerful. Yeah, powerful memory I have is I remember I was like in third or fourth grade and I grew up in the church.
I was at the University of WBS, you know, vacation of high school kids camp and I remember I learned that God is one God, but three persons and I started doing this thing and I before I went to bed where I would sit up and I would kiss the air three times. Did you really? Yes, because I wanted to make sure that out of the father's side, nobody felt left out. That's why you still do that.
Oh, my God. I do it. But yeah, I mean, I think back and I'm like, that was so silly and childlike, but how powerful to just learn such a simple truth from Sunday school and cultivate my relationships with a lawyer like that. So now when I think about it, I'm like, oh, it's powerful.
How are you? Beautiful. I mean, the first thing I thought of was 1989. Not the Davis Without.
That was a year before I was born. Great. That's so cool. Well, thanks for joining us this week.
We'll see you later. Sorry. I was 10 years old. Right.
Limited Bay Area. And that was the year of the day of the great earthquake. Up in the Bay Area. That should grade to my memory.
Coming home. Getting ready to turn on the TV World Series. Open A's, Evertasco Giants, getting ready to play. Fill the rumble.
Run it outside and see the street. It looked like a tidal way rolling and cars jumping down and everything else. And so that's my powerful memory. Connected into the Trinity.
That is powerful. Yeah. Those of that, that is very, I mean, still, I can't, to this day, drive over a bridge. Doesn't matter what bridge it is.
Dumbarton, San Mateo, Babridge, Golden Gate, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I'll take it about the earthquake. It's a weird thing. It's a weird thing.
It's a vast. That impacts part of how you feel interacts even today. So there you go. Wow.
Less spiritual. No, no. But nonetheless. Powerful.
Well, why don't we jump into God's word. Great. Let's do it. Read Colossians 1, 1 through 14.
We're going to read it in its entirety. And as I read it, a few look down questions in your magazines. Like your discussion questions are in your magazines. And so you'll see that weekend and weekend.
We got said to highlight here. There's a few here that says, what are some aspects of the Colossians church that Paul thanked God for, which of these stands out to you the most? Another question here. Paul prayed for the Colossians that they would be filled with the knowledge of his will and wisdom and spiritual understanding.
What would the effects, what would be the effects when that prayer was answered? So basically, you could Paul praise these things. How would that have impacted the church? How would they would have acted if those prayers have been realized?
And then if the Colossians were already Christian, why might Paul have prayed for them? To this growing wisdom and spiritual understanding. What does prayer show you about God's will for us as Christians? So great questions to kick around, just to remind ourselves that the context here, right?
This is what Paul's prison epistles. He writes it from prison. And the church in Colossae is not one that he had actually physically visited himself. But half-risk who Paul had a relationship with is the set and begins the church there.
And then goes to check on Paul in prison, basically with him. Paul, how are you doing? Paul hears what's happening in Colossae. And the letter is set back as the letters would have been, been read aloud to the church gathering.
And so they're hearing Paul's words directly to them, which is also God's word first to them and for them. It's also God's word to them and for us today. There's lots of things that we can learn about. All right.
So why don't we jump in? I'll read it from one through 14. It says, Paul in the apostle of Christ Jesus, by God's will, and Timothy our brother. To the saints in Christ at Colossae who are faithful brothers and sisters, grace to you and peace from God the Father.
We always thank God the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, will we pray for you? For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope reserved for you in heaven. You have already heard about this hope in the world of truth, the gospel, that has come to you. And it is bearing fruit and growing all over the world, just as it has among you since the day you heard it and came to truly appreciate God's grace.
You learn from this. So you learn this from, Papyrus, our dearly loved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and he has told us about your love in the spirit. And now here's his prayer for first night.
For this reason, since the day we heard this, we have it stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding so that you may walk worthy of the Lord fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious mind, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has enabled you to share in all the saints and heritants in the light. He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. And in him we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.
This is the word of the Lord. All right. Fourteen verses packed with truth here, Paul. You could tell, yes, it met them.
There is a sense of relational connection. There's a sense of family and inheritance and deep care for this thriving church community. There's a sense of which, and he's in chains. He's in prison, but he goes out of the way to encourage and encourage them.
Isn't that incredible? Paul, who is like a serial church planner, right? He's playing churches all over the place. But he doesn't see the constraints that he's in as like, okay, the mission to stop.
This mission continues through my encouragement of these churches there. Just so much beauty. So what's the idea of the astereas you interact with some of these questions here? Yeah.
I mean, you know, one of the things that I think that Paul thanks God for the Colossian Church is he acknowledges their faith in Jesus and their love for the saints. Yeah. I mean, you could be known for anything like, you know, in the epistles like their generosity or, yeah, different things, but I love that one of the things that stand out the most about the church and Colossians is their love. And it's known all throughout the world, but their love for one another.
So yeah, how about you? Yeah, I love that he's reminding them. First of the gospel. I mean, you think about the New Testament Church, not dissimilar to the churches that are in the world today.
People from so many different backgrounds, social, economic, cultural backgrounds, racial backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, gender, all of that. And Paul is there reminding them that what Eric mentions in the message, what qualifies you as the gospel. It qualifies you as the gospel. That is the foundational starting point of our unity.
That is it. It's the only thing that unifies us is the gospel and the gospel has taken root in you and it's also taken root in others. That you're a part of something that's great all over the world. So I love that Paul's reminding them that this is who you are.
This is who you are, the gospel qualifies you. But then he goes on to say, he acknowledges it's bearing fruit, but there's encouragement to keep going on to keep bearing fruit. That's what qualifies us. But as Eric mentions in his message, the gospel also multiplies that it takes root and it takes root and it's meant to be grown through it.
So good. Yeah. What else do you see in these first 14 verses? In one of the questions, I think it was, let's see, if the Colossians were already Christians, why might Paul have prayed for them to have this growing wisdom and search understanding?
So like Eric talks about, yeah, it's given, but it's also bearing fruit and multiplying. I think it shows that we're ever growing in our knowledge of God. And I remember somebody saying even on the other side of eternity, we may be sinless for our for ever be students. Yeah.
And so that really encourages us even on this side of eternity to keep growing and to be learning, but then to look forward that there's going to be endless amount of things. Like God is omniscient, but we're not. And there's going to be wonder forever. So I think that that stands out to me from this passage too.
Yeah. And there was clearly a temptation there. We talked about the Colossian heresy, which is different conversations of what was that exactly? We have ideas about that.
We're going to cover that in one of the weeks where an institution that we have for us today, okay, great. The gospel seems almost too fundamental to elementary. And in some sense, it is. It should be clearly understood and articulated in a sense that a child could understand that's what the gospel is.
But there's a temptation to think, okay, great. There's something more. There's something deeper than just that understanding. Okay.
I think I get the gospel. What else? What else do I need to grab on to? What else secret knowledge is out there that's going to really help me grow?
And I think we experienced that temptation today. Right. Okay. This is the gospel plus whatever it is you fill in the blank and that was certainly going on in the church in Colossians, which I love that Paul opens his letter reminding them about the foundational truth of the gospel.
I love this quote that Eric does in his message. Charles Sbergen says the most important daily habit that we can possess is to remind ourselves of the gospel that we never graduate from the profound foundational truth of the gospel that frees us that sets us free that makes the sons and daughters that we learn what truly it means to be servants, to be friends, to be friends, to be friends. To love and exist with one another from from that gospel. We need that constant daily reminder of the truth of that.
I love that you said you said the pace with the rest of the letter. That's the starting point. That's it all day long. But as you said to, right?
It's just prayer to continue to grow on and wisdom and understanding. You know, it's that often used illustration of how many years have you been married? Nine years. Yeah.
Yeah. Twenty, twenty four years for me. Wow. You know, it's that moment when they pronounce you husband and wife and it changes, it changes everything.
But you have the rest of your life to live in. So what that? Yes. What that means.
The first thing that tells you from that is remembering. One hundred percent. Right? And that's what we're instructed often in the ceremony.
Remember the sacredness of the state. You feel the rest of your life. Enjoy the state of the connim and the vows that you made. That's so good.
And it's the same way with the gospel. But even in a much more profound sense, like, great, we come into it. We bring ourselves into it. We make this surrender the sacrifice of the covenant of marriage where actually God does that for us.
Yeah. He draws us unto himself. He does the covenant. He makes a sacrifice and we respond and say yes.
Yes. And so it's the sense of great. Remember that. Remember that.
Let it feel you for all the growth of the tree that's ahead. Awesome. So the question is the lookout says the Colossians had a wonderful reputation for the broader world in the broader world. Do you think Christians have the same reputation today?
Why or why not? And secondly, how might remembering our redemption help us actively share and demonstrate our faith to others? Yeah. I think I see in the magazine on the right side, it says, where the reminder is share your story.
And I think even in our life group, I try to do this pretty intentionally. Like, I'm actually really almost hyper aware of my brokenness to a fault that kind of more leaning towards shame sometimes. But David and I are both pretty open about talking about the metallic taste of the emptiness of life before we met Jesus. And I think that revisiting what was I like before I met Jesus before he renewed my mind, before I became a new creation.
And keeping that close is so vital to staying dependent on the simple gospel every single day. And so when it says, how am I remembering our redemption help us actively share? I think people will think that you have to share so much of your godliness right now. But what you actually have to share is where he saved you from, that you were lost.
But now you're found that you could not walk, but now you walk with him. You were blind, but now that you see. And I think people always want to talk about the after meeting Christ part rather than, here's where I was and here's what he redeemed me from. Does that make sense?
They feel tempted to share the put together version of where they're at now. I think it's so beautiful to talk about where we were at. And even the things that we struggle with now, because it points the spotlight towards Jesus and not towards us. Our righteous deeds.
What about you? Yeah, that's going to foster a sense of humility to this question about collage. They have wonderful reputation. Do you think the church has the same reputation to me?
Why weren't I mean, that's such a big, big, grand question. For sure. How could you possibly summarize? How does everybody think about the, but you know, it's a mixed back.
Right. It's a mixed back. I mean, you look at so many of the great movements that have brought liberation and freedom and many of those things are rooted in the Christian Christian nothing, many of them are rooted in a false view of the Christian. So there's a mixture that when you look at man, what the church is, the bride of Christ at its core.
And is it perfect today? No. Is it being transformed more and more into the like us of Jesus through the individuals that make up the body of Christ? Absolutely.
I think that's why there's this reminder. You look at this through all of scripture. Look at this. All of Paul's letters.
We get this kind of this gloss over, you know, looking back at the New Testament church and we think, man, everything was perfect all the time. And the church was just great. And why can't we have the church like it was in the book of Acts and you realize like so many of Paul's letters are written to churches where there is. Here's some dysfunction.
Yeah. Turn well. That's that's always in the case because we're not perfect. This side, this side of heaven.
Wow. But so there is a part of like recognizing humility, brokenness. It's a great. So what is the way on the way on is it moralism?
It is more legalism. It is like willpower. It is a forte of like, community. No, it's like being saturated and reminding us of our need for the gospel every day.
The gospel isn't the thing that we stood up and responded to. And that's it. No, the way in the way on is the way in. It's the way in that keeps us going.
Yeah. And so then we turn into the look and let some of these practical questions of great. So how do you remind yourself of the gospel every day? What does that look like?
And then we're in your life. Have you been tempted to maybe rely on something other than God's grace to qualify you and to find your satisfaction. So what are practical ways that you help remind yourself of the gospel every day? And then where have you been tempted to maybe rely on God's grace?
Other than God's grace to qualify you and for your satisfaction. Yeah. So many things that you could say respond. I would say man, just being in God's word daily, right?
I mean, you look at just this passage. All these statements that are true for us that Eric walks through to understand that I have a hope that's been reserved for 40. Wow. Not a hope that I can gain.
Yeah. But the father has enabled me, but I have an inheritance with him that he has been rescued, that he's transferred me into his kingdom from darkness into light that I have redemption. I mean, just look at all these statements and maybe think about you remember back to the identity cards and enruded. I love seeing people still sharing those around and all these statements of identity of who we are and what the gospel has done for us.
And I think just putting those things in front of you daily and meditating on those preaching the gospel to yourself every day, spending time in his word and his presence. So important. It's not something you graduate from. It's something you need to like daily saturate yourself in.
What about for you kind of habits that you might have in place of, you know, how do I remind myself of the gospel? I think of my story a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I just think about often like what I was like in high school or what I was like when I was in elementary school or and like how I could have ended up. Right. Yeah.
I think about that a lot and it just makes me in all in another practical ways like our family like one of the main things is like pay on Sundays like we go to church. Yeah. Like it doesn't matter if like we're in the season of you know having a fresh new kid like you know as a family. Yeah.
Very fresh. Yeah. And even Kinsley it was I think on a Saturday or something she was like I don't want to go to church and you know as a PK or a pastor's kid like I want to be careful but you know David and I we looked at her and we said hey in the chum family like we believe in. And we're shipping with God's people and singing praises to God and hearing God's word and living that out and she was totally fine after with that explanation and so yeah I think that's a very practical way that once even that once we were them of being with God's people and and other people's faith rubs off on you.
Right. I think that's that's that's so important. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. There could be a natural tendency towards you know just complacency or he talks about languishing in his message and just apathy but actually like the joy of your salvation. Wow. Yeah.
This isn't just you know faithful duty and obligation to the things like I have to do because this is what I'm supposed to do is like no man this is what I get to do this is what I get to do this is what I get to do this is what I get to do this is be surrounded by God's people on a weekly basis to be in his word on a daily basis habits in place where we serve others where it's not just about me and my growth and my formation. But I'm growing into Christ likeness and I'm not I'm no more like Christ that when I'm serving others so that's a part of like me I want to have that output I want to do that because that's not an earning but it is preaching the gospel to myself through faithful actions every fleck whatever really. So yeah this is a really mean it's a powerful book it's a powerful conversation to have over these over these summer weeks. Anything else you want to add as we come into land for week one of Colossians.
I'm just excited. Yeah. What a summer that we're going to be going through such a rich book really you know so I'm excited. Yeah.
And we know people are going to be traveling a little bit. Yeah. Things that are happening and so that's the gift of having mirrors online. That's true.
You're so never just one click away from catching up to the message and listening that online. There's a podcast people still podcast right. That's what we do. Yeah.
Are you at two times listening to podcast or you like a normal rate or use more than two times do it. No. Like podcast is like do I listen to like I'm in a season where I'm listening to a lot of Disney music in the car. So podcasts are kind of out the door for me.
But yeah. How about you? Enjoy. Yeah.
So many podcasts. Oh that's awesome. And I like the two and a half times speed. Oh the tune up the speed.
I don't know if you've got to listen to me. I don't know if you've got to listen to me. I don't know if you've got to listen to me. I don't know if you've got to listen to me.
I don't know if you've got to listen to me. I'm really fast because I'm really fast because I'm doing that right now. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
But great. All right guys.