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To get now and partner with us, visit marinerschurch.org slash gift, or click the link in the show notes. Thank you. 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.
Hey, life group leaders. This is Kim, your host this week. So good to be with you again. And today I'm so excited to have our care and recovery pastor and my friend Paul Hahn with us on the podcast.
Hi, everyone. So let's be with you this week. Oh, my goodness. Week four of Colossians were in Colossians two, four through 23, and talking about let no one condemn you.
What a great passage this week. And I hope your conversations have been rich for your group. I hope you're thoroughly enjoying this beautiful magazine as we jump in and have the questions in front of us in the scripture and some great artwork to our community. I hope you have some great artwork to help us focus on this passage, but this passage is so rich and full and please make sure you read the whole thing within your group, whether that means you go around in the circle and everybody reads some of it.
You don't want to miss it. There's so much in there. And we just want to encourage you that as you sacrifice and lead and love the people in your groups, you are making such a significant difference. Thank you for what you do.
Thank you for who you are. And thank you for leading out in this beautiful book of Colossians. We're going to start and just jump in and do a few things today by looking at the passage beginning at the beginning, fourth through seven. Let's I'm going to read that one for us to start.
And then Paul's going to add so much today. If you haven't met Paul on, he brings so much shepherding heart towards our care and recovery ministry and cares for so many people loves the Lord with his whole heart. And to have his input today on this passage that impacts a lot of us in many ways, whether the condemnation is towards ourself or we're feeling it from other people. It impacts our hearts, our lives, our choices, our relationships, and we're just looking forward to digging into that together.
So let's read verses four through seven together. I am saying this so that no one will deceive you with arguments that sound reasonable. For I may be absent in body, but I am with human spirit rejoicing to see how well ordered you are and the strength of your faith in Christ. So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as the Lord, continue to walk in him, being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught and overflowing with gratitude.
That is the word of the Lord, Amen. That scripture, oh my goodness, Paul, as you look down at that scripture, does something jump out at you? I think I'm just getting even the imagery of the roots and a firm foundation. And I love the invitation that we have of it's kind of stated as a fact, right?
There's going to be statements or things that are people who try to deceive us and bring false truths or people trying to speak over you in ways that are not of the Lord. But I love that there's this invitation in Christ to not be shaken by that, to be able to stand firm, to depend on this firm foundation that is the gospel. That is so true. 100% Christ's work in us that roots us and grounds us as our identity, that's who we are.
Because it's not an if the condemnation and judgment will come, right? It's a when, it's a how. And the thing that fights against it is not us, it's not my strength. It is 100%.
The fact that I'm rooted and grounded in Christ's love. Yeah, so good. Thank God. It's not up to how hard we are, how tightly we can cling to him, but how tightly he comes unto us.
Yes, yes, for sure. I want us to jump over to the lookout section. You know, there's always tons of questions in here that you can land in and sometimes you want to drill down deeper to them. But I know in Paul and I discussing a little bit this week, I know there's some really great imagery that is used with care and recovery ministry, like the foundation of it.
And it applies so well to the lookout section this week. So as we look at the questions there, the first one are some of the philosophies based on human tradition. And I think of that compared to the gospel philosophies compared to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I remember you talking about that, the graph, the picture of it.
I just wondered if you would explain what that looks like. So if you'll be patient with me, I'll try to describe it to the best of my ability. I know, yeah, if you can just visualize it in your mind. We look at the gospel as this kind of U shape, right?
There's like a dip into this pit where on the left side, we started with Shalom. We started with wholeness. We started with peace. We started with a fullness and a beautiful relationship with God.
And then we know that that didn't last long. Sin came into the picture and we experienced death. We experienced brokenness. We experienced harm to our relationship with God, with ourselves, with others, with the world.
And so that's where this U kind of dips down into this pit is experiencing that spiritual death, relational death. But thank God he did not leave us there in the pit. He brings Jesus into the picture and through Jesus through his death and through his resurrection. We are able to have a renewed resurrected life.
So that's the other, the right end of a U shaped curve where he wants to restore. He wants to restore Shalom. He wants to restore our relationship with God. But why we talk about this in care and recovery is that oftentimes while the gospel takes this new shape, where we actually have to recognize our own spiritual death and surrender that over to the Lord and trust him to give us in life, instead we like to create a shortcut.
And so if you can visualize on this U that we tried to shortcut from peak to peak from left to right without experiencing or admitting our brokenness without experiencing or admitting our grief and loss. We kind of create this bridge across, but that bridge is an illusion. Right? It's a dotted line.
It's not a solid life. And on that bridge lives these false gospels, these false ways that we feel led to try to save ourselves, whether that is finding comfort in alcohol, drugs, whether that's finding belonging from relationships that aren't great for us, whether that's finding identity in materialism or success or our careers. We create these dotted lines for us thinking that, Oh, surely that's going to give me peace or that's going to give me wholeness. It's going to restore shallow, but because it's an illusion, because it's a dotted line, it actually does not hold the weight of all we're bringing, because only Christ can hold that for us.
And so that's definitely one philosophy based on kind of human traditions or human mindsets, just our nature, our nature to think that it's our responsibility to try to pick ourselves up by the boots and solve our own problems when the Lord so graciously invites us into just receiving, receiving his gospel and his grace that he will be the one that restores those things. In fact, he already provided the way he already provided the cross. And so that was the first thing that came to mind for me. Wow.
And only because of the cross are we rooted and have a foundation where we're unshakeable because of that grace for us, right? So whether in care and recovery or not, like for life groups to be able to have that visual and talk about that within the context of feeling condemned or how that traps us, the guilt that comes with it or being stuck in that place, all of us experienced that at some time or another. And it's not getting from peak to peak. It's remembering we're grounded in Christ.
And he's the only one that can restore us. We can make us into new creations, give us a new and abundant life. And I think I'm viewing even that word condemnation. I love that you brought up that, yes, sometimes it could feel like the judgment or the condemnation for others.
I feel like so often in our society, it's that weight, that burden that we put on ourselves, the weight that we put on ourselves, that we have to have answers or that we have to solve our way out of this thing, whatever that may be. That's instead of invitation from Jesus to just surrender to him. It's a totally different posture, isn't it? So even to talk about that posture with your groups, when we feel that, when do we feel that we are?
Taking more control of that or getting stuck or feeling that guilt that doesn't allow us to release our hands to the Lord? Because it's a real thing. Maybe it's at work for some people. Maybe it's in a relationship.
Maybe it's hearing family voices from growing up. It can be a myriad of things, but talking about that openly and honestly leads us into the look in sections. Because we all have things that impact us when you think of that word condemnation. So I know that having that pressure to perform is a big deal, especially in Southern California, right?
Because we have to earn quite a bit of money to live in this beautiful state that we love, which is gorgeous. But having that pressure on us, so one of the questions is how can you remind yourself in those times of what Christ has done for you, meaning those times of condemnation? How can you remind yourself of what Christ has done for you? And for me, as I was praying for you guys and as I was thinking about our church and our groups and the types of people that really the Lord put on my heart for this weekend, that question really made me think about those who are still feeling condemned, feeling condemned by God.
So they are not, they maybe have not decided to follow Jesus yet. And they're feeling the full weight, the full pressure of still needing to be their own savior in different ways. And so I love that this was an I believe weekend where so many in our church could stand and declare everything Jesus. But I want to encourage you guys as life group leaders, like we all need that gospel reminder of what Christ has done because we're so prone to take on that weight ourselves.
But I want to encourage you to not even assume that everyone in your group has given over and surrendered all that weight and that burden to the Lord, and reminding them that the answer is and the gospel of the answer is in Christ. And what does that look like for this weekend discussion to kind of press in a little bit more with the shepherding heart, you know, with grace, but also that truth where maybe there are people in your group who still need to say that they believe that they want to surrender their lives to Christ. They didn't maybe get to see it out loud or standard weekend. But man, what a beautiful opportunity for you as a trusted shepherd in their life to be able to have a moment like that in your groups.
Oh my goodness, what a celebration, right? Realizing that carrying that weight is heavy and being in need of rest that only comes when you release that and allow God to carry it instead of you carrying it yourself. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that kind of for me led to the third question kind of as we all reflect, I think we're all prone to, you know, wander in one way or another.
And over me, I'm prone to dive back into a peopleistic mindset, right? I go back into like, oh man, I have to do the right things in order to gain flavor with God or appear right or whatever. That's kind of where I lean into. But that's heavy.
Like even for me, Christ, while we're even as someone who is a believer and has been walking with the Lord, like we still need to check our hearts. And I think that was the kind of second group of people, which may be a majority of your groups of just people who feel tired. Like, I feel that there are people who are going to be showing up to life group, either needing to lay down that weight of that performance, that religiosity and lay down that idol. The same time there's probably people coming in with, you know, the self-help mentality or like, I don't know, you know, needing to the spiritualization of things or just, yeah, that theme of figuring things out on your own.
We also need a rest. We all need a rest. We all need a rest. So again, as the shepherds of your group, I wonder if there's an invitation to lovingly remind your group of like the rest that's available in Christ.
Oh, that's so good. That's so good. We pray that you have great discussion in your group this week. Pray for the people that I believe, celebrate with them, rejoice with them, pray that they follow through and take the next step and grow in their faith.
Pray also for all of the rooted grads. We had a great celebration this weekend, graduating. Oh my goodness, so many great groups. Some new life group leaders joining us next week, and we're so excited to add them to our groups teams.
And we'll be with our podcast next week. Can I have better life groups too? Yes, please. So as you guys are shepherding your groups and things may come up, different burdens that people are walking with, different struggles, different things that they know that they want to lay down in front of across.
We have a practical hope workshop coming up on Sunday, June 30th, right after the 1130 service in the upper room. It's a practical hope workshop called Thief in the Fire, Hope in the midst of the struggle. And so we all struggle with different things, but what does it look like to hold onto the hope of Jesus through those times? And you're going to hear from some speakers and some of our leaders.
We're going to get to use some tools, but also really biblically founded information on how we can truly hold onto hope during those difficult times. So good. Oh, leaders, we just love supporting you and celebrating with you and pray that you have a great group this week. See you soon, bless you.