Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Welcome back to the Life Group Leader podcast. We are cruising along in the series, Hope in Hopeless Times.
This is week two, and we're gonna be wrapping up the second half of the first chapter of first Peter. Jeremy, how are you? And walk us through kind of what the big picture is for this week. Yeah, I'm doing great, thanks Jared.
This week, we're gonna be looking at how a Hope-filled life is a holy life. So as we set our hope on the grace to be brought to us, it's gonna change the way we live. We're gonna live differently than the world around us. And even when things get tough, we're gonna have that hope in the person of Christ, and in the life that we have to come with Him is gonna be our anchor to provide kind of stability in a world that's changing all around us.
Yeah, this is one of those things where it's the passages in here, Be Holy, because I'm holy, right? And you go, oh, is it that easy? Yeah. I just have to, you just tell me to be holy, and I just kind of wake up and I decide each morning I'm now holy today.
It's a real hard wrestle for the Christian who's been walking with Jesus for any number of days. We realize that life is really challenging. There's still a lot of things that come our way. And holiness is less of a wake up and behave in a certain way and more of a lean into relationship and it'll be the natural product.
It'll be the fruit of a relationship, right? Yeah, I love the way you said that, because hopefully this should give our groups a lot to talk about is just, even just initial impressions from that verse of that feels like such a huge, overwhelming command, but it's an invitation. Peter is quoting back from the Old Testament when the Lord called His people to live and to act like Him, to reflect Him in the way that they live. So yeah, there's kind of the house rules, any family has house rules, so to speak, but it's really about being more like our heavenly father than it is even about here's the house rules.
They're all wrapped together, but the heart of it is relationship. Yes, and when we get that out of order, when we start to think, follow the rules and that will equal a healthy relationship, then we start to become legalistic in our approach. We start to think, okay, it's all about following the rules and then God will love me as opposed to, no, no, you are loved, therefore, this is what it looks like to live in God's family. The Ten Commandments were given in freedom, right?
They were given as, hey, you are now free, live in the Promised Land, this is what that should look like, right? Yeah, well, just when we remember that any command we see in scripture, like you pointed to the Ten Commandments, for example, that the commandments are giving in a place of freedom, God's people had been literally set free from captivity in Egypt, they were brought into this wilderness on the way to the Promised Land and then God gives them kind of these, these are the commandments, these are the ways that you're to live your life, but the fact that we even have those points to the fact that we've been set free, the fact that they have the opportunity, for example, to observe a Sabbath or to keep God above all other gods, points to the fact that they're no longer bound to another culture, another empire, forced labor and other religions, that they're walking in this freedom that God has given them and he's telling them what this new freedom looks like, the abundant life that Christ talks about, not just eternal life, not just the reward we get after death, but what life right now looks like with God includes these invitations to trust him. So much of our focus around Christianity is life after death and this eternal hope, which by the way, is beautiful and so true, and yet there's a profound reality that we're still here and that the Christian has the most opportunity for impact in this life. And so what does that really look like for us over the course of our summer to be looking at this book and to consider what if we were the most hope filled, joy filled, active people in our communities, our neighborhoods in the name of Jesus, right?
So Jeremy, how can our leaders be best prepared as they walk into this week's discussion? So this week's discussion, even as we see the Be Holy because I'm holy, it's really about our hearts. It's really about the affections of our hearts. So prepare by spending time just asking God to kind of, you know, the prayer of David, like reveal the motivations of my own heart, like show me if there's anything in my own heart that is not pleasing to the Lord.
So just spend some time, you know, prayerfully thanking God for his love for us, the fact that he's brought us into a relationship with him. And as you begin studying and preparing to discuss this text, constantly be pointing people and be paying attention yourself to the relational nature of it all. That this is not, this is not like we've said, a list of do's and don'ts, but it's a, as you are now, your identity has been changed as you now, are living in a relationship with God and with one another, what is that going to look like? And so constantly point people back to the relational nature of life with God.
And as a leader, you know, you're gonna be in relationship with your group. You know these people, you guys have shared your story, you've done some experiences together, you've been in God's word. Don't get caught up in believing that you have to be the holiest of the group so that the group is catching up to you, but instead you wanna walk closely with your group and say, we are working on this together so that we can be in relationship with God. Further connecting you with the group rather than separating yourself from them.
You don't wanna create too much distance between the perceived holiness of the leader compared to, right? I remember just, the reason I was thinking about youth pastor days where the youth pastor in the eyes of most students is just like one half step below Jesus and it's just so not true. You know, you feel like an imposter so much at the time. And for life group leaders, I think it's really important for us that we remind our groups occasionally, hey, I'm with you, I'm struggling too.
I'm having a hard time with this one as well. That level of vulnerability is not only is it okay, it's really healthy in a group. Yeah, and in addition to that, as we're discussing this text this week, one of the other things we wanna do is not only remind ourselves that we're kinda in this thing together, we're in this Christian life, this family called the church, we're all in this together, but also that there are no sacred and secular, so to speak, divide in our own lives. Like so often we say, okay, this is my spiritual life over here and then this is my real life, for practical life, for daily life.
And so part of what we wanna do this week is kind of look at everything, our life as a whole and say, God cares about all of it. There's nothing that God does not care about in our lives. There's nothing too great or too small, too insignificant. All of it has a spiritual dynamic because God cares about all of our lives and the things that we do reflect the fact that we are those created in His image and reconciled through Christ.
So everything we do has the potential of being testimony to the fact that God is our greatest joy and our greatest hope. So we wanna help people see that everything has that spiritual dynamic to it. That fully integrated approach to my life is not compartmentalized into sacred and secular, like you said, thinking about, this church for me is I go at eight, 30 on Sundays and I have a group that meets at six, 30 on Thursdays, but it's like, no, no, you are one being and there's an integration between all aspects of your life. Jeremy, is that a good example of how we can try to take this conversation deeper?
Oh yeah, absolutely. That we wanna help people see that all of it matters. And I think one of the temptations we run into sometimes as believers is, verse 17 talks about how we're strangers in this world. So we're gonna be looking at how we're to love one another, like verse 22 says, brotherly love, that we're in this together, that church is a family, God cares about all these things.
But the temptation that so often we run into is this idea that if we're strangers in this world, then things in this world don't really matter. And that was one of the earliest kind of heresies or teachings that kind of we see in the New Testament that Paul and Peter and others are saying, no, there's someone who are gonna say, because Christ has saved us, we're just sort of spiritual beings and the things that we do in this life don't matter. And so that can become a legalistic form of abstaining from all kinds of things, or it can become like a license to do whatever you want. And I know in my own life, I've kind of been through both of those seasons as a teenager and at different points in my life where I think, well, if God's gonna forgive me, these things don't really matter.
Like, I just kind of wanna be a good person. But when we see that yes, we are strangers in this world, it's not because this world doesn't matter, but we're strangers in the sense that we live by a different, we live for a different kingdom. And so we live by a different standard and according to different family values, so to speak. Any kind of pitfalls we should be watching out for this week, anything that might help our facilitators, I'm sorry, our leaders, just create the most dynamic group possible.
Once again, we just want to be prepared to share stories from our own lives. And we really want to avoid this week of the idea that the things don't matter, that these so-called perishable things trying to fill our empty lives for Satan. He talks about that we can try to get busy filling our lives with all these things. And as Christians, we know that we can never earn kind of a sense of worth or a sense of value.
And so think through some of those things. Like what are the things that we try to fill our lives with that ultimately can't bring ultimate satisfaction and meeting and hope. But at the same time, don't dismiss them and say, well, then all that matters is that I pray all the time and this kind of detached sense of spirituality that has no real impact on our lives. People need to see that what we believe and who we believe in as the person of Jesus changes our lives as opposed to saying this life doesn't matter.
And of course, this is the church answer that works in everything, but Jesus is the perfect example of this, who was incredibly theologically astute, aware of God's word, could hang with the best of him in the synagogue, but also had no problem hanging with notorious sinners and could work out his theology practically. And had a way of not ostracizing either side, right? He wasn't making anybody feel outside of the power of the gospel, but it was really an open door of a conversation for anybody. And so as you think about what does your life look like?
What looks like growing and understanding of God's word, but also practically working that out in our daily life, in our neighborhood, our family, our workplace, our friend groups saying, I'm understanding this about God's word and how could this change someone's life around me? Yeah, and what you just shared, that is, I mean, that's the mission statement of the church, right, of Mariners that we want to, that's right, that we want to inspire others to follow Jesus and to fearlessly change the world. Like as you follow Jesus, your life is gonna change and it should mean that you start seeing the world around you differently. And not just because we start acting differently, but because our hearts are truly changed.
The love that we have for this Jesus, who loved those who were kind of outside, they weren't perfect, they didn't have it all together, but the love of Christ transformed other people in such a way that the world took notice. And so my greatest hope for group leaders this week is that as you discuss this text, that passion for God and for others, that whole part of our mission statement of we want to inspire people to really follow Jesus. Like it should be exciting. And so people should see that love in our lives and say there's something different, there's something kind of strange about you.
Like tell me more about that. I want whatever it is that you have. Yeah, so from stranger to strange, right? That's right.
We might say, hey, we might feel like we live as strangers and people might look at us like we're strange at times, but there's a beautiful compelling picture of what it looks like when the spirit of God is alive within you. You do, you look different, you act different, you talk different, it's just different. And it can be beautifully open arm inviting kind of different. So Jeremy, thanks so much for all of the work and effort you put into equipping our leaders with great resources.
And so like our leaders, we're grateful for you. And if there's anything else we can do, please let us know. We'll pray in for your week two. We'll see you next week.