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. Well, here we are. We are at week eight, the final week in our summer series, looking through the book of first Peter, Hope in Hopeless Times.
Man, what an amazing eight weeks this has been. I have just so enjoyed just the deep dive, looking to God's word, to study, to learn more, but also to put into practice within our groups and our communities, what it means not just to be students of God's word, but to put it into practice. So we hope this has just been a great encouragement for you and your groups. And this is going to be an amazing end to this series.
I love the title of the series during me. Get ready, here it comes. The details on the devil. I feel like we need a drum roll on that one.
The deets on the devil. This is going to be a whole lot of fun, isn't it? I mean, if you've been around church for a while, or maybe there are so many things that we could say about the devil, I mean, immediately I think about, kind of the cartoonish imageries of this devil with his pitchfork on the shoulder of one person, while the angels on the other side, or I go back to flannel graphs in Sunday school and all kinds of crazy stuff. But this is a subject that we often don't really get into, so often in church, because I think there's part of us that wants to really kind of deny the real existence of the personal devil, because it just seems so like, other than like really, are we really going to talk about this in this day and age?
But this is one of the reasons that there's just a great encouragement when we stick to the passage, like we're doing this through the series, we're not skipping a verse. And so this is here, not only in this passage, but throughout the Canada scripture that we need to have this understanding about who the devil is and how we resist him. Just want to read just real quick before it. I'll toss over to Jeremy, Eric in his message, I believe he's going to just quote this great quote from C.S.
Lewis when it comes to where I often find myself in my understanding and discussion about the devil. He once wrote that there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to fill an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.
And the devil is equally pleased by both errors. Put another way by Jeremy, remember that movie, Waterboy, Bobby Boucher, Adam Sandler, Bobby Boucher's mother, is it everything? Mama said, the devil is football, the devil is at the level of the things. And we can have that mentality in our Christian faith where we can excuse everything on the devil or we can have this temptation to maybe believe that he doesn't exist.
This is going to be a great discussion this week and you're going to help us this week, Jeremy. Let's go for it. Yeah, so this week we really do want to help people see that at all times are in the devil seeking to devour us. But in times that feel hopeless and challenging, we're more easily discouraged.
The way to resist him is going to be with humility and standing firm in our faith. In the message we'll see that in order to resist the devil, we humble ourselves, we hurl our cares on Christ when we hold our ground, right? Like the devil and spiritual attack is a real thing that we all endure, but there is a way to live out the victory that we already have in Christ. And so this week we do want to end on that acknowledgement that life is hard, we're even attacked at times, but we do have victory and hope.
That's right, that's the key to all parts of our faith that yes, the struggle is real, yes, the devil is real, but yes, even more real is the victory of Jesus. That's already been won, that we are walking into reality of. But yeah, there is a battle that wages currently and we need to be wise and aware about that battle, knowing that not everything that we face, not every temptation comes from the devil, right? I mean, I think scripture talks about that, James I, that it's not, sometimes we're tempted by our own evil desires and we're drawn into sin and those desires give way to sin.
But yes, there is an awareness that we need to know that there is an enemy that is after us, that's contrary to God's goodness and his will, and it's the devil's a created being, which sometimes we have a hard time understanding that, what did the devil come from? Well, did God create the devil? Well, yes, actually, because if God did not create the devil, then who did? There would have to be another creative power outside of God's sovereign power.
But just like you and I, he was created with the dignity of causality, with choice, with freedom and gave way towards, into his pride and evil from this place. And so this is a real being that we want to be aware of, that we resist, but also not everything comes as a result of the devil at work in our lives. Sometimes it's just our fallenness and our flesh, but this passage does give us some great handles of how we can resist evil in our lives. Yeah, in the opening of our discussion guide, there's a question that seems kind of lighthearted in a sense, because in the text, Peter describes the devil as a lion, right?
And if you remember, if you listened to last week to the podcast, we mentioned how Nero would feed Christians to the lions and that he would, that he would burn Christians and there was an intense persecution. And so that same imagery of the devil is a lion looking to devour us. What you just said about kind of that crippling fear or that just overwhelming presence, anyone who's ever had a bad experience with any kind of animal, right? Like if you were maybe bit by a dog as a kid, or I don't know, thrown off a horse or whatever, like it can become a very scary thing.
But sometimes it can become even a paralyzing fear, right? Like maybe you yourself or you know someone who had a bad experience with a dog and they can't even be around dogs. And what we see in those kind of cases, we usually want to help those people find kind of that healthy, healthy respect. Like yes, this can be painful.
Yes, there can be danger here, but we don't have to live in fear, right? And so kind of the discussion guide, that's one possible way that we could open up the discussion for your group and look at the reality of the devil and of spiritual warfare and attack that it's real. It can be painful. There's times where we've surely been burned and bitten, but we don't have to live in fear and be paralyzed and constantly on the defensive.
We are victorious and we can have hope. And so we can move forward in our lives while not downplaying the reality of the danger and the pain that is out there. Yeah, it's about being aware. It's about acknowledgement.
It's also about being aware of the victory that we have in Jesus. And the devil is not on equal footing with God at all. I mean, God is omnipresent. The devil is not.
He's bound by space and time, right? So we're not dealing with an equal partner. We're dealing with a defeated foe. But we need to be aware and conscious of his tactics and how to overcome and walk in that victory, which is already ours.
That's great journey. And so Peter, as he begins wrapping up his letter, like this is kind of a final word. He encourages the believers to resist the devil, knowing that they're surrounded by a culture that could feel hopeless, but to know that they have hope. And so within our own groups, we kind of want to do the same.
We want to summarize that reality that we've been hitting all summer of, at times the world can feel hopeless, but we have hope as those who have a victorious king in Christ. And so there are several questions in the guide that kind of aim to hit the same target from different angles, so to speak, of like what are the things that we've learned? Where have we been encouraged? Where have we been really challenged?
Or maybe thought about our lives, our relationship with God, our relationship with the world around us differently as a result of this message series and these discussions in our groups. And so I would encourage leaders, look back if you've been using the magazine or you take notes in a journal or whatever, look back over your own notes, things that have really stood out to you, come prepared with that, and then encourage people to do the same. Like ask them, where have you really grown? What has gotten shown you?
And look back through your magazines or whatever to help people do that. And then one thing that I would love for group leaders is to be able to do as they think about this series and what it means to be a part of what God is doing in and through Mariners Church is remind them of our mission as Mariners Church, that our mission, our goal, our desire, as a church at large on a smaller scale within these groups is to inspire people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. That means there are gonna be some things to be scared of, there is gonna be resistance, but we wanna inspire people to follow Jesus, no matter what, believing that he can in and through us change the world. Awesome Jeremy, I'm glad you got the statement right.
I was really nervous for a second, but you nailed it, that's it, absolutely. And to acknowledge God doesn't give us that fear, He doesn't give us that spirit of fear, He gives us power, might and a sound mind, and these things are given to us, not just for personal safety and security, not just for personal peace, but so that we can have the confidence that we can advance the gospel, the kingdom story in and through our lives, that we don't have this victory so that we can sit on a laurels and rest in isolation, but that we are advancing, that the mission of Jesus is a forward movement. It's not something that happened in the past that we stop, remember and celebrate every once in a while. It's an activity that we're a part of now.
And so we mean encounter difficulties, and we encounter temptation and evil. Again, this week there are tactics that we can have to stand firm in our faith and to push forward, knowing that the victory that has been won in Jesus is our reality. So that's really good journey. Hey, I love, if you want to just give us a preview, as this is the last week in the series, if there's anything else for me to know about this week, let's do that as well.
But as we look towards the next series, why don't we give our leaders a little bit of insight of what to expect and where we're going here? Yeah, so the next series, this is pretty exciting to me because we've walked through over the course of eight weeks, first Peter, and if they'll remember, there was two weeks and we kind of said, okay, don't dig too deeply into what Peter's saying here about our identity in Christ, because we're going to do that in our next series. And so in this upcoming series, we're going to have six weeks on our identity where we look at you are, fill in the blank. And we're going to go back to what Peter says about, we're a chosen people, a royal priesthood, et cetera.
It's like we're children of God, the right of Christ. And so this is a great opportunity to invite people who maybe aren't in a relationship with Jesus yet, who maybe have been out of kind of a church fellowship for a long time, to encourage them to come with you, just to hear what God's word has to say. So we'll use that versus kind of a springboard to look at different texts to say, what are these six different things that Peter talks about, our identity in Christ? And how does that change the way we live?
And so it's going to be a great series. We'll use kind of the same format for the questions. There's been people who've asked, are you going to keep kind of doing questions like this? The answer is yes.
We don't have the full-blown magazine every time, but we've got discussion questions that will help you walk through the sermon in the text each week and we're going to be looking at who we are in Christ. So bring everyone you know. That's it, come on, it's going to be great. So did you catch that?
We're not quite done with First Peter yet. This book is so rich and dense that we're going to go back to First Peter to nine through 12, spend six weeks on our identity because everything springs from that place who we are in Christ. And it's going to be great. Next week, Labor Day weekend, we'll have our pastor Mary just kidding be sure.
He'll do a fantastic standalone message and then we'll jump into this series on Christian identity. Just one more thing, just to note, Life Group Leaders, we have our next Life Group Connect series. That's going to be happening as a part of this next series, starting on Monday nights, September 20th. That'll happen for six weeks.
And that's an opportunity for your Life Group to welcome new people into your group. This is one of the ways that we regroup to graduates back into Life Groups during our Life Group Connect series. And so you'll be getting information about that. There's also an option for you if you're not welcoming new folks to use this six week series on campus, kind of as a catalyst for your group into the fall session.
So you'll be receiving some more information about that. Well Jeremy, this has been great. Thanks so much for all your hard work and walking us through this series. Really looking forward to the next one.
And we hope as always, this is a great encouragement for you and your Life Groups as you discuss God's word but also grow to practice it in your life groups. We'll see you next week.