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. My name is Kurti Wood. You're a group's pastor here at Mariners Church.
And we hope that in this time we're able to set you guys up well as our life group leaders to feel equipped for some rich and meaningful discussion based on the sermon. So before we do that, we have our new series started, How to Be Careful. So Eric Geiger, our senior pastor, and our lead Irvine congregation pastor, Jared Kirkwood, will have a conversation just now of helping you understand their hope for this series. So go ahead, take a listen, and we'll talk through the questions here at the end of the podcast.
Eric, thanks again for joining us on the Life Group Leader podcast. We're here chatting about our, really it's our thankfulness series, How to Be Grateful. We need a thankfulness series. We really do.
We do. We have a society that I think has lost its ability to be grateful. And if you're not thankful, according to the scripture, you're not joyful. There's a relationship to the two.
So anytime someone says, man, I wish I had more joy. They may not realize it, but they're also saying I wish I was more thankful because it's impossible for your joy to go higher, your gratitude not to go higher. And similarly, you cannot increase your gratitude and your joy not increase as well. So there is a, we'll see that in week one of the series.
So deep relationship between joy and gratitude. So people who want to be more happy, you got to be more thankful. I love that. Sorry, that's perfect.
I feel like we can stop right there. But why do we dig into the couple of weeks that we got three week series? Why don't you walk us through what you're excited about over these three weeks? You want to say everything I just said.
So week one, week one, it's going to be that being grateful is good for you. We'll look at this incredible passage in the Old Testament. You're going to see that guy commands you to be thankful. And it's not because he's needy.
It's not like he's the heavenly fodder up there who has something lacking if he doesn't hear thank you. He commands you to say thank you for you because it's actually good for your joy that you are thankful. So we're looking at this passage in the Old Testament on that. There's a very recurring scripture throughout the entire Old Testament that give thanks to the Lord for he is good at his love and his forever.
And every congregation will have a gratitude wall that first week. Oh, that's cool. So we're going to express what they're thankful for, but ultimately who you're thankful to, which is ultimately God because every good comes from him. There's a lot of talk in our culture about practicing gratitude, but I'm actually going to show you some research.
If you're grateful for the wrong things or in the wrong direction, it's kind of surface level platitudes and not true gratitude. We the right kind of gratitude because only the right kind of gratitude can increase your joy. Is there anything that you're thinking about expressing gratitude to another person? I'm wondering in a group context if there's anything that we can do over the next couple of weeks.
I think in this, the group context will be, let's be sure that we understand that all we have is from him. So there's a research project where, actually, a University of California, a professor that defined gratitude as, you're really only thankful when you believe you have a gift of great value. So, hey, come on, Christian, it's a gift of great value. Yeah.
And it was given to you by someone and it cost them a lot. Interesting. So you're not grateful, for example, if you think, man, I'm so grateful that I earned my promotion. Wow.
Not grateful. Right. Because you're essentially, you're thankful for yourself. Right.
And that's going to be a cycle that does not contribute to your joy. Mm-hmm. But, we're this professor. One gave you a great gift.
You have to cost them something, then you're grateful. Well, then who should be more grateful than Christian? That's exactly right. Because the greatest gift we have cost him everything.
Mm-hmm. So that's really the source of gratitude. That's so awesome. And then in the second week of the series, we have the Rooted Celebration.
Something that everyone of our congregations, these are a high point of our year. Yeah. And we too, we're going to talk about the one thing that destroys gratitude in your life. Mm-hmm.
I don't know if I want to give it away. Don't do it yet. You'll have to be there. And then Rooted Celebration, which is going to be epic.
Yep. Because we have, I'm so grateful for all the people you've been in the community. I'm super grateful for all of you. I'm super grateful for all of you.
I'm telling everybody this right now. I have a guy in my group that is telling us he's not a believer. Last night we did strongholds. And I had him praying in our group, just kind of, he was working through some stuff.
And I thought, I might have pushed this guy a little bit too hard. But we'll see. He sent me an email this morning. He's like, can we get coffee next week?
I want to get some questions for you. He's like, this guy's going to come to Jesus. He says he's not a believer. Yeah.
That's a look. Honestly, the first step to becoming a believer is realizing you're not a believer. That's exactly right. Yep.
Yep. All you need is need. That's the weekend before Thanksgiving. Yes.
We can for Thanksgiving. We'll have a lot of fun. And then gosh, it's Thanksgiving. Which means it's Christmas.
And then it's Christmas. Which means it's the new year. So we better get our gratitude going because without it we're not going to have joy. That's right.
So get our gratitude up. That's right. So like your players, what I would say is the weekends are going to be incredible. We are also entering into a season where I know that there are lots of people where the holidays bring up all kinds of emotions.
We have some things to help the people in your group. Our care and recovery team is working hard at creating some environments for that. Stay tuned. We'll share some more about that.
And as we approach the holidays, there's going to be a ton of fun. Thanks for your whole group, for the whole family looking forward to it. And then Christmas is just around the corner. So Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, everybody.
Awesome. I love hearing Eric and Jared have so much fun together as they really talk through how to set you guys up well. So hopefully here now me and another unco-host with me will actually talk through the specific questions for this week. So I want to introduce to you guys Liz Powers, our content pastor.
Hi guys. Thanks for having me. I'm having me back. Yeah, we're so glad that you're with us Liz.
It's actually kind of a little ironic that you and I are having this conversation because we work both so closely with those two individuals. I work with Jared day in day out helping make sure that all discipleship is running smoothly and the groups are supported and then you work with Eric, right? Yeah, exactly. So as content pastor, a lot of my role is working on our weekend content.
So Eric Sermons are all of our teaching team, but I get to be in these manuscripts and sermon content we can then meet with him. So it's great to get to talk to you guys and hear how it's going in each of your groups and how God's using these things just to develop your groups. Yeah, I love it. Liz, I'm so grateful to have you and we can kind of talk through it, but we really do represent so much of how we're trying to help you as life or leaders translate what you're experiencing on the weekend into some experiential and helpful, meaningful, rich discussions that continue this experiential process for all of us.
So if you've noticed like your bleeder to probably seem some changes to some of the content or working through so much stuff trying to help ensure that it's the most successful for you and as we do that, not only are we hoping that you'll follow along with us, but that you'll know where our heart is. And so even as Eric was just mentioning, as he thinks about this sermon and what he hopes for the group is that you see God as a giver, that you can be thankful because you know that God has given all. And just like that, while he might not have fully touched on that in the sermon, you get an opportunity here in group to dive deeper into that, right Liz? That's great.
Yeah. So you guys are going to be thinking deeper into that scripture that Eric taught from for this week, that first chronicle scripture. And the reason that it's a sermon aligned is that it's not going to be regurgitating exactly why Eric taught on, but you are actually going to be taking a deeper look and maybe even a different angle conversation might go in a different way than what you expected from the weekend. But we're hopeful that all of those things can be met that you guys can come in with your thoughts from the sermon as well as taking a deeper look together at the scripture.
Perfect. That's such a great explanation. Thanks so much for that, Liz. I hope you guys, that leader, leaders that's helpful to you as you kind of frame what this conversation would look like and what you can expect through it.
So for this specific week one of the how to be grateful series is how to be grateful and an ungrateful world. What are the things in this world that are really sending some cross messages to us? And also what is God's word saying to us and how can we live that out? So just initially I just want to point out right from the top that this rhythm, the rhythm that you'll really see stand out by the end of this discussion is worship that we can worship bad no matter where we're at and through worship will be in recognizing him as our giver that we will be able to be more grateful and hopefully ultimately more joyful.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So good. So lean in, we love a little start out with a good lean in question.
The first one says share about a time in which you are a recipient of an unexpected act of kindness. How would you respond? If you were grateful, how did you express gratitude? What do you think that we'll see in the groups this week?
Oh my gosh, I love this question because you kind of like, I kind of get welled up just even thinking about it. I mean, normally for me when I think about this, it's times that I haven't even been able to adequately or properly express my gratitude. Like there's nothing that I could really do to accurately repay them, which is a lot like our relationship with God. Like he's not asking us to repay him for these things.
It actually worship is our only response. So I love this question. Just for me, the response that I feel is, oh my gosh, I couldn't possibly express it to a person how grateful I am. So I'm hopeful that you'll hear some of that out in your group.
But I don't know. What are you thinking is going to come up in groups? Oh, I totally think that's true. I think someone who's already kind of had a conversation like this before will land actually right in that place.
But there might be others that are a little confused, right? And I hate to use the word confused, but they're kind of like, oh, well, no one's ever done something that I didn't know what to say. So I just kind of like, you know, struggle through it. And that's actually because they're experiencing exactly what you're mentioning, which is I don't know how to respond, like what I'm truly grateful.
It's I feel embarrassed or I feel like I owe them something and maybe some things can come out like that or maybe it's just thank you in a big hug and just be able to really acknowledge the different responses of everyone and allow, you know, each other or allow the people of your group to hear from each other as different expressions of gratitude and not feel condemned or ashamed that they maybe didn't have the best reaction or the right reaction. But hopefully as I learned this discussion will help them see what is the right reaction, especially to the gratitude that we want to direct or direct towards the Lord. Yeah. Looking down at God's word, we're going to read this first Chronicles verse.
My gosh, first Chronicles is quite actually a really rich book from the Old Testament. And I know when you first hear Old Testament, some people and even maybe some leaders might feel a verse, but trust me bear in on this. This is a beautiful, feels almost like a song the way that it reads. And we hope that it really jumps off the page to really help us see what is the right response to the gifts that we've been given by God.
So the first question here, what does David command that all God's people do? What does he especially emphasize through repetition in these verses? Why in last like why is this important? What do you think will really stick out to people here, Liz?
That's great. I want to point out a couple of things with this look down section because for some of you that maybe aren't as comfortable in doing something like reading a Bible study, this might feel kind of intimidating because you're like, I don't know what does David command? And I want to just encourage all of you guys take a deep breath and read over the scripture. And the answer is right there.
It's like it's observation. You have back to like your elementary days whenever you would read something and your teacher would ask you, you know, what are you seeing? That's what this question is asking. So what is he asking?
What is David asking guys people to do? He's saying give thanks. He's emphasizing this repetition of gratitude, this discipline of gratitude and even worship. Yes.
And luckily from our team, we actually give you a little bit of the answer here in the leader note. So when David urges people to seek after God, we can see again and again that this is what the thing the Lord wants us to grasp. So go ahead and read through that as you kind of as you kind of orient yourself for this discussion. Yeah.
And as it continues in this looks down section two in the next section of this little passage, I just want to encourage you guys again, it's going to ask about making a list of the things that God did for the Israelites. You might not have a ton of backlogged information on this. And that's totally okay because again, it's right there in that text. You can see those things right there.
If you guys just want to call out the fact that right there in verse 15, remember his covenant forever, the promise you are paying for thousand generations. We know in our simple terms of what God promised to them that they would be his people, that he would be their God and that he would love them. Like it doesn't have to be logical. You don't have to look this kind of thing up.
It's right there in the text. Yeah. I love that. And I even love in our two.
You mentioned making a list. That's the second question here. But I also love in the second part of the second question. We get a why question.
That's where we start to little interpret a little bit. So why do you think that David urged the people to remember? And while the philosophy of no wrong answers might not 100% apply, I still think it's important to create a safe environment for your group to help them learn to interpret the scripture. So everybody, why do you think that David have urging everyone to remember?
What's the big deal with remembering? And that kind of conversation will help illuminate the goal of this discussion. And even in the leader note, we kind of call out to it as well pretty clearly. So as we move on to Hebrews verse, we have one more look down question here.
What do you learn about God's kingdom and our response to it from the passage? I love that we pull a little new testament in here, right? Kind of helping see both the theologies here, the pre-Christ theology as well as we're looking ahead. What other things you're kind of thinking will experience here in the Hebrews verse?
Yeah. I mean, it's true. It puts us in the story. I mean, a lot of I think it's very challenging to understand our place whenever we're looking at things like the Old Testament.
We are there, but especially for some newer believers in your group. I think that this passage is going to be really helpful in showing that it's where it says therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. And that is in context of a passage talking all about Jesus. And what you accomplish for us on the cross.
So this kind of this part of the passage is going to be helpful for people understanding where we are now in this timeline of what we've been afforded. And oh my gosh, if you can think of nothing else in your life to be thankful for, you can be thankful that we're receiving this kingdom because of what Jesus accomplished for us. Amen. Amen.
Come on. I love it. The Old Testament is relevant to us. The New Testament is relevant to us.
These are beautiful things. But where we've been the story is, you know, with we see it now that we are post Jesus. Love that, Liz. That's so great.
So, you know, kind of turning away from scripture a little bit, but looking out into the world to kind of say, what does the world do? And what how does it work? How do scripture play out in the way that we live? We've got a couple of questions here with look out.
What is the difference between remembrance and nostalgia? This is kind of calling back to the second passage of the second passage of the second half of First Chronicles. And can nostalgia lead to gratitude in the same way that remembrance can? Why or why not?
I think this is a great question. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I could see this going on in different ways in groups.
So I really want to hear from you two Kirby. I think that what we can we can talk about with this is nostalgia feels like longing for the past. Yeah. And remembrance is gratitude for the past.
The nostalgia is I want what I used to have, whereas really as followers of Jesus, when we remember and we're grateful for what God has done for us in the past, oh my gosh, it can only point us to the future saying that same God is there. He's there in my future and he's still providing for me and still accomplishing things for me. That's so good. That is absolutely the value behind this question, right?
Helping start to paint the picture of the differences in remembrance, but why do we remember? Right? But coming back to the question, so why do you think that the scripture, you know, put in this, I also too, I've seen this in even my own group, you know, when people have laid down some sins in their lives, right? Or surrendered parts of their old life and sometimes they long for those things.
And while that might be a human experience like nostalgia is, you know, what is a godly discipline that's active, remember, that's the act of worship. So these are things that we can replace in our lives that, but we don't have to get to that just yet, right? So we're just kind of talking about the concepts here, but we are hoping you as leaders will kind of gain a sense of that. So second question, again, just kind of framing for the look in the more, because you say this is a word of nostalgia, maybe that will accuse some people to start thinking about themselves a little bit, but number two, and they're going to look out.
How does being a grateful person give us an opportunity to share the hope of Christ or others? Are we starting to think about how are we going to, how is it being grateful going to change the way I live? And it's also going to change the way I move in the world around me. Yeah, really good, really good.
So that's actually a pretty good transition to look in. So we'll go ahead and move into, wow, how does this scripture, how does this, yeah, how does this discussion really start to play out in my life? Yeah. We've got where in your life is it easier to be thankful and where is it harder?
What do you kind of, what do you guys see in here, Liz? This is just going to be an amazing opportunity for your group to be vulnerable with each other. And just sharing like, man, I hope that this is a time of encouragement for one another because you might see a bunch of similarities across your group. And then there will be some people who are super easy to be grateful in this one area, but it's harder for another person to be grateful in that same area.
So I'm hopeful that this is actually going to be a really encouraging time where you can kind of come around one another and getting your perspective wide and a little bit of your circumstance. I'm hoping will be really beneficial. I completely agree. And then it says I'm in light of today's study.
What are some ways you can begin to cultivate gratitude? I mean, these are the practical pieces, you know, the things and you want to shy away from being too advisory, right? You want to advise each other? Or really, this is a look at looking into myself, right?
What can I do to cultivate gratitude? That's what my husband do, to cultivate gratitude or so on and so forth. And additionally, for three, spend time as group sharing some of the stories. Ooh, stories, here we go.
Let's talk about what are those things that you remember and that you hold on to. And when people in your group can't remember things, they can point to where you have seen God grow. So here's a way that you can share with others and encourage others without having to get advice as you share the story of how God showed up for you. Yeah, exactly.
And honestly, I think that this is one of those practical ways, is to share stories with one another and to encourage one another. You know, when I'm going through a hard time, a person in my life group, I hope is going to look to me and say, remember, don't you remember? When God was faithful to you? So this can also be a discipline, this can be a communal way, a rhythm for you guys to practice gratitude.
Absolutely. And if you have someone in your group who is musically talented, let me tell you, after you are spending some time sharing stories, there is nothing better than throwing that guitar and starting to lift up your hand. So, or maybe you just love to play the Spotify, hit the play. That's really diverse.
And there's so many ways that we can worship God beyond just music. But I really think that there will be a really intentional time, even if it's just the way that you close out in prayer, to really have a worshipful, praise experience at the end of your discussion today. So we love you guys. Sorry for running a little way.
We're so excited to see how you can continue to be grateful for all of you guys on field.