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. Hello and welcome to the Life Group leader podcast. We're so glad that you tuned in.
My name is Tim Luke, I'm ends pastor. Glad to be the guest today on the podcast. And of course, as always, we have. Me, Kirby, your group's faster here.
And I'm so excited to talk about gratefulness. So great. It's a good time to be grateful. It's true.
It's so timely. It's finally November. It's a little rainy today, but we have things to be grateful for. So great.
Super grateful. So great. But as we look into this specific discussion guide and we start to set you leaders up for some great discussions, we hope that you guys will have some great intentions as you're starting these discussions. First up, rhythm reminders.
This discussion will be a great opportunity to kind of step into helping and challenging those in your group to be daily devoted to God's word. And what's not written here, but I think it'll come really naturally as we go into the discussion is also sacrificial generosity. So just want to prep you guys as you think about these important rooted rhythms that keep your group focused on God's word and continually transforming one another, spurring each other along. So as we look to our first question here, lean in, getting the conversation started with some fun silly things.
The first question is what is one life hack that is now an unconscious standard practice in your life? Tim, what kind of life hacks in your life are you seeing work right now? Yeah, kind of a thought provoking question, but I think this would come in the area of parenting and is being a dad of three kids, a five, and a 10 year old, two things I can think of. One, I try to incentivize my kids when I really need them to do something and do it quickly.
So if there's Legos all over the living room floor, I will literally say, I will give money to the first kid to pick up their mess. And so I have to have cash on me at all times. The other is anytime we're in the car because it helps the time go by, we will play some sort of game, whether that's 20 questions, punch bug, how many Teslas will we see in Orange County, all of those games and that incentivizes our time together. That's so sweet, I love the game on games, especially because you have two such fun, awesome boys, I'm sure games really help the time pass and help them keep engaged.
That's so great. I love thinking about life hacks too. I think one right now that I'm just, I know is great is keeping your range jacket in your car. I know I was looking everywhere for my range jacket this morning and I couldn't find it, but then I remembered, oh right, I just keep it in my car because that's the best place for it, right, when you get up and walk around.
So as long as you remember it, otherwise it's not really a life hack. Well, it wasn't a life hack this morning because I completely forgot about it until I was where I was. I was like, oh my gosh, it is in the car. So but it felt very unconscious as a life hack.
Yeah, so unconscious you get a life hack. So like conscious, it wasn't really hacking any of life, but hopefully you've got some good crafty people in your guys' groups who can share some of their own fun life hacks, kind of have a silly way to start your thing. I know with TikTok or Instagram reels, we see so many little hacks and tricks and how to peel and orange better, how to smash some garlic in a new way, or cut some vegetables and maybe some people have implemented, some of those things. Oh, I just thought of a good one.
My mom taught me that to put little snacks into baggies and she would light a match over a knife and then she would cut the bag in half. And because the knife was hot, it would seal the Ziploc bag and she would do that for all of our food. So she doubles the use of a single use? Yes.
Single use plastic. The amount of money would say, I think probably a culmination of $20 across our whole life. Wow, I wanna try that. I'm excited to try.
Yeah, definitely. So, but of course, you know, we're hoping to inspire some good, fun, lively conversation, but you can go ahead and take a turn with this conversation as you kind of giggle. You know, it might be hard sometimes to move from a lean in to a look down. So I always encourage, you know, think of lean in as the before the discussion begins and then look down as when it really does.
So you can kind of insert a prayer here. Okay guys, I love that we're talking about this. Let's go ahead and pray before we read God's word together. And that kind of starts the group off setting with a different tone that doesn't feel too like awkward.
Right, you kind of see that Tim? Yep, absolutely. Okay, awesome. So look down, you know, you're hopefully gonna step into prayer and then look down and read God's word.
We have a Psalm here. Wow, I really love Psalms. I think they're super helpful, easy to meditate on, easy to call out. And so as you read this, hopefully read it aloud that will really start to inspire kind of the, I think some of the worshipfulness that comes out of Psalm when you read it out loud.
Even in church this past weekend, we stood in red acts together out loud, which I thought was really cool. So standing reading scripture out loud, I think there's really can be some impactful moments. But the two questions here for this verse, what are the main verbs and adjectives as we have that help illustrate a project to God and worship and then what, based on this reading, what is the relationship between worship and gratitude? What do you kind of think the groups will get out of these questions, Tim?
Yeah, I think it's critical for our hearts to worship. It is an act of prayer and we're praying, or we're singing our prayers and we worship and oftentimes the songs that we sing that our worship team leads us in our giving God praise, giving God glory, recognizing there is so much praise and gratitude in the Lord that we serve. And so there's a total correlation and it's a way that our body can physically respond to pray and sing praise to Jesus. Absolutely.
It really seems like those worship and gratitude are really almost interchangeable, right? And sometimes we can kind of think, wow, is expressing our thankfulness or giving affirmations really synonymous with worship and praise, but I really do think that a posture of gratitude really is a way to walk out worship, right? So, hopefully people kind of pull that out of the song. And then you can step into another song here, which I absolutely love, better to kind of double in on how we delight on God's word and how this actually can help us be cultivate gratitude in our lives.
And that first question here after song one, really asks that question. It says, what do you learn about the person who delights in God's word and how might this person cultivate gratitude? I love this song. I actually wrote a paper on this one in my grad school class, just this past Sunday.
And this was exactly what we pointed out so much. Some one sets up the rest of the songs so that we can see both at songs are a meditative place for us, but also they are instructional for us. They help us see, like it says, delight in the Lord's instruction. These songs that are worshipful also help instruct a way of living, a way of walking out.
And I love the metaphor here in Psalm 3. He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams. Those flowing streams are, yes, you could say, God's instruction, God's delight abiding in him being the tree planted by the flowing stream. So this is a good opportunity even here to pause on some of these verses and really allow some of these words of God to soak in to the people of your groups.
If you have the time, I would highly encourage you guys to pause here at some of these songs and read over them again and again, to see what comes alive. Anything else you'd like to make a note on these songs here for everybody, Tim, before we head over to 2 Corinthians? No, I love in verse two, just recognizing that we can delight in the Lord's instructions, his word and meditating on it all day and night. When we get in God's word, when we meditate, we absorb God's word, it is hard not to delight in his presence and be with him.
Verse three, as you talked about in other translations, it talks about the flowing stream is actually like a river of flowing river. And Jesus is actually referred to beginning in Genesis is the river of life. And that is why these trees, if you notice a river and there's trees all around it, they're deep rooted and anchored near the river in Jesus. And so I love the kind of the thinking that Jesus is the river of life, giving us all the nutrients and everything that we need so that we can bear its fruits in its season.
And it says it leaves you not with her, whoever he does, prospers. So we need the river of life, we need to meditate on his word and delight in his instruction. Absolutely. And I think there's something, even in this song that you can see, even the way you're talking, it's kind of like, there's a synergistic effort to this, right?
So when we delight like more growth and we're rooted in God's word, then we experience more gratitude and then by more gratitude, we meditate more and then by meditating more, we have more delight. It's like this kind of exponential almost growth. And so I think that's kind of the encouragement that we hope your group calls out of this. It's like, oh, I'm feeling really ungrateful.
I'm feeling frustrated. Well, meditate on God's word. Well, I don't feel like I'm delighting. Okay, well, let's read this together and spur these words and courage us.
And let's get closer to God's instruction, God's word. And that will help reflect and create in us a new heart of gratitude and thankfulness for all that he's done in our lives. So not only has God's instruction important, but as we read Second Corinthians, another topic comes to surface on ways that we can engage in gratitude and also grow in our gratitude. And hopefully that you will see, it has something to do with generosity.
So the first question here is, is it surprising to you that believers who excel in faith, speech, knowledge, and diligence in love might not also be generous? Why or why not? And that's calling to their verse seven as the giving and generosity isn't listed there, but is then only listed next to that, or is it secondly to that, where you can be excelling in faith. You can be excelling in speech.
You can be excelling in knowledge. But yet you haven't taken a step towards, expressing it in a new and different way. So that's according to verse eight and nine, what should be the primary motivation for our giving and how is this related to gratitude? What are you hoping you think that the group will discuss as they look at this verse, Tom?
Yeah, I mean, anytime that you can talk about giving and generosity as your group, I think it's just super convicting, but also super helpful. Because we often are more innately people who have a scarcity mindset versus an abundance mindset. So when we change our perspective, when we look back, if it got faithfulness and his generosity in our life, we recognize his abundance, and then we can then open our hands up and go, wow, he's given so much, so I must to give so much. So I want people to- Yeah, the term motivation.
Yeah, the term motivation when we think about his goodness in our life, his faithfulness in our life, and it should spur on a really good question of generosity. There's never not been a time when my group talked about generosity, and there wasn't different opinions. There wasn't somewhat convicting. There wasn't somewhat, oh my gosh, we're not in a season where we feel like we can do that.
Instead, there's vulnerability and their support, and it's great. So now is the time where we, especially as we approach the holidays and Thanksgiving, that we can look at our giving and actually have a giving plan. Like if you're married, you should have a generosity plan, and that shouldn't be a conversation that is the wife decides, or the husband decides, it's a union decision where it's something that we give towards that we both love and yeah, there we go. It's so good, I so much of that.
And I think this is a safe place in your group, right? Where we can share honestly with one another, where we might be struggling, and there's ways to gently nudge each other along in our journey of generosity, not just to wrap up the numbers, but because we have this truth in mind, which as the leader notes says, generosity isn't indicator of our spiritual growth, but as we really understand how much God has done for us, that when we open up our hands and surrender our lives more and more to Christ, our money, our finances, our time, our efforts all come alongside with that. And so generosity with all things, but specifically our finances, our ways that we can tell, hey, how much are we really surrendering and giving into God in this time? So that's a good helpful conversation and kind of gives you an indication of where your people are and what allow it to be a safe place for you guys to engage in it.
So before we really start to ask people to look in, rather than just looking at this verse and seeing what is standing out to them, we want to look out of the world and see what kind of things that world engages and what they think about, how culture says gratitude should look like and so forth. So what quick fixes do people turn to in an effort to cultivate gratitude and does it work? This is an interesting question to think to. Yeah, it's kind of an interesting one as we think, okay, what are the quick fixes?
What are the ways that other people outside of Christianity cultivate gratitude or anything come into your mind? I don't think it matters anybody's faith to have some sort of gratitude exercise. And we've probably heard if you're in church, circles, different practices and tools, like I'm gonna write down 10 things on great stuff for every single day. I'm gonna share things I'm grateful for with a friend or a spouse or my group.
And anytime that we are physically writing down or verbally talking about gratitude, I think that shapes our heart. And I think that's where, when we have to think about things we're thankful for, it might force the easy ones, you know, the lunch I ate today or whatever. But when we can think a little deeper, that's when we recognize, wow, God has been so faithful. It's true.
And it becomes the motivation for how we respond to people, the world, like we're just, we can be people of gratitude, people of generosity, because we recognize His goodness. Absolutely. And there are lies that culture says, you know, that they try to tell us, you know, rather, I think something that's really sticking out to me, that I think really combats a lot of our own gratitude, is like you said, the scarcity mindset. But also I do think too, like the fact that we feel like we have to give back what we've been given, right?
When someone says when they do something nice, you're like, oh, okay, well, I'll get you next time. Or, you know, there's, I think it's really common in a secular world where if you do something for someone, it they expect you to do that back for them. Or if you give to something, it has to be something that they give back in return. And I think that's what's so counter-cultural about our face is that it's this weak-if without receipt wanting back, right?
We're able to be grateful for what that has done, knowing that there's nothing we can do to return the favor, to return the gift that we've been given. And so I just think so often, culture says, you know, to truly be grateful, you have to give back, you have to give back as an act of goodness, not out of just a reflection or just out of gratitude. So it's an interesting one, because I think everyone can appreciate the gratitude is good for them, but do they always call back to that, thank God is the one who is given them all. That's an interesting conversation, I hope your group gets to engage in.
So lastly, as we look in, there's a lot of different questions here. And I would kind of help pick one or two to really camp on for your group. And I think if you want to call back and you had a good discussion on the life hacks, I think question three is really helpful here. What are some hacks, you know, in your own Christian life, that you'd love to share with everyone in your group, or I think if you're thinking about, it's one of the specific things that's come up, worship sacrificial generosity or devotion, and you're trying to help people really take an accept, the question number one might be good as well.
Is there anything, any of these questions that are really standing out to you, Tim? I think the question number one, as we reflect on the three spiritual disciplines from the weekend message, which of sacrificial generosity and daily devotion, which of these is the easiest to implement in your life, and which is the most challenging based off sacrificial generosity. Like I said, sometimes that can be a convicting conversation, but I think it's a super perfect time as your group to go, all right, as we approach the holidays in a county like Orange County where abundance, sea and wealth is affluent, could you then have a conversation based off that? And like, how are you or your family or you as a couple, how will you approach the holidays with your generosity?
Again, generosity isn't always monetarily, it's time, treasure and talent. So how will you serve it? Maybe one of our outreach events. How will you, you know, will you find a family in need that you adopt and you hook up a bunch of great Christmas presents for their family, whatever.
I think it's just, it gets people thinking about how can I respond and combat the ways that this consumer holiday could change our heart. Yeah, and I love that that question is an all play. For someone who might already be already have this great sacrificial generosity plan, they might have not been thinking about how daily devotion is an act of gratitude or maybe someone who's really great at giving but has a really hard time putting their hands up and worship everyone has an all play here as we think through. Okay, where what comes really naturally for me and what comes is a little more challenging?
So I think that is such a great question. And we hope you guys have a great discussion this week. Really finding some good action steps to really help apply this weekend's message to your lives and to grow and faith together. We love you and we're kind of free of it.