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. What do you think people say? I don't know.
They say thank you. Thank you. Oh, of course. Of course.
A classic, classic Kenton. I love to hear it. I love to hear it. Well, like our leaders were so glad to start off this podcast with some things that we're thankful for.
Did you? What do you like to say thank you for most right now? Right now, most of all the things to be right here in this room with you. You recorded my Twitter podcast because I've been isolated in quarantine with a man called is scientifically proven to be always in the common cold, but I'm back out today.
Hopefully not infecting her before. Please Lord protect me and keep me healthy and safe. But we are hoping you guys as well are staying safe and healthy out there. It is it's been quite a little rough season.
I feel like everybody's little little babes are sick or dads getting sick or all kinds of things. So we hope you guys are staying healthy out there. That's it. I believe it.
But as we go into Kenton's message kind of pulling it apart, but also looking specifically at the scripture that he's talking to and helping you guys interpret the scripture for yourselves in group, we're going to start us off right here with our main point that's been our main point for this whole series in good times and hard times. We can foster gratitude by reflecting on God's goodness and his good gifts. Yeah. And what a joy to like be able to unpack this message a bit this week.
As you heard the official handoff for those that have been around me for a long time. This is a message that we look forward to every year. Yes. Classic Kenton forums created here and again to have this conversation about gratitude and yeah, it's such an incredible series.
I know sometimes we get into the mindset, okay, thanksgiving. So we have to talk about gratitude. Sure. But actually we know that gratitude is a practice that we're invited into every day.
Yeah. You know, first that's what it says. Be thankful all things because this is God's will for your life. Yes.
Not just in this window of Thanksgiving, but for all the time. So I love that. It's not just in good times. It's not just during Thanksgiving, but it's in all times.
We could be thankful because we're reminded of what God has done. So good. So good. I love how Eric has shaped the last couple of these kind of pulling our sense of gratefulness is attached to joy, which I think is so beautiful.
And here we kind of take a little bit of a turn of digging into what are we, what are we really wrestling with that is preventing us from our gratefulness. So we have our rhythm reminder here of repentance, which is an interesting one to think, oh, how does me repenting for things cause me to be more grateful, but we're going to kind of hopefully unpack that through this. And by the end of the discussion, you'll kind of see how that comes together. So starting off fun.
Honestly, I love this question. I think about goat. If you don't know what a goat is, it's greatest of all time, which is Kirby had to look it up. So in urban dictionary, kind of, but it's funny because when I think of goat, I really do think of content.
So he really is a goat in my mind. So it's so cool. Like thinking he's the one preaching this message and yet we also to get to ask the question of what are some other goats in our lives. So I go to sports and the sports guy.
Listeners, you're the angry, but I did grow up in the Bay Area. So Warriors and Irish Giants. So I go to Bay Area and Jill Montana, you know, but that's my thing. Sports all the time.
Sure. Yeah. Well, I got nothing to contribute to the sports conversation because every time I do, I'm silly about it, but I remember when I was a kid, the goat that was huge, then I was my family. It was big falcons fans.
So like Michael Beck was huge on the first jersey I ever had, but he ended up not being so great of a guy, which is a little unfortunate. But that's what I think about when I was headed in that direction. So I thought we held this fold up some really good conversations for you guys. But I love in the leader note here, the second paragraph, you'll see a great transition.
Sometimes you might find it hard to transition the conversation from the lean in to the look down and this sets up really well. You can just kind of, and not to be overly Christian-y's, but you can kind of end the conversation with what's the greatest goat of all time. It's truly Jesus himself. So and our actually God is really specifically identified here as God is our, the goat of goodness and that really can help inspire further conversations.
So looking down at God's word, we're going to read together James 1, 12 through 13 and 16 through 17, broken down here for you guys to read if you don't have your bibles right here in this discussion guide. And of course, our first question is looking down at this passage, what do you learn about how we are called to navigate trials from this passage? John, what are you kind of seeing as we're looking at verses 12 to 13? Yeah, I think just a practical reminder, when we're talking about look down, we are talking about look down at the passage and you want to even lead your group to say, if they come up with something, hey, where do you see that?
Where do you see that? Sometimes it's temptation here is to rush to stories or examples, but we want people to engage God's words directly. So I just look at the passage with you together on it now. What do I learn?
Well, I learn that there's a blessing with me in door trials. I see that first well. I learned that we stand the test that we can receive a credit life. I learned that God is with us.
He's promised to do with us in the middle of trials. So what I see is that we navigate this not by ourselves, but we navigate this with God's presence with us. So you want to encourage your own group members, look at the passage, interact with it, call out what you see. It's good.
It's really good. This next question is kind of helping us frame the truth that we might be able to pull out of here so you can kind of unpack that as well. I think that's super helpful, but still we're looking even if it's even if this question starts to kind of take a look at your own heart, we're really looking to what the scripture says. So don't hesitate and kind of reframing this question to kind of suit as we look at the truth in this passage of where God asks us to respond as we're enduring sin and trials.
Yeah, and you want to draw out is it's a verse 13, the difference between temptation and trials. I think just last week I got a question from somebody about is temptation is sin and we can say confidently. No, it's not. And we can say that because obviously our word itself, Jesus was tempted.
If he just tempted it every way. Yes, he did. But it's often temptation could be the birthplace right over or given over towards a desire is where we get into those things. We give a foothold to it and trials and sin could come on the back end of that.
So good. So good. And I think it's important to as we start to look at this and see highlight God's goodness in where it's kind of standing out in this passage. The leader kind of points out a lot that the giver is good.
So are the gifts. There's true regardless of how we feel and you get it in time, but equating God's goodness with our circumstances, we cultivate whatever we do equate God's goodness with our circumstances, we start to cultivate betterness and entitlements. So when we're looking at the scripture, when we're looking into ourselves or we're saying I'm being tempted by God, we're not recognizing who God is and how what he's doing and how his own goodness. So that's kind of our challenge there.
So as we look out and identify the relevance of God's word in the world, we ask a couple questions here. So what explanations, excellations and quotes kind of thinking what do we say to ourselves? Does the world typically give and question why we experience trials? So we're kind of looking at that.
I'm being tempted by God. Where does that come up in culture and how are those explanations different from the Christian worldview? What do you kind of think in there? Yeah, I mean, there's so much, there's so much in there.
I mean, you can go towards the sort of the fatalistic life is just random. There's no meaning. There's no purpose behind it. We're just a collection of molecules.
meaningously bouncing through the universe. So things happen. That things just happen and are meaningless and pointless. There is the other view of that.
No, everything that happens to you is a direct correlation to how good you are or how bad you are in this world. So you've earned it or you deserve it. It's all on you. And you just got to get through it.
Just got to power through it. And then there might be the other view that says, yeah, things just kind of happen. So you know what? Do whatever you want.
Like pleasure seek do whatever because it doesn't really matter because it's meaningless. So just live life. I want to, there's up to now, but it doesn't really matter. So do you.
Do you. What works for you. one thing because there's no hope in the field. Right, right, absolutely.
And the second part of this question is to say, how is this different from our Christian worldview, right? So we kind of look at the culture as their longing, searching, hoping, dead ending, and we get to turn to God's goodness and say, yeah, we can try to project our own situations, right, on to God. But rather, what does God say about the situations? Rather than, where is God, it's like, it's, it's rather than like, why is God doing this to me?
It's like, where is God in this? How is he using this to strengthen me or to, or to work out his goodness? And you, you can kind of see some of that discussion in the leader note here. The second question, what does it say about the state of the human heart that when hard times, that when times are hard, we are quick to believe God and believe false things about him, if we outright, if not outright abandon him.
This is really cut into the heart there. Totally. Absolutely. Yeah.
And it tells us that we're pretty circumstantial, right, on our view and our connection with, yeah, it's great. All good. You're getting what I want. Good.
The minute things go bad, yeah, I'm out. You know, we don't only do that in our relationship with him, we do that relationship with one another where we give it very transaction and it's very situationally based on what we think we're seeing and what we're owed in the moment. And Eric did an amazing job last week talking about that, the entitlement and thankfulness gap. Absolutely.
And we do that with him all the time. Yeah. If we don't think that we're getting our prayer and soon enough where he didn't give us this because we did that, then we're out. And I'm so thankful that he doesn't do us that way.
Yeah, praise God. We would be out. So true. But yeah, it tells us that our our hardest is broken, right?
We're circumstantially based. Absolutely. How do you feel like this is going to kind of come to light in in Kenton sermon as he kind of articulates a lot of our own gratitude practice? How do you kind of see this this question be answered from the Kenton?
Totally. I mean, I think Kenton is amazing, right? That he gives us very practical handles that thankfulness isn't something that just happens. Yeah.
But it is a practice that we have to practice. Right. And so that's why he leads us through those exercises to actually say thank you. That's why he encourages us to have a regular rhythm of Thanksgiving to writing it down to acknowledging it because like anything the more that we enact it, the more that we become that thing.
So good. It's I think it's just really great practical at saying this isn't just something that you just this easy that you magic would just become. Right. This is something that we become over a long period of time with faithful practice.
So good. So good. And so before we go to look in, I want to kind of take us back to look down. We actually had this opportunity to go through this verse 12 and 13.
But you might see there's also verse 16 17 here. And so when we start to think about the practice, I would if you guys have time in your discussion, I would actually encourage you guys to look back down at at 16 through 17 and kind of see a little bit about how that might add or bolster your conversation. 16 and 17 says, do not be deceived. My dear brothers and sisters, every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights who does not change like shifting shadows.
And I just wanted to point out to you guys that in this verse 17, father of lights is truly creation. And that is one of the ways that I think I see Eric and and Kenton both points away that we can be grateful is by looking out into God's creation and saying, wow, look how beautiful this because this is a good and perfect gift from God. So if there needs to be some further, you know, where do you guys see where does greatness come naturally to you or where can you help cultivate gratitude? It can sometimes be experiencing coming down from God's creation itself.
Right. So it's that point of general revelation is this revelation where you see God's goodness in the world around us. But of course, man, we've got the ultimate insight in the author behind it. We know what points do.
Absolutely. That's one thing to be thankful for a sunset. It's quite another to be thankful for the one who goes to the sun to see. Absolutely.
Yes, beautiful. And that's too like even if you wanted to try to look at that as a lookout, then after that, it's like, okay, so like, what does culture say about about creation? Right. And what are they missing by not knowing God is the giver of these things?
So then they move into then we can move back into look in kind of circulating back through our standard rhythm here. But we kind of now turn to ourselves and say, what are some of these difficult trials that we've experienced in our life, the ones that are keeping us from gratitude? What temptations have come along in those trials and how did the trials shape your opinion or feelings about God? JT, what do you think is going to come up for people in this conversation?
And how is a leader? Can they really prepare? It'd be so much, right? And I think sometimes there could be a difficulty with questions like these, especially if your group has been meeting for a little while, or even hello, new life group.
You might be listening to this. You just were just really proud of you amazing. So well, you've had you've had this conversation. So I get it like even longer if you get in these, we'll be talking about this already.
You know, how much more do I say? But actually, every time that we recall it, not only things that have gone on the past, but what are you currently facing that is a source of confusion? Were you currently maybe running towards isolation because it's something that you've encountered that there's never an end to that kind of conversation. There's never an end to that kind of learning.
So I think again, like always leaders who set the tone, right? So if you can sit, sometimes they're grittling out or head to head, you know, that's a great opportunity for you to say, Hey, for me, this is what I'm experiencing. It's not a competition. It's not a scale.
And often as a leader, you set that tone and you invite people into it. But don't shy away from it because it doesn't let's send me to you in a beautiful place when we share these things. Absolutely. So I love that you were even talking to the, how do we set the environment for this?
Because as you can see, this is kind of naturally leading into a repentance conversation, freedom from stronghold, but we're helping to actually identify some of those areas in our lives that we have been struggling to be grateful and rather than just saying, be grateful for that. That's actually digging where is this coming from? What has been shaping you through this? And how does this express itself?
So even we go on to say, how can these trials then actually help us to bless others? And also where and where can we contemplate God's goodness more in this? And then hopefully that will have an impact towards our gratitude. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, lean into it. And again, like in our faith, in the Christian faith, we are a part of movement that came out of death and then resurrection. And so we shouldn't be afraid to talk about moments of difficulty and where things seem to be hard pressed, where we seem to be overwhelmed with temptation and trials, because man, we look at the greatest evil that was ever done, God sent his son and we killed him. And God took that and made the most beautiful thing ever, the redemption of our hearts and souls and reunification within him.
And it's amazing. I think sometimes this person's we want to rush to the other side of the story. And we should not be hesitant to talk about what are we experiencing now? How is that challenging our view of ourselves, God, and others around us, knowing that we're not like fatalistic because we know that there is redemption in the other side of it.
But let's dig into the messy middle because God often wants to meet us in that place. It's knowing that we're not stuck in it forever, right? Because there's redemption in the other side of it. So lean into the conversation with your groups this week.
Go for it. Yeah, those were praying for you guys and hope that you guys have a rich conversation. Happy holidays and happy Thanksgiving. Real quick Kirby, favorite Thanksgiving side dish.
Oh, I'm the queen of sweet potatoes. I love marshmallows and a little granola. Some people don't do a little granola on top, but a little bit of the barbell. Oh, like a little crunch and a little soft, you know.
I guess maybe pecans. Oh, okay. I just picture you as a single, a granola bar. Of course.
But what about you? I like the cornbread stuffing. Oh, I actually do love that. I love all about Thanksgiving.
Hey, we got Thanksgiving and the Oh, more sports. All the things. Okay. All right, you guys, we're praying for you.
We love you. Happy Thanksgiving.