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. Hey, Life Group leaders. Welcome back to the podcast.
This is Dallas, and I am joined by Kim. Hey, everybody. Great to be with you. We're super excited for this series.
Loving Daniel, loving getting to nerd out, loving sitting on weekend services and just learning. It has been so good to just sit, learn, take notes. The magazine is so great. It is so great and beautiful.
We have it. Our Life Group discussion questions are on page 56, but you can hear me turning the page because if you go just before page 52, Daniel chapter 3, you have everything you need in there, and there's notes on the side. That's where you add all your notes from the weekend teaching. It's just so good.
It's so good. And the topic is know what to never compromise. That's the topic for today. That's a deep one.
Just sitting on that title is pretty great. Know what to never compromise. That would a bad lean in question, a bad opening question is what do you never compromise? It's just really personal.
I'm so thankful that we have other lean in questions for us. Let's look at that first one. Lean in. What are some underdog stories you're a fan of?
Are you asking me? I'm asking you. What are some underdog stories? Honestly, the first thing that came to my mind is my husband's love of the Cowboys.
They all heard the American fans. I'm not waiting to send him this podcast. You made my day. Yeah, pretty great.
Every weekend is just here in form. Underdog, loving. America's team ramp. Oh, yeah.
Keeping it in the theme of football though, the movie Rudy. Oh, yeah. I think underdog story. Rudy, me.
Love it. It's fun to just go around and we're like, why is this question important? Why would this be fun if you were leading it with a group? Oh, it would be super fun.
What it feels like, you know, like even as a family, there's always somebody in your family that is in that place that needs extra support, extra love, extra care. And what that feels like to be on somebody and to see them rise above things. Oh, good. Yeah.
I think just hearing, like you get to know people a little bit. So you say, Dallas Cowboys. And because I know you, I know the story like, oh, your husband has a diehard. So you're getting bits and pieces of our story that that's probably not something that you would share rooted like that's not in there.
Right. So you, and this is the beauty of groups is you slowly piece together someone's full story and questions like this help you piece it together. It's great. Okay.
We're going to, we're going to look down. So if you were at our, our leader huddle, you know what all of these are. We're in a lean in. We want to have an opening question that is going to drive the main point of our discussion home.
So that's probably one of the most important questions. And then we're looking down. What is, what is looking down mean? Looking at the word.
The word. And for what it is like letting it speak to you, letting it simmer in your heart as you read every word of it. And how can we, when we are in the look down section and someone begins to share a part of their story, how do we redirect that? How can we as a leader when someone's like, oh, you know, this reminds me of a time in my life like how can we as leaders redirect when people move into story in the look down section?
I think in a general way, just reminding them that we gained so much insight of just sitting in the scripture, how, when it happened, how it happened, what are the characters in it? Why was it taking place? figuring out the whole message that God has breathed into the scripture before we start jumping into the next place in our lives. Because it seems like we get a little cloudy.
Our vision gets cloudy when we take it and put the lens back on ourselves again, without having the full skill of the word. Yeah, that's great. In this look down section, there are three passages. So as a life group leader, that's up to you to choose if you're going to do...
So I'm looking at page 56. I have Daniel 3, 1 through 7, Daniel 3, 18 through 18, Daniel 3, 19 through 30. So as a life leader, those are big chunks. How can you pick one of those or two of those?
And as a leader, what would a leader need to do to know which one they picked? It's like the on the nose answer. Like, how would you pick as a leader? What would your game plan be if you were leading a group to know which one to pick?
Oh my goodness. For me personally, it would be the one that grabbed my heart. So you read it, you sat with it. Oh, gosh, it convicted me.
It rattled my cage, the one that you wrestled with the most. Yeah. So what you're hearing us say, life group leader is read it, read the passage. And one of the things we did at the leader huddle was walking through, okay, when we do look down, if I were writing my own questions, I would read the passage and I start circling, I start highlighting, I start pulling things out.
So as I'm reading Daniel 3, 1 through 30, as a leader, I think one of the benefits of being a leader is you have the bottom of the iceberg. So underneath the water, normally iceberg is bigger than what's up top. And it's the same thing when Eric, as he teaches, as he prepares the wealth of knowledge under the surface of preparing. So you would prepare for all rays.
The Lord is going to do something even greater in your heart because you were taking the time to prepare. But where, what are you circling, what's standing out to you? And that's the one you should pick. It's the one that captivated your heart.
This can't sound. Absolutely. Yeah, because then you'll come with some wrestling of your own and authenticity that spurs on the conversation, just because of the things that you have sat with ahead of time. Sorry.
And don't feel like you have to do the whole passage. It's picking a chunk of that and leaving it for people to be able to pour into and wrestle back and forth. They're such richness in that. Great.
Yeah, that is great. And making sure that you are reading the passage that you're going to pick, which ever one. So is there one that you, as you look, you bet, I'm looking at Kim's, Kim's, I'm cheating right now. I'm looking at her book and she's got notes all written down.
So that's why I'm asking her the question. Is there one that that stood out to you? Oh man, I would say either the second child, eight or 18, or the last one. Today, I would say eight through 18.
Because the verse that said, even if I know that my God can rescue me, but even if, that even if it's such a big thing in our lives, even if will I still praise God? Even if do I keep my eyes on him knowing that my obedience needs to be consistent, no matter what, knowing that my faith in God never does waver because even if he chooses not to rescue me in the way I think he should this time, he has a reason. That's what we would call double fisted faith. And I think this could be a beautiful, if you're picking that passage, this could be a beautiful prayer moment in your group.
Hey, where are you praying right now for God to do the miraculous? Where are you praying? On one hand, we know that God can God is fully capable. God, if anybody can do it, God can.
But even if he doesn't answer that prayer in that way, we still know that he is good. That's right. So this could be a really great opportunity as a leader to practice double fisted faith, to pray some dangerous prayers to pray some bold prayers to believe for it. But I love that even if he doesn't such a powerful passage.
Such a powerful passage. And if we learn to live life at every other part of our life, we hold loosely too, because we like to hold tightly to our kids and our jobs and our identity and our wealth, all the things that this world gives us, right? And then we try to not hold as tightly to God, just think he'll always be there. Then if we reverse that and we hold tightly to him and the rest of our life we're just loosely holding on knowing that he's good and he's got the chance of the perception.
And I think leaders to have the freedom to ask that question. Hey, what are you holding on to really tightly? This is not in our questions today. But giving you the freedom to shepherd your group, whether I have your picking that passage of having the freedom at the end saying, hey, we're gonna do something a little different tonight.
I want to know where are you praying for God to just move in a minute way? Where are you praying for double fisted faith? And just seeing what brings out of your group, what are they gonna say and how you guys can join in prayer together? But giving you the freedom to go off script to best lead your group.
I think it's so powerful. We want to give you that freedom to do that. That is so good. Because you don't know when you're sitting in there, there's only a couple questions.
If you're gonna choose that passage 8-18, there's only a couple of questions. But as you dig deeper, let it be. Explore that with your group because you don't have to use every question that's on the page to get to the richness of God's word. Kaleel.
Yeah, it hurts. That's good. Wonderful. Preparation.
Yeah. Planning that out, sitting in the passage, just asking, hey, Holy Spirit, would you leave me? Would you guide me in this? So that is looking down.
We've looked down at the passage. Now we are going to look out. Where do you see this alive in your culture? Where do you see this alive in where you work, your friend groups?
And, you know, if you're going on that, double fisted faith. Hey, wherever you see someone in your life live with double fisted faith. Like if you were just double clicking on that and I'm sitting as a leader and knowing that, okay, we read Daniel 3, 8-18, we asked those questions. Knowing at the end, we're going to ask the question like, hey, where do you need prayer?
For God to do the miraculous thing, to have double fisted faith. A question might be, where have you seen God move with people who have double fisted faith? Where have you seen people in your life? Practice double fisted faith.
I love that. That's a great question. And the question in between look out section that leads us to the look in the look out. It's so easy in this crazy world, this chaotic world we're in, right?
To see everything that we see when we look out and how it encourages not to hold tightly to God. There's so many things that try to distract us away from that. So that look out section is important in that it gives perspective to the looking in. Yeah, it all works together.
It's amazing how it does that. But I think you're seeing us with the theme of pick a look down and even as you're looking at the look in questions, you see the double fisted faith. It's all there. And I like the rhythm reminders prayer.
I'm so glad they highlighted that rhythm reminders on page 57, right? Border. This is a really powerful moment for your group to pray. Any other thoughts on leadership insights, thoughts on the questions that you have for our leaders?
Other than reading for the Cowboys? That's double fisted faith. That is totally double fisted faith. There's just that's richness of this text.
Sitting in it personally is the golden thing for yourself as well, right? I mean, you always learn more as a leader because of your own time preparing. But it still isn't teaching. It's not like you walk into teach a lesson.
It's that you walk in with a story and wrestling to be able to spur conversation. So I guess my encouragement is to give room for lots of conversation for people to pour in their own wrestling to that. Yeah, that's great. You're leading people.
You're leading by example. I read scripture too. Let me show you how God's moving in my life and the exact same thing that we're studying. I think that's beautiful.
Beautiful, beautiful. It should be a great discussion for your groups. Super thankful for you. If you have any really cool stories about how you got to pray with people in your group this week, would you share with us?
Lifegroups.mariners.org. We would love to hear those stories. We would love to pray alongside you and the people in your group. Send us an email, send us a message.
We would love to hear that. But thank you for all you do. Thank you for the way you lead and shepherd. Signing off.
Until next time.