Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practice the spiritual rhythms and changes the world together. Welcome leaders to this week's edition of the Life Group leader podcast. We are starting a brand new series this week called I Need a Miracle.
We are so looking forward to walking through these incredible passages with you, weekend, and week out and more importantly for you to walk through them with your life group. Of course, we're coming just right on the back end of Easter, a little bit of secret insight that we're recording this before Easter. And so we are saying in faith, knowing and believing that it wasn't amazing Easter. And now excited to kick off this series together.
And I'm not alone in taking this off, but we have got the very well, no, the very well respected, the very highly esteemed contributor to so many things here at Mariners with the Gospel everyday podcast. She's our pastor of Next Step, ladies and gentlemen, Tiffany A. Lions, it's Tiffany Lions. What's up, Tiffany?
It is so good to be here, John. Wow, what an intro. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, and that was a free off the cuff that it comes from sincerity.
We are and all that you do. I'm super sound of beer. Yeah, we were saying before this. So you know, you're doing this before, but you're telling me this the first time you've been on the Live Group leader podcast.
It is. I have been a listener, but first time, first time. A long time listener, first time caller. That's what I'm saying.
Can I be honest with you? Yeah, please. I've listened to a couple. So I couldn't go with that straight up thing.
I was trying to edit it according to the black couple time listener. Yeah. But now we'll start to listen now that I am on it. That's what I'm talking about.
Yeah. Yeah, listen, listen, listen to this. I know you know, if I have more time podcasts, you're a great contributor to that. And of course, there's so much more to your role in what you do here helping people take their next steps and how they serve and activate their gifts.
So now we're so grateful for you and all that you bring. We were just saying, I need a miracle. It took us about half an hour to get these mics turned to fucking ready. It did.
It's crazy. It's like what a start to the series. We needed a miracle. Yeah.
The Lord provided. He provided the form of Dallas Viva walking us through tech support. We're so happy. But man, this has got to be a great series.
Life Group leaders, you hopefully by now have already received your new series magazine. Yeah, these are so just well done with the articles and supportive resources that are through here that the volunteers that have contributed to this thing. And not only do they look and feel beautiful, but the way that our volunteers have helped contribute and shape the content in here is just so incredible. And so every time we do these, we do this about three times a year, these hard copy series mags, leaders you may be wondering, well, where do I get my sermon questions out?
Well, they're in here. They're in here every week. You can find week by week the sermon discussion questions, which are in here and we're going to walk a little bit through now. But to be curious here from you, what are you excited for in this series as you look at the healing stories of Jesus and what they mean for us today?
I'm so excited because I think for many of us, there is at least one thing in our life, probably multiple things in our lives that perhaps we have lost hope with. And for some of us, there are seasons that's like, wow, I feel like the lost hope is all consuming. And we can look back at what Jesus has done and what that actually means for us today. And so I really excited about the hope that might be able to be found in Jesus and his ability to actually step into our situations and circumstances.
So I think our people will be blessed by this series. Yeah, I'm super excited. Yeah, that's it. And then we did the series overview.
We did the series overview. We did the series overview. We probably got that. If you haven't listened to it, yeah, go back and listen to that with our senior pastor, Eric Geiger.
One of the things we also talked about was the extended prayer times during the series. I think at least here for Irvine, if not of all of our congregations, three out of the five weeks, there's going to be an intentional invitation to receive healing prayer, which, man, that's who we believe God is. And that's what we want to press into the series, that there's nothing that's without hope. There's nothing without God's ability to rescue and redeem a situation, whether that's a physical, emotional, spiritual burden that we're carrying, that what we read about scripture is indicative, not just of who God was, but who he continues to be today, that he is a God that heals.
Not only does he can, he do what he wants to. He wants to step into our situations. Yeah. And so the leading question here just opens that up, right?
Initially for our leaders, as we look at week one, the passage is going to be from Matthew 9, 27 to 34. But the leading is, do you think miracles still happen today? Why or why not? How would you interact with that question, Tiffany?
I think for sure. My answer is yes, I believe they still happen today. And I believe it because Jesus is still alive. You know, the same power that resprisedly dead lives in us.
Like, I mean, he is not less powerful now than he was when we read about him in the pages of scripture. And because he's consistent that means that he's still lying. He wants to interact with us in the same way. That's right.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'll let that Eric walks us through this in the first part of his message as well, right? He talks about the difference between a naturalist and a supernaturalist.
And actually it's impossible to be a follower of Jesus without believing in the supernatural, the God who created all things, who spoke all things into existence, the God who came to us in flesh, who took on our sin, shame, and our burdens, who we just celebrated was not only crucified but was rose again. Like this is who Jesus is. And so not only do we see that in the truth of scripture and who God is in his character, but also, I don't know if he's probably for you too, that we have the experiential knowledge of seeing a God that heals. Have you maybe encountered that in your own life and in the life of others?
How have you seen the healing nature of God? For sure. I was actually trying to think of a time and honestly, this weekend I had somebody come up to me and about a year ago, I forgot this story. But she came up to me and said, Hey, a year ago, you prayed for my dad, who was essentially on his deathbed in Egypt.
I was FaceTiming him from the patio of Fairness Church. And the doctors said it was bleak. There was no way he was going to survive COVID and then some subsequent things. And she told me just a couple of days ago that her dad is alive and well and is doing great.
And when I look at stories like that, the only explanation because the doctors can't explain it, nobody can explain it, is that there was a miracle that's a place. And I was so excited to give her out. I was like, let's pray right now. Let's celebrate.
Let's pause and thank God for the miracle that he did. And it blows our minds. And yet this is so true to who God is. It's true.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So many different stories and examples of where we've seen God heal.
And then also plenty stories and examples where in the immediacy, we don't see what we're hoping and we're longing for. And that's going to be a substantial part of the conversations we're going to have in your groups. And Eric's going to walk us through that each week as we look at these healing stories. But, you know, he talks about that they're mirrored.
They're called murals for a reason because we don't always see them. And because God is above all things, he can suspend nature, the laws of nature and super see those to outwork them or act. And we see that and we believe in it. But we don't always see that in the immediacy.
So just as important as it is to share those stories of hope and longing where we've seen it is also to allow space for a man where we haven't seen that. And Eric does this really, really this message. Of course pointing towards the faith and assurance that the ultimate miracle has already been one, like all of us. Jesus followers, that's a resurrection story.
Dead to our sins, alone in our trespasses, enemies of God against him. Dead to rights. And because of what Christ has done, like he raises us. That is a miracle in and of itself, right?
And so we're going to look at these different things. And I think the other thing to say about miracles too is, you know, in my background, at least, we start about signs and wonders. And we'd say it's a sign and it should cause you to wonder. Like the miracle is not the miracle itself.
And a lot of these teachings are going to revolve around. Yeah, there's a sign and it's causing us to it's pointing towards something else. Like what's your favorite place to go in Southern California? You're a longstanding Southern California resident right now.
But if you have a friend in town, like where do you want to take them? Coronado, Mark, for sure. One of the places. Does that come on?
Yeah, Crystal Cove. You know, it's beautiful, right? Like if you're driving down PCH and you're, you know, kind of towards coast of Mason, you see the Crystal Cove. It's not like, oh, we've arrived at the side is meant to take you.
And the same way the miracles are assigned pointing us to something deeper about who Jesus is, dude. There's going to be a lot of that through this. So yeah, host that conversation well within your group. So then we look at the passage today, Matthew 9 and it's along with actually, right?
It's about 18 through 36. You're going to want to take turns and maybe read it in chunks here. But Tiffany, as we look at the passage together, what kind of things stand out to you? I mean, the questions here that we're highlighting are, you know, what you learned about the people that humbled themselves before Jesus.
What you learned about the woman that was bleeding with an issue of blood. And really the thematic for all these questions is what do these people have in common? What do you see as we interact with those that were healed in this passage? I mean, the first thing that stood out to me was that they're all desperate.
They were desperate for Jesus. It was so clear that they were desperate that there was faith involved with all of these people. They believed, you know, they were desperate for help. And then they wouldn't have gone after Jesus had they not believe that he could actually do something about their circumstances.
And so there was faith involved. There's this, uh, desperateness about them. And so I think that those are a couple of the characteristics that stood out to me in this. Right.
And you see, um, four different healings, five different people got a two for one with the two blind men that were healed. And any healing Jesus is showing us, right? There's a desperation. There's a need, but also his supremacy over physical elements over suffering over death over blindness over evil that Jesus reigns supreme over all things.
And then in all of these situations, um, you're, you just said, right? They seem desperate like no hope. There's nothing that could happen that can happen. I mean, this is basically debt in one of the healings, right?
They all seem like they were very, very final. And so you see desperation and you also see a mixture of faith in them calling out, calling out to Jesus and calling out to Jesus. And Eric walks through that a little bit too, just the connection between our faith and miracles. What would you say?
What would you say to that? What do you see? I love what Eric pointed out in that our faith isn't a hero in this. That's so vital and so important because I have heard really well meaning people say so, we're really damaging things one day when they equate the strength of somebody's faith as the ultimate because the reason we can have faith is because of the strength of Jesus, the healer, and the miracle worker.
And so I love that Eric made it really clear that our faith is not the hero in this. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.
It's not that we have like faith in our faith. Like faith is not some like this form of commerce that if we have enough in it, we can cash our faith chips in and then finally get our blessing and our healing, right? It's faith is the mechanism by which God does stuff. He gives us this gift of faith and faith is a part of it for sure, but it's so much more about his willingness and his faithfulness.
And I always point to how much faith the Lazarus has. The Lazarus was dead. Yeah, no faith. He didn't know whatsoever.
And God still still did it. And you know, sometimes you do hear that. Well, if somebody's not healed, it's either a couple of things. It's a lack of faith or it's a sin problem.
And why you don't want to totally dismiss all of that? But man, we have misunderstood like we can't make the stuff happen. We can't do it in our ability to try to earn something from God. It's about his miracle and what he does.
But you do see this component of desperation and faith, which I love your highlighting for us. And then we get into the lookout in the different story. We read that these people in the lookout question are desperate for Jesus. We see people that admire Jesus.
We even see people that oppose Jesus. And what do each of these postures towards Jesus lead us to? How would you interact with these lookout questions? Or the second lookout question, are these different type of postures still applicable to our world today?
And maybe where do you see it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that as I think about these things, the three different categories that's built out here is, you know, the people who were desperate for Jesus, they were close and they were ready to receive this hearing. And the people that admire Jesus, it's good.
But maybe there was a lack of proximity or like they got to admire from afar, but they weren't like, we're here asking for it, you know. And then the skeptic, you know, of what he does work when we do see what we think could be a miracle. We're so skeptical that perhaps we miss Jesus working where we try to rationalize it. Like I could think about the man from Egypt who was on his death body or go.
I could rationalize that and say, well, you know, the doctors did this and then, you know, maybe it wasn't a healing, you know. And so I think we could probably try to rationalize just about anything. And so I started to think about where I was and all of this just Tiffany Lyons. And honestly, I have to work to always be desperate.
I don't just, I'm not like an eye land in the desperate category where I'm ready to be, to receive whatever got asked for me. I think that it's easy to slip into each of these categories at different stages in our lives in different seasons. And so I think I have to, I have to work to not be skeptical. Even when I hear, I'm sure you've encountered this John, but like when you hear about a miracle that just feels like, whoa, this is wild.
Which all your goals are that way. But sometimes when you encounter that you're like, wow, I don't know what I think about that. And so yeah, so there are a lot of times where I have to do the gymnastics and remember I need to be desperate. Yeah, it's good.
Need to be desperate and have the understanding again, it's a miracle. That's a w always see, but you do see it as a normative operation of what Jesus did. Jesus always came proclaiming and demonstrating. And anytime you talked about the kingdom, one of the ways that we saw that the kingdom was here and it was coming was through the physical demonstration of healing, so driving out demons.
That was a normative part of Jesus's earthly ministry. And it's a ministry that's given to us to experience his healing to play a part in believing and stepping in and praying for other people to receive healing. Like we have that place as Jesus followers to do the stuff that Jesus did. And so, yeah, part of that is the desperation.
It's recognizing that things are broken. There's pain in the world and that pain can be used to drive us towards a fuller dependency upon who Jesus is. And then I love what you're saying too. Like I had a friend that recently said something looking at, it seems like it was so long ago now, but the whole ashberry revival that broke out like, amazing, right?
And people had lots of questions about that. And there was a post that went around and somebody said, you know, when it comes to these kinds of things, I'd rather be gullible than cynical. But I think, oh, man, there's something in that for me, like not naive and Leslie Fair, but it's just like, man, yeah, I want to lean into something. And I want to lean into this and believing and and attributing anything that happens to me.
This is God's goodness and he's in control and he's sovereign over all these things rather than being dismissive and having a nation that lost a press and to see more of that because we're desperate for that leaders, you're desperate for that in the in the groups that you leave like no doubt. There are people in your groups right now that are sitting under, you know, the immense weight of a negative diagnosis or a wayward family member. There are things that seem irreversible and impossible. And if we believe and we do believe that what we just celebrated a couple weeks ago is true that Jesus rose from the dead and his powers that work within us, the neck gives us hope that all things will be redeemed and will be restored.
Maybe not always in the timetable that we want, but we can have a hope and a confidence to know that that's who God is and that is what he's doing. So then to look in question, you're going to probably have a form of this question we get a week out within your groups during the series, but what does Jesus need to restore in your life? Is it relationship with him or relationship with somebody else? Where and how do you see these miracles speak to something that you're facing now?
How would you kind of approach leaders to navigate that question and to shepherd their groups well through that? I think encouraging people that this question is hard, acknowledging that this question is hard. And you're asking them to be super vulnerable because when people actually put words to the hopes in their heart to the things that are broken, need restoring, it takes so much courage because you're articulating this and you're hoping that God will step in. You're hoping that a bear will happen.
So what if you articulate it and a bear doesn't happen? Does that for their faith? You know, I think this is like a struggle to articulate every time I'm praying with people with extended prayer. The first thing I say after they share what it is, I'm proud of you because you were bold enough and courageous enough to even say it.
It's really good to think. And so sometimes I think as we're leading people, they may not even see the courage they have in asking God. And then the other thing that as leaders, we also have to wrestle with this. We recognize we have a God who can perform miracles, but yet we have stories where he has and stories where he doesn't perform the miracle we're asking for and then how do we reconcile that?
And so I think having that double-visited faith of God, we are going to be bold to ask you. But even if you choose not to, I'm going to believe that you're still good. And I think even walking your people through that before you even go through the process of over the season, you guys are going to be praying about some amazing things to happen. And God's going to answer some of those.
And some of them are not going to know why, but it's not going to go the way we're hoping because we all see the whole picture. That's right. Yeah, that's the nature of what it means to follow him to grow and mature with you are fave to have this realization of the kingdom that is common is still coming and the relational component of what that means to feel like you don't have the answers for everything, but to sit in it with people, to be in it, to pray with them, to listen really well, and to point to the sufficiency of the resurrection of Jesus. And what that means for all of eternity, for all of eternity.
Tiffany, come on. So good. So grateful for you and your perspective and how you pastor our church so well. And leaders, we can't wait to just see how God wants to use this series over these next five weeks.
We know we've got a lot of new leaders that are listening that just graduated from rooted and we've got rooted that's starting out here again. So, man, we're so grateful for what you guys are doing, how you are shepherding day in and day out on the ground. We could not do what we do. We could not steward what God is doing without your obedience and without your leadership.
And so we're praying for God to do great things as we go through this series together. All right. Thank you so much for your time. Leaders for your time.
We will see you back here next week. Thank you.