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. Hello, Life Group leaders. This is Dallas here, filling in for JT as host, and joining me is our Women's Pastor, Esther.
Hey. Thanks for being here. Of course. You know, JT's not here.
I don't really know. We're just gonna wing it today. Oh, let's do it. No, we got some structure.
We got some structure. Of course we do. But first I'm looking at the magazine. I need a miracle.
These are awesome. The work's so hard. I'm so proud of us and our church and this is so amazing. Hopefully every single person in your group has one of these because they need it.
I run my group. We've done the Life Group questions and only the leader has the questions and we're having to spend minutes repeating the question. Hopefully everybody brings this to group because it has scripture in it, it has the questions, it has stories. It's awesome.
So hopefully everyone in your group has it. They're bringing it. They're bringing it to weekend services. It's so good.
But we're picking up on page 30, the Life Group Discussion Guide. We are in week two. And Esther, can you read the teaching summary for us today? Yeah, of course.
It says Jesus provides in small ways and large ways from a luxury item at a wedding to food when there is none. He provides for you all according to his riches and glory. The boy who gave us food to Jesus participated with Jesus in a miracle as we give we are able to participate with Jesus too. I love that last line.
We're going to hit it at the end. I think it really fits in with all the content. Jesus is at a wedding. So lean in question.
As I'm going to ask you, I'll answer as well. What is the most elaborate wedding you have ever attended or seen? And press to the most about the wedding ceremony or the reception. Okay.
It was my sister's wedding. It was at the Biltmore Hotel in LA. I don't know. It's okay.
I didn't either. But it's a ball with a hotel. All right. And yeah, it had very, very high ceilings and everything was just very expensive and elaborate and fun.
And yeah, I think that was the most elaborate wedding I've ever read to you. I recently went to a wedding and it was in Corona, Damar. So I thought it was really cool because it was so close to the water. And I think the thing that really set out to me was they served steak and lobster.
Oh my goodness. I'm so scared for barbecue. Am I wedding? Because we were bawling on a budget.
Yeah. And the budget had multiple zeros and it cares into mine. I just thought it was so cool. I remember.
Take a lobster lobster, surf and turf. I can tip my wife. I'm eating steak right now. I'm eating steak.
She would extra longer. I think it would be like a little butter dip in sauce. I thought I was king of the world. That is awesome.
So I need to be invited. Weddings like that. No. Most of them I don't get invited to the reception because of the officiating.
But yeah, this one I did. I'm so thankful for. We saw so cheap. I'm not sure.
No. Anything will impress us. Yeah. I'm not really seeing other people but sharing and sharing some less.
Yeah. And as you do that, we look down. We look down into our text and there are two passages of scripture. We're not going to read them all.
But we hope that you're group. As you hit this point in group time that you would stop and you would read the passage. And hopefully that leaning question is a way to get everyone engaging in the conversation. And then this is another one that you could do to get everybody engaged.
A lot of times even astronaut meetings will read a passage of scripture. We do like the popcorn reading where everybody take a verse and you just go and it's like middle school. So I start counting around the table. My verse four times I don't stumble on the martini.
But you could allow everyone to read the passage of scripture. So we do look down. We read the passage and then we answer some questions. And as you as you look at this page 30 and 31, these are all of our discussion questions.
And if you count it, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 questions. Now if your group meets for four or five hours, I think you could get through 11 questions. What you can do as a leader is take a moment the day before the night before a couple of days before work and work through it on your own and figure out, okay, what are the questions I want to ask? And I'm picking out one, two, three, like four or five questions.
Four or five questions. That's all I'm picking out. I don't feel the need to go through all of them just picking out a couple. So look down, read John two, one through 11.
And I picked that first question. Why was the master of the banquet so surprised at the quality of the wine that Jesus miraculously produced from water? How did serving such wine counter to what was traditionally done? Any thoughts, sir?
No, not really. Other than the text. Great question. Yeah, that's a great question.
But yeah, no, not really. I think free-griev is to getting everybody to point back to the passage. So getting them, okay, let's engage with scripture. What was surprising about it, because the good wine was normally served first.
Yeah. So this was counter-cultural. This was against what was normally happening. And as you follow along with Jesus, that's what he does, goes against culture.
So normally you bring out the fine wine first, then once everybody has had a bit too much is when you bring out the two buck chuck. So this was totally different for it. So work through that with your group. Then there's another passage.
John 6, 1 through 15, again, have different people read it. And I just picked that first question. Why was the crowd following Jesus? This isn't a trick question.
So if we go back of Hage, it's literally right there in verse two. A huge crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was performing by healing the sick. So I think sometimes these questions aren't here to confuse us, right? Yeah, yeah.
Look back at the text. Yeah, yeah. Look at the text. I think they were looking for spiritual guidance or just personal benefit.
What was your motivation when you first came to Christ? The great question. And I'm putting myself in your shoes as leader. So I would ask, Estar, I'm going to ask you this question and give you a moment to think of your answer.
Yeah. What was your motivation when you first came to Christ? And I would say, hey, we're going to sit and we're going to have everybody answer this question. Go around the circle.
What was your motivation when you first came to Christ? So Estar, what was your motivation when you first came to Christ? Yeah. I mean, I was kind of like a nominal Christian.
I grew up with always knowing about Jesus and then I went through a breakup. Yeah. And I was kind of awake into my desperation for direction and leadership and honestly, of worship, I needed to stop being Lord over my life. And so that desperation is what kind of motivated me to come to Jesus.
Yeah. How about you? Yeah. My motivation is I was attending VBS.
I heard a great story. Oh, this is really good. But also as I look through my upbringing, my family was all Christian and there was no escaping being a Christian in my house. So it was one of those, it's bound to happen at any point of time.
And you kind of remind me of like a follow up question of like, what was your motivation? And you kind of answered this other question, like, how has it changed? I've like realizing that she the Lordship part. And for me, like just inspired by your answer, like what changed is I came to this moment end of high school, being in college of I follow Jesus, but I don't think I could ever tell anyone what that means.
So how has that changed? This is a really good time to engage people in their stories. Yeah. Great.
Yeah. Good leadership. So we've done a leading question. We've done two look down questions.
I'm jumping to look out. And some of these questions, I think don't get, don't get caught up in trying to figure out what the hidden meaning is just as we learned in the last one, pretty straightforward. So one of these that might, that might be a little confusing because Esther and I were even talking about this before we push record is how can we bring the quote, the better wine to situations in which we are placed so that we may point others to Jesus. So what's some guidance for us to not get caught up like, what does the better wine mean to not confuse everybody?
Yeah. And Eric's message, he talks about how Jesus turned specifically water, water used for purification into wine and wine represents blood. And so this is really an introduction of the new covenant that there's going to be a cleansing that is better, that is permanent through the death and the resurrection and the blood of Jesus. And so I guess you can rephrase that question.
How can we bring Jesus and the reality of the gospel to situations we are placed so that we can point others to Jesus? Like where have you seen the gospel play in your life or in the lives of their people and the stories of other people, you may be even in your life group and how can you bring that to point other people to Jesus? I guess that would be a great way to put it. Yeah.
That's great. And leaders, I hope you're taking note of as you're walking through and processing these, like rework it to fit your context. Yeah. You know you're better than anyone.
Like I can't say here and say, here's what you have to do with your group because you know your group better than anyone. So take it, reword it, help your group understand as you've been walking alongside them to help them get them out and pull it out of them, encourage them through it. So let me get this last session, last section, look in. I think all these are really good questions as there's one that that stood out to you in these three questions of look in.
I think they're all good. Yeah. I think the last two. I think the meeting of these needs teaches about Jesus' concern for Arne's and his ability to meet them.
I love that in both John 2 and John 6, it shows so much of God's abundant nature. Like he fills all of them, all the jars to the brim, and then brings the best of the quantity and the quality. And then with John 6, the feeding of the 5,000, it says that they had 12 baskets full of leftovers. And so I think that just the leftover or the abundance of the wine reveals the nature of God.
And so I think that that's something definitely to potentially celebrate with your life group and like a specific attribute of God that we can leave with. And even helping them, I always call it like looking over your shoulder, like, hey, where have you seen that? Where have you seen the 12 baskets left over in your life? I always go back to Jacob when he was in the desert.
He was running for his life and he stopped in the middle of nowhere, exhausted, adrenaline, like had to stop. There's no streetlights. He's just running. And that was a moment God encountered him and came there, had that moment, wakes up, realizes, oh, the Lord's been with me the entire time, built an altar.
And that's where he remembered, oh, the Lord was with me in this place. Just circle back. And years later, he's walking through there again and he's got family and I just imagine him bringing kids, nephews, nieces, hey, everybody come around here. I want to tell you a story.
You see this altar? I built this altar. I'm looking back and remembering that God was with me. So how can we have these moments, help your group, understand where has, where have you seen God fill things to the brim with quantity and quality, like Esther said, help them remember for their life?
Yeah, that's so good. I think that brings almost like God's face closer to your face. Like, you know, like, and talking about him in the past tense allows us to see like him in the present. Yeah.
So that's awesome. Yeah. But I want to go back to this teaching summary that last line as we give, we are able to participate with Jesus too. And here's where I want to challenge everybody throughout this whole series, we're doing a lot of extended prayers.
So the end of service coming forward, we are praying for the needs of the people and there might be people in your group. So this is a great opportunity to remind them, hey, there's extended prayer, come forward after service, but we get to participate in that as well. Yeah. So leaders, I want to invite you to participate and invite you to pray alongside us as we're praying for miracles and we believe that we're going to see miracles throughout this series that God's going to heal people.
That's going to do an incredible work. So inviting you into the work of ministry, take a moment in your group. If you would please pray with us that God answers prayers, pray with us that people have boldness to walk forward and to receive prayer where you can participate in the journey and in the miraculous healing as well. So that's my encouragement to you guys today.
Cool. Well, leaders, we're appreciative of you. We're so thankful for you. There's so much momentum.
We believe in groups. We believe in you. Our team is here for you. Thank you for all that you do.
We are signing off. Have a great group discussion time. See you guys.