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. Welcome Life Group leaders to the Life Group Leadership podcast. So glad to be joining you today.
This is John and I've been awake for a couple of weeks, I've been out of pocket been sick, so Dallas have been holding the down but excited to jump back in with you this afternoon. And not alone, I'm here with my good friend, part of our outreach team and special emphasis on the global arm of our church, Mr. Marayu. Yeah, John, I'm also a Life Group leader.
So I'm pretty excited to be here. This is such a one that to be able to share. And here my voice has one of the Life Group leaders who will be the thing to this podcast. Super fun.
Yeah, thanks for jumping in with us. And then, leaders, if you hear some construction going on in the background, that's not Marayu and I like turning over tables and wrestling or anything like that. If you've been on campus, you'll know that multiply is in full effect and it's so amazing just to see a man did the excitement of what God is doing, what an incredible opportunity. We're preparing the ground right now, right for the law and venue which I'm particularly excited about.
And John, I think, John, with me. Good things are going on. You're gonna see that this weekend. There's so much to celebrate.
Our senior pastor, Eric Geiger did something yesterday. We had a kind of a moment to look at the celebrating. He said, this isn't a groundbreaking. This is a groundbreaking.
I just love that. We're taking ground for the kingdom through your generosity and it's exciting. So, well, I've gotten right here with this for a few reasons. Number one, huge is awesome.
And I'd love to sit down and chat with him. He could have a chance that I get. But also just kind of an insider information. But this weekend, not only is it week four of Ivy DeMirical, which has just been an incredible series.
But it is what we kind of outreach weekend is coming up this weekend as well. And Life Group leaders are the inside track at hearing that maybe now Friday before the weekend. But Marayu, just give us a little bit of an insight of what's expected this weekend. And we're always encouraging our groups, right?
To think not just beyond their own gathering, but to have a heart for outreach, to reaching into the community locally and globally. What are you excited about this weekend? What can we highlight for you? I think it's really powerful this weekend.
We're putting together the whole outreach weekend. One of the things that we felt was pretty important was to give our people a history of where we've gotten to. Sort of like an expansion of our unity with the saints, of what God has enabled miners to be a part of over a long period of time. And so they'll be an opportunity to learn.
Hear about the ministries that have gone, explore, express different prayers, and some practical ways to jump in for not just you as individual, but you as your life groups. Some next step that will come out of the weekend, you'll be able to go to an unbound interest meeting. There'll be a special needs parent day out where you get to sign up for that. There's an outreach volunteer, Ali.
Anybody who's ever thought, hey, I'm curious about outreach. Or, man, I would really love to be a part of filling the blank outreach ministry. That's the event for you. There's a foster interest meeting.
I am actually a foster parent. So if you want to sign up and serve and be a part of that, that would be really special. But I am a little biased because I will be, my team and I will be hosting the global interest dinner. And so if you've ever been curious about what it looks like to be a part of the global church, how you as an individual, as a group, can come alongside our global partners, Eric is going to talk about what that is meant for him.
And you're more than welcome to come and listen to that. There's a little bit of an evening to us global, but it really is an invitation to everything outreach this weekend. That's great, man. I love that.
So lean in this weekend. Life Regleaders are going to hear not only for the message about, man, the missional impulse of what it means to live out the kingdom, not just for the sake of our own discipleship, but for the sake of others, right? And so you're going to hear about that. And there's going to be five opportunities for you to jump into from interest meetings and some different things that we do with local outreach partners.
So that's a massive part of what it means to be in and to lead a group. And you'll be hearing more about this on our electric leader resource page. You're going to see even more of these opportunities that are coming for you to go and serve together as a group. That's really important.
We did that. We did that. We do that. We do that.
Right. The service experience is a substantial part of our journey. It's not meant to be a we did it. But yeah, let's keep on.
Let's keep doing this. Let's serve together as a group. And so you're going to hear that this weekend. You're going to hear that more in the follow up from us.
Yeah, I'll reach expression gets to complete on discipleship experience. That's really significant. Like to go like who Jesus was when he engaged with those in the market. We'll jump into that a little bit.
Beautiful. Awesome. Great. Well, week four here, the sermon title is Jesus Pursues and overcomes him from all nations.
I love that. I'm just going to read the teaching summary, which is as your I need a miracle series magazine. I know groups you have that weekend and week out, looking at that together. It says this, Jesus shocked the Jewish community.
When he performed miracles for those on the outside, the Gentiles, so the non-Jewish community. Jesus came to bring forgiveness to people from every tribe, tongue and nation. His pursuit of all people has not stopped. And he has invited us to join him.
As we do, we enjoy the miracle of God uniting people together. Just reading that, what gets you excited about that? Enjoy the miracle of God uniting people together. I think it's exciting because left to our own devices, we can't do it.
At least experience the unity that God wants for us. And his pursuit of all people has not stopped. And if at all these pursuing people, not only am I one of the people he's pursuing, which just absolutely flaws me, but his call for us is also to pursue those who aren't thought about in society. And those two things really jump out to me when we look at the summit.
Among many other things. Right. Then Eric makes the point right throughout his message that the gospel, the good news, the message of Jesus, it's good news for every culture. And then he also says that and also confronts every culture.
Because it's not like the gospel meshes in or it's the synchronism with culture, but it sits above culture. So it's good news, but it also challenges culture in some beautiful and some painful ways. I mean, I think about, and Eric talks about this in our American culture, kind of this pursuit of the American dream, success and comfort and security. Again, not all those are bad things, but when those sit above us in the gospel, then we're in a bad way.
Yeah, I have my colleagues to say, if you really want to know, Americans just walk through Walmart or Best Buy, because there's a gadget that solves problems that people didn't even know you had. So it's pretty fascinating because it truly has a gift to that this culture has to try and solve so many life problems. But really, the individualism that Christ really challenges this culture is pretty spectacular. Yeah, it strikes me that a lot of, at least as to the West, right?
Kind of our pursuit is that it is kind of a pleasure and to minimize pain. The avoidance of pain at all, at all, of course, at all costs. So we try to set up things that are going to dull pain, hide it, pretend pretend that it's not there. And actually, what we find, even in the passage that we're going to look at, and we all have these moments in life where we get a desperate situation, where there's desperation where man, the gospel meets us in those places.
The gospel meets us in our media. And the beauty that comes out of that is, it's in conflict. Yeah, right. It's powerful.
Right. So what's jumping to the questions here a bit? The leaning question is an interesting one, but the leaning question is trying to get at the story of desperation. So if we know that desperation draws us into the gospel, Jesus that pursues us first, right?
But so often it's our desperation that becomes a mechanism that pushes us towards the pursuit of Jesus that has already begun. Here's the question. It says, have you or someone, you know, had a near-death experience, described the experience? What was it like?
How did the person survive? I know, do you have a mere near-death experience? I do. It doesn't get too much sympathy because different people have different ideas of where people should ride their bikes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when I was 12, at the time, 12, 13, I might, you know, my dad just saved money, just bought me an adult bike, so he didn't have to buy me another bike later on.
Yeah. Yeah. And it was a little big for me, but I was riding it on the road doing a maneuver that was probably a little more dangerous than I should have, but it car showed up from nowhere, which they always do. Yeah.
But I did get up and end up getting hit and end up on the... On the front of the car. Yeah, the bonnet. The truck.
The truck. Yeah. We got the car. The car.
Yes, my bad. Yeah. Bonnet is a hat. It depends on your ass in the world.
Yeah, we call it a body back hole. Yeah. Yeah. But I, you know, I remember feeling in that moment, like, this is it.
Yeah. This is how I go. It's a bit sad, but it's true. Long story short, Miraculous Lee was able to leave there with just a broken arm.
But it's that that I will never forget that feeling of desperation. Yeah. I will never forget that need to be rescued, the inability of anything that I could do, any thought that I could have, anything that I could control that would save me. There is nothing there that, you know, I could do.
I'd read all the safety things. I knew what to do if this not happened, but when you're on the bonnet, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard. Yeah. It's hard.
It's hard to not feel that desperation. It's rough. Yeah. Yeah.
I will go into my too long. If you want to know some time, come find the other patio. Between my eighth grade and ninth grade year, I got jumped my whole budget. I said my neighbor.
Some guys came out of a toilet of Corolla. Yeah, it was not a great experience. I would call it near death experience, but it maybe felt like it at a time. You would just read about.
I was desperate. It wasn't good, but I had a cool story to tell going to high school. Yeah. All right.
That's the life on the streets of the barrier, where I grew up. All right. We go to the look down here. Yeah.
I just want to call out here. Eric is primarily teaching through the text in Luke 7, 1 through 10, which is the telling of the Centurion man who who who who served it is unwell and calls for Jesus to come and and heal heal the servant and the Centurion man is in a position of great authority and of privilege and recognizes that Jesus is a person of great authority and it just Jesus's word could come and make this man whole. And then we also point in the in your leader guy to Mark 7 24 the 30, which although we don't read that text, I believe in the sermon through, it's a good text to point to as well with the Gentile woman, whose daughter is oppressed and calling upon Jesus. So and so the question here, the first question you would want to ask, and what's the significance against?
What do you notice about the desperation of this woman? What do you notice about the desperation of the Centurion? What stands out? What do they have in common?
You just want to read those with both of the stories and then draw some things out, some observations about both of them. So we won't read the full passage, but would there be anything you'd want to highlight, even as you're reading this in your group? I think it's also important to point out just the social boundaries. And by social boundaries, it isn't necessarily that they were considered as equal, but for example, the woman would be somebody who lived in margins of society, not just because of which it was, but also because she had a daughter who was possessed and that wasn't necessarily considered as kosher or somebody who could continue to live within normal life and so she inevitably lived in this space of consistent desperation to see healing come upon my family.
So point out that sense of the boundaries creating a unique sense of desperation. Right. Right. And then with the Centurion, I mean, you're talking about he's a centurion in the Roman movement.
Hurry. In Roman occupied Israel. No. Talk about somebody who was power.
Yeah, it has power, but also a lot of the state from the community. When we come to find out that the telling of this man's story that actually he was looked on with, he was in favor that he even paid for the reconstruction of their synagogue locally. But you've got to understand that the situation of you're in Roman occupied Israel and he represents the full power of Rome that came and took away your belonging and repeat it. This is not so funny.
He would have inclined to help. Yeah. That's right. That's right.
So what are we getting at? Well, these are two really outsiders and where they may have thought, well, actually the message of Messiah is for the Jews that follow after it. We begin to see more and more that Jesus is showing us and we see it all throughout the New Testament. This is what has been foretold that you're going to be blessed to be a blessing, that all nations will be blessed through you, that it's not about one sect, one people group.
They've got the message of the gospel as multidiverse, as multiethnic, it's multigenerational, it goes across all barriers and all boundaries that we can't put it in one by the best petition. It's a pretty powerful thing. This story always reminds me when I was planting a church in my burial. And one of the pastors I worked with told me an interesting story where he eventually had rebels come into his village, destroyed, killed a bunch of people, and they were pushed into the neighboring countries as refugees.
But he felt like he still had to continue preaching the gospel. Long story short, a year later, that rebel group that took over his village was overtaken by another rebel group and they were pushed into this same refugee camp. And he said the day he realized that the gospel was for everybody was when he got up to preach and within his congregation he could see the people who had killed, who had thought his village and he said he wouldn't say that he knew how to get over it, but would it not for the gospel and seeing that space coming to play? Man, I don't know.
It's something else but it's truly powerful that it's only the gospel that they were able to do that despite the different setting that people accomplished. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And the commonality of need and desperation right where the gospel beats the sound. So you want to keep that around a little bit more. There's a few other questions that you can guide through, but really the main point you want to get through the look down is what do you learn?
What do you see about this and cheery end about the Gentile? What do they have in common? What do you learn about them? They're going to get to the lookout and it says, are there categories of people our community that might be quick to dismiss Jesus simply because they believe that he did not come for them?
So are there folks maybe who are similar to the Gentiles in early on? I might have felt, wow, I'm not sure if this is for us. Is this a Jewish Messiah? Are there folks now that might feel like, oh, I'm not sure if the message the gospel is for us, either because of the ways it's been presented or more received.
Does anything come to mind for you there? Yeah, I think about, I mean, it was just a business with these two people. One is, sometimes our desperation is so intense. Yeah.
I feel like nobody would care. All right. And so we carry this weight around not knowing that there is a savior there who desperately wants to bear that burden for us. But at the same time, there's also, you know, going back to what you were talking about earlier, John, a lot of us will become really good at insulating ourselves from the pain that life has.
And so we dismiss Christ as weakness. We dismiss coming to Christ or giving our lives to him as an inability, right, engagement with the desperation that we truly do all have as humans. Yeah, right. And so I think, yeah, I think of those two categories of people.
Sometimes it's a pain we're carrying, something in our lives that's just impossible for us to come to terms with, or maybe we've just done a good job in silly thing ourselves, right? We built this black box, that we've shunned it into a corner for you. Right. Right.
Excuse me. That's good. Let's turn it into the look at it. Let's turn it into looking at it says, describe a time when you had no choice, but to put your faith in Jesus and to let him work out his purposes in a desperate situation that you were facing.
So when was the time that you felt, man, I have no, there's no other way. I'm desperate. And how did you turn to Jesus? What did that look like?
And I don't even be a story of the past, might be a current story from any within your group, right? Yeah, I think, man, this is, I look forward to this discussion for you as group leaders, because it's a really good opportunity to learn from one another, see how God has come through for one another, because in that setting, you get to see how big God is, and see what he could be calling us to on a personal level. Like I said earlier, my wife and I are currently fostering a young baby, and he's, no, he's the sweetest kid ever. I mean, he smiles at everybody, he's in that sweet spot six months old, just cooing and crying.
But man, he has quite the story behind it. And he has a lot of physical growth, physical things holding him back to his growth. And so we're desperate to see God come through. And I think every night, you know, we have a difficult night or I'm holding and crying at 2am, you know, we just turn to the Lord and say, you know, this is your child.
We're holding in. We're able to foster a man who will apparent him during this time. And we are pushed into the desperation, but I just have to tend to go on. I have to believe that God is we be given that to you.
That's right. That's beautiful, man. You guys are living that out day and day and day out, absolutely. And then last question is kind of has to do with faith, right?
So we see the centurion, I mean, it's like, Jesus, if you just say the words in my servant would be healed. I mean, there's such a demonstration of this man, it's not withholding that there's his faith and rest not in the centurions of man authority and power. He's desperate. So he recognizes Jesus' authority and power.
And there's just like this clinging, this holding on to you. I know that you can. I know that you've got it. And so often for us, there are things that we put kind of as a stop gaps before we get to that point.
So maybe the question you want to have around your groups is, you know, what are the things that maybe you run to before you maybe run to faith in Jesus? What are those stop gaps? Is it your ability to try to figure something out? Is it your own power?
Is it your own authority? Is it reliance on maybe the faith of others and other people to come and rest you the situation? This man was at a complete desperate situation and he had so much power at his disposal, but he recognized actually, I can't solve this. And so he went to Jesus.
He ran to Jesus, to his authority and to his power. So it's a good question for you to kick around this last question with you guys in your groups is, man, what are those things? Are there other stop gaps things that you looked at before you reach out to Jesus and spend some time, you know, invulnerability talking about those, retell stories or radio as you're doing of things that you're facing currently, but also where's where places that you've seen that in the past and it builds faith within us right when we can hear and see how God has worked through with others. Beautiful.
So if you guys have this conversation this weekend excited for the outreach weekend and all the opportunities are going to come for your groups coming out of here. And then Marie, I know you wanted to point out a couple more things in the series, Mag, before we go back to that. One thing that's very interesting is you guys talk about where you feel the faith in Jesus shows itself. I think a lot of the times our faith tends to be limited by verbal we've we've formed.
And this is not saying that we don't get to experience God, but a lot of the times stepping out of our comfort zone allows us to see how big God is and gives us the gumption or the courage to take on bigger faith journeys that could be calling us into. Man, I had the fortune come out of being on this trip with the two writers on page 64, 65. So there was Marie and Lexie talk about their experience in Uganda and Lexie talking about Nair's miraculously mended story in the magazine. It's two powerful stories.
I think you need to read about it. And Lexie and Marie talk about Marie at 16 by the way. No, 50. She talks about how prayer was really small thing that she didn't realize how big it could be until she was in Uganda.
And she's stepping out of our comfort zone in another two. But I don't hear any more. No, no, sorry. They're too much.
And Lair talks a very unique story about her healing journey and how we only go to step 10 to make it possible for her to do that. And so this is my dangerous prayer for you guys. Yeah, it's good. That's, yeah, you will step into or have situations in your life that will stretch your faith, allow you to see God in a much bigger way and need only God or have the kind of thing that only God can come through for you to manage.
That's not faith in him can grow. It's awesome. And thank you, Maria. Thanks so much for your time, life for leaders.
As always, we're believing and knowing that God's doing great things. And if you're a group, I'm excited to sit down with my group and carry on these conversations. And man, when we put ourselves in front of God's word and we ask God's word to read us and respond with vulnerability and honesty, it's amazing what the spirit can do in and through that. So thank you, Camarillo and life group leaders.
Thanks for your time. And we will see you back here on the space next week. Take care, y'all.