James - Week 1

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. All right. Welcome leaders.

This is week one of our new series, James, Having Faith That Works. If you haven't listened already to the series overview that I did with Eric Geiger that released this Wednesday, make sure you go back and listen to that. We give a great overview of the book of James and where we're headed during the next eight weeks of the sermon series. We are excited to jump in and study what has been described as a very gritty street level practical book of how do we have a faith that works throughout the week that impacts the whole of our lives.

So we're going to jump into that and not hear by myself today, join by my good buddy. I'm a radio is here today. What's happening? Oh, it's such an honor to be here, JT.

I am always excited to share my phone with you. You are sharing a microphone. It's one microphone. We have a technical difficulties because I'm a pastor and not a podcast producer.

That's where we're at. It's okay. It's another level in our friendship. Let's call it.

There's so many levels. There's so many levels. Way too many to get into right now. But yes.

Well, no man, excited to have you jump in to this as we look at the first set of group questions, which of course, there's a series magazine for this series. That's right. So receive one of those already. Make sure you grab one this weekend at your congregation.

And yeah, we love this. 43 volunteers help to put this together. All the resources, the articles that are in there. And this is a guide for you to get the most out of the sermon series and dive into it with your life groups.

The group discussions are in there as well. And we want you life group leaders to be the one that is most excited to study this book together and to dive into it and to lead the discussions week in a week out. We love seeing them on the weekend. Give them a show up with their series magazines or take a notes and preparing for the group discussions.

And so make sure you pick one of those up. I get to leave the chapel. Whenever you see people take it out and they have their pens, it's not rare for somebody to come and tap me on the shoulder and say, hey, do you have extra pens? And I just, I'm always happy to oblige and help people figure that out.

But it's exciting. Yeah. You mentioned that's one part of your role that you have to post for a challenge. We'll hear a major survey during our 10 AM service.

But you're here also because of the other part of your role through the book of James. We are also launching our Seek the Good campaign. It's really impossible to not study the book of James without having a practical outworking of the opportunities to serve others. And so we're able to just talk to us a little bit more about what's happened with Seek the Good and some of the uniqueness of your role with the community center here and what's happened with the community center.

Yeah. So my other role is as the coming center pastor, it's really exciting to be able to be leading the front door to our church. And we always say that the way the community center is oriented, the way the front doors are facing is to the community to be that picture that anybody can come in as they are. I like to say that our ethos, how we invite people in is we don't know what the trouble is.

We don't know the crisis you're going through, but come here and we're going to see what we can do. We get to connect with a lot of people in need. We get to actually also connect with a lot of people just looking for resources, looking to see what ways they can get and plug into the church and what ways they can get just some form of help. I think that when we seek the good for the city, when we pursue that which God has asked us to do, we actually get to see him do phenomenal things, not just in our lives, but through us.

I mean, you know, we all know how, well, I shouldn't say no, but we know that it is possible to describe how big God is, but he gives us the privilege to be the vessel that affects our community, particularly as a body of the church. And we always want to take time in the fall to remind ourselves of this, to say here God is a good resource. Use us as you would, allow for us to step into a space where we get to seek the good of the city that you have sent us to. It's good.

And we're meeting a practical need through relationship, not just here at Mirrors Irvine, with our community center in Food Pantry, but we know we have that represented so far. Other congregations. We're talking about that, other congregations evolving. And I just say a little bit about food insecurity.

I think there's sometimes a misconception around South California. That's true. I mean, is that a thing here? Yeah, does that even exist here?

It's true. It is a misconception. The reality is that food insecurity was pretty stable, 2018 up to even 2021. And then it began to rise.

It's grown from 8.9% up to 13.7% right now. 13.7, 13.9, depending on your sources. But it's not just growing at a regular rate. The rate at which it's growing is also increasing.

And we can safely say that it's accelerating. The reality is that we're seeing the margins that which people are finding themselves into slowly growing. And when people find themselves in the margins, the reality is that we have to invite them into a space where they get to hear that they're seen, loved and cherished. Food insecurity is, you know, food is the first need that any human would be looking for.

We can safely assume that all the other needs tend to end up being secondary to that one. And so finding being a lighthouse, a beacon in our community, a place that people can come to as they are, no matter what their circumstance is, gives us the opportunity to engage with them. Now, food obviously is a practical opportunity that we get to engage with. But we're in a church.

We know God sent Christ to be in relationship with us. He gave us the blueprint of how we get to represent ourselves to the world and affect it in that sort of relationship. And so when people come to a different food factory, shout out Huntington Beach and Santa Anna, we know full well that we also get to be a relational vessel. We want to ask, how can we pray with you?

We want to see what other opportunities are there to get engaged in somebody's life. I just met this morning, actually, a professor who found himself at the bottom of a bottle way too often and was unfortunately unable to continue teaching. And so he was here. I got to pray with him and I got to connecting with some of our care ministries here at Manus.

And the fact that it's food that brought us together, I believe, is God using an opportunity to create a relationship. I got to sit with him. Here is a story reminding that it doesn't matter. He found himself in this mistake, found himself in a cycle he couldn't break, that he still has a place in the kingdom.

That God still is pursuing him in such a beautiful way. And so we look forward to seeing what God does with that story. Yeah, awesome. And I think maybe not this week, it'll be the following weekend.

I can't remember which week in the series is it's going to fall, but the church is going to hear more about the opportunities with the communities. And that's one part of it. It's a significant part of the seek and good season. But there's also going to be so many opportunities for life groups to get in.

And our group, we're going to start looking at those things that we can get in and how do we serve and how do we put our faith into action with the great opportunities that are good. Yeah, be sure to check out the list. And I think that's a great opportunity for you guys to jump in as a group. I know you're going to learn new things.

You're going to have a new experience in our community. And my prayer for you is this, that God will show you the way he sees our community, that he will show you the heart he has for all that is going on in our community. And it's going to be fun. Awesome.

So people are going to find out more about that in the coming weeks. Yeah. Thanks for giving us a little preview of what's happening with us. Of course.

Yeah. Alright, man should we dive in now? Let's go to it. Okay.

Honor, starting it off. I know. Hey, quick tidbit actually. I know a lot of people think this is crazy.

But Jane is actually in my top five books in the Bible. I was a teenager, you know, felt my lifetime around and was just overwhelmed by the grace of God. I just was like, I don't know how to repain back. There's just no way to do so.

And getting to the book of James, God makes it so practical. And he tells you what it looks like to live out to that life that he's calling us to live. And I truly believe the love, the language is obedient. So to respond to him in love is an opportunity to obey.

And Jane's laid it out real clear. Yeah. He talked about this morning, one of our staff meetings in our Lee Pastor here at our Revert-Gruit. He was talking about those competitions where he gets slapped in the film.

Maybe we should try that right now to find out. That would be, well, maybe not. Well, maybe not. Some have been put off by Jane.

He's not pulling any punches. He's coming straight out. He's coming straight out. He's coming straight out.

But I love what you said. It's to showcase the love of God in our lives. Not to earn it. It's not a more holistic way of living to get something from him.

It's a response to the grace that we have received. But you don't have to wonder what he thinks. It's a great book for so many reasons. Eric, you know, what would it take for the half-brother of Jesus to be convinced that, oh, wow, my half-brother is actually the safest.

I know how crazy he's that. He opens his letter and talking about James a servant, you know. He doesn't use his familial position as like a hierarchy of your friends. It's me, you know, it's me.

It's not the servant. So there's so many beautiful things within this world. All right. Well, before we read the first 18 verses, we're going to do it together.

We've got to lean in. Our opening question says this. Can you remember a challenging physical obstacle that you faced? What was it like when you faced that struggle?

So what's a physical obstacle? A challenge that you faced? Yeah. You got so many.

I'm sure. Well, the one that comes to mind was the first time I climbed Mount Kenya. For those of you who don't know, yeah, how big is Mount Kenya? It is.

It's big. It's huge. It's way bigger than Shady Canyon. Yeah.

Bigger than Mount Bollywood. It is the second largest mountain in the continent of Africa and the steepest on the continent of Africa. One of the things you have to do because you're gaining innovation so fast is you have to get your body prepared to take in way more water than you used to. Yeah.

And so I spent a month drinking 12 liters of water a day. That's for those of you who know what a Nalgene bottle is, that is 12 Nalgene bottles a day. Yeah. So I don't know what it is.

It's not. Yeah. I actually don't know how to put it on my Google machine, but it was it's it's hard drinking that much water after like five bottles you're done. Was that harder than the actual climate itself?

It was. The physical was drinking the water. Because you haven't started climbing. So your body isn't like taking in or necessarily using what you're getting from the water.

You're just trying to get your body used to it. And it just I mean, you know, yeah. That's awesome. Incredible.

Yeah. I think it was during COVID right? All the gyms shut down. What am I going to do?

I'm going to say fits like many people picked up kind of the habit of running. And that first day of just like trying to run around the block and I can't do this. I'm not fit for this. There's no way.

You know, I didn't do any research and trying to understand like how do you get running. You should be getting out of jogging pace. You should go with your zone too hard. None of that stuff.

I just like came out of this. This is not for me. I can't do it. So what about you to keep going?

You know, part of it was just out of necessity. I was like, I'm going to do it. And then there was part of just being outside and then had some other friends that were doing it too. And you know, gradually you increase and you increase and you increase.

And then I had that one Saturday morning. I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to run the back loop, you know, build up for it. Okay.

Yeah. Running more than I was during those first bit. But the first time I completed that loop, which is a little over 10 miles. I never would have thought I would have been able to do that.

It was exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. But I'll get out there for once in a while and do that and see some friends from Mariners. There you go. That's very impressive.

That's why I sure it's more impressive than rich water. That is very true. You got me on that. Yeah.

Also, all right. You've got to be getting to the passage here. And if you look down observation questions for us, it says James talks about the importance of trials. What does he say endurance will produce?

You could also say what you learn about enduring trials for the passage. What does the passage tell us about the roles of faith and wisdom? And then what does James say that we have to look forward to as we wait through the trials that come our way? You really could put all those questions into one question of what do you learn about enduring trials from the passage?

What does it produce? What's the promise? Different ways to articulate that question. So why don't we read the passage and then Marielle lets you interact with it, all right?

Good. Says this, don't you get James 1 verse 1. It says James, a servant of God, end of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Eric talks about why that is just so astonishing that he opens with that.

He opens with that naming mechanism of a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes of dispersive rod. Greetings. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, all right, there's the first slap, if you will. Because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature, complete, lacking nothing.

Now, if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea driven and tossed by the wind. And the Lord is like the first person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

It fills a bit of space, not every day. Being devil minded and stable in all his ways. Let the brother of humble circumstances boast in his exaltation. But let the rich boast in humiliation because he will pass away like a flower of the fill.

For the sun rises together with the scorching wind, dries up the grass. Its flowers falls off and its beautiful appearance perishes. In the same way the rich person will either, well, excuse me, will wither away while pursuing his activities. First of all, bless is the one who endures trials because he has stood the test and he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

No one under growing a trial should say, I am being tempted by God since God is not tempted by evil. And he himself does not tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after the desire is conceived, he gives birth to sin.

And when sin is fully grown, he gives birth to death. Do not be deceived by 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. How many times we heard that notice that you pull that out and realize, oh, it's actually the context of the trials.

The trial is producing a tour of the endures. Verse 18, by his own choice, he gave us birth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of first reach of his creatures. The word of the Lord, or the right, Mary, what's the wrong answer to the truth here? What do we learn about enduring trials?

Oh, goodness. The first phrase that just hits me is let endurance have its full effect. But I don't want to. I know.

It's amazing. It's the process of endurance. We want to run the back bay and not figure out, you know, not start off panting around the block. That's right.

I have a mentor who used to tell me, a lot of people want to be Nelson Mandela. Nobody wants to spend 27 years in jail. And the reality is that that's letting endurance have its full effect. It's not just about putting in the time.

There's an aspect to this that, you know, when trials come, trials are not things you can necessarily pursue. Those that tend to just be out of our control, you know, that really difficult medical diagnosis or that unfortunate economic circumstance that has come is one of those trials that creates this unique spiritual endurance led by the Lord. Right. And in the message, Eric really categorizes them for different documents.

What have you learned about what trials produce in this? What is the opportunity of these trials? Do you have the first one you mentioned? It's just growth.

Yeah. It talks about growth, wisdom, humility and eternal life. And I think, you know, growth is an interesting one because as I heard you talk about the growth, it's easy for us to think about growth as let me just read a book and I'll get to the bottom of this. Why don't you write a book about your experience?

Then I can learn from it and read it. But there's also a growth that comes from the experience that you have had that is really almost impossible to articulate. You know, he touches on his story with his, of the passing of his dad and also his having to deal with his back pain. You know, I'm sure all of us can read an article about back pain, but the growth that comes from learning how to navigate back pain is very different.

Yeah. Often the question I'm asking is, I feel stagnated. I just grow. How do I grow?

How do I grow? For me, that's often put it on the T for if you're a lead rooted, because we often, that's true. That's true. Or there's some magical matrix download thing.

Maybe that's information is great and helpful and everything else. We so often grow the opportunity of doing. It's the same with trials. Trials can produce the environment where we grow, where we become more aware of our dependency on Christ and needing to ask for wisdom, humility, meaning I need you and I'll have this all figured out and then the hope and the promise of eternal life.

All of that is cultivated through trials. I feel like it's setting up a segue to wisdom. Yeah, that's right. I actually have an interesting story about this one.

I always tell people, I never knew what forgiveness was until I got to live in Liberia. I was out there doing ministry, planting a church. For those of you who may know, I don't know, Liberia has had right now, I think it's about 30 years of peace after six decades of war. And while we were there with my team and helping plant a church, there was a lot of people who grew up in and were victims of war.

And there's one pastor who I met who told me a story of how he was driven out of his community, started living in a refugee camp in the neighboring country. And the rebels who drove him out of community were driven out of that community as well and joined him in the rebel camp that he was living in. And he stood up one day to preach and he saw one of the rebels give their life to Christ. And he struggled so much with that.

And he explained what the forgiveness journey was for him. And I think that to me really began an interesting perspective on just what it meant, not just supposed to experience forgiveness, but what it means to pass that on as we've been called to do as as as as is. And the wisdom that man had when he came to doing ministry and experience, it's it's clear. This guy has seen some life like it was it was really, really powerful.

But you can only get to that with the acknowledgement of this, what you've been exactly with your heart, by the kindness of goodness of God. Right. That's kind of periods of the lookout section where it talks about what about our culture today makes it difficult for us to trace from to face trials with joy. That's one thing.

So how you could say how is that? How is sort of the Christian perspective response of facing trials different than how our world looked like? Where have you seen it? And that's a perfect example.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's not it's not the natural expression of it. Yeah, that's totally true. So yeah, to your point, it's you know, you're heart being melted with the kindness and goodness of God, having received forgiveness.

And also like the view of eternity to know, self-regions temporal, but that is grace is eternal. Yeah. And there's a refining that comes better. That's coming to know that because price suffered and there's resurrection life.

It's the same for us. So, you know, I don't know if it makes it quote unquote easier. It's still painful and it still hurts. I was talking to a guy this weekend with a patio who came up after one of our services and you know, kind of nonchalantly asked me if we had any sort of support groups for people who are dealing with loss and their family.

And of course, as you do, yeah, of course we do. Let me hear your story is life had just passed away. And this was for Sunday services after a long battle with cancer. And of course, it was grief in there, but there was also a sense of somebody who's who spent some time with Jesus, where we both left a conversation after hearing the story after me praying for him.

I mean, I don't know how people do this, walk this journey without the assurance of knowing that God is overcome. Like I don't know how he said this has been so hard, so hard, the hardest thing I'll ever do. But I don't know how people do this without the hope that we have. And it's so, it's so true without having that doesn't make it quote unquote easier, but it does give you a very small star.

Yeah. Yeah. So helpful. Yeah, doesn't mean it's easy.

That's good. All right. Look, yeah, we read the questions here. It says, when you face trials and suffering, where are you tempted to run?

Where are you tempted to run before you run to God? So what are the things that you run to to give you hope outside of God when you face troubles? And how can we, and this is where you as a group come around each other and better amidst trials and point each other to the Christ? So that's a two questions there.

Hey, when you're facing a trial, what are the things that you run to to find hope, to find relief, maybe to find even just solace or distraction outside of God? Yeah. What are you facing right now? Right.

That's great. That's great. You might add personally, you would navigate that last question. I think one of the things that I've learned back up, I really appreciate the American culture because it's such a problem solving culture.

This is on recorded. I know. I know. I know.

I really do. There's you know, Michael, my parents always say one of the funnest things to do in the coming as walk through best by it because there's a gadget to solve a problem you didn't even know you had. Yeah. But the temptation is then to think, how can I solve this problem?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To think about what is something I can do, what's an article I could read, what's, you know, what can Chad JPT tell me? What five steps can Chad JPT tell me to do? And sometimes a lot of that is not necessarily embracing, you know, and I feel weird saying it, but it is what scripture tells us, you know, too.

Consider a great joint, my brother and sisters, whenever you experience various trials. So what does it look like to not embrace that trial, but to mitigate or lessen the impact of the situation? And it's hard, it's like not instinctual for us, as humans do so, especially when you think about, you know, on a milder level than convenience, on a macro level, not knowing where this depth of grief is gonna take me is so hard. And that's where we often find ourselves and helping people, for you guys, like group leaders, is probably even just bringing up the conversation and helping people figure out what are my habits whenever crisis strikes, what do they align with, what it looks like for me to engage in this way.

And what is God reminding me to do? You know, Eric talked about, he said, the time to teach somebody about how to respond to trials is not when they're trying to. Yeah, it's before the moment. And so doing this discussion, you know, allow for the safe space to be people examining what they do during that time.

And if somebody's trial comes up in this time, man, we get to explore the hope in that moment through prayer. And you know, I'm a little more, Pentecostal, I will throw out the book to spend half hour praying for one another, but you know, let this be a guide you, as you need to agree to know exactly how to respond to this. So you really are identifying what are one of those things that we run to, which I mean, control is one of the things. Yeah, problem solving is one of what is problem solving.

That's greater symptom of control. Yeah, trying to figure this thing out. In a love that you're pointing to, it's not a, you know, just a flip-in response prayer. Prayer is not what we do.

We have nothing else to do. It is the resources of heaven that our disposal is not what we can access at any time. And it's prayer is. And so we're going to do that this weekend.

And next time in a prayer, the whole situation, opportunity to respond and receive, receive prayer ministry. And I love that you're talking about that. And what is prayer? What is prayer ministry?

It's not problem solving. And understanding and experience of God's love in your life. And often say what I love to do prayer ministry training. Like what is the goal of what we're praying with somebody?

Is the goal that they're healed in the moment? Well, yeah, we'd love that. We'd love that. We can't control that.

But what is the goal? The goal is to have that person walking away. So I'm more loved by God than maybe they were before. Because there was time, there was space.

Did God love them more? No, no, because they responded, no. There's more or less than that. But the environment should be created where it's honored.

I was heard of it valued. I got the encouragement of God's word and the hope to keep on to keep on. Does God do miraculous things? All the time is.

All the time we see it all the time. So we're going to provide that space all the weekend. And provide that space in your groups, too. Carry that on to your group.

So look at that. Great to do. Anything else to point to some of your water tips right now? No, nothing really.

But I think even as I'm processing this message, the reality is that it takes courage to be vulnerable. Yeah. And I also want to give credence to that. And that's something maybe you could talk about in your groups as well is we do live a busy enough life to ignore our problems.

Like that's not impossible. It's not impossible. It's very easy to and find ways of not facing them. And use different problem solving methods to mitigate for that.

But the courage to face them isn't necessarily because we believe that we have the way where we ought to fix it. But it's the invitation to believe in a much bigger God and vulnerable, go to him and say, Lord, I don't know how to do this. I don't know what to do. I'm killing it at work, but my marriage is falling apart.

Lord, help me. And it's powerful because that's the vulnerability we get to have without Heavenly Father. Yeah, it's so good. Very good.

Man. It's so good. It was fun. All right, group leaders.

And that's just week one. That's just last round of the face. We're going to be better off for it. Love it.

So hey, guys, show up this weekend. Series magazines in hand. Take notes. I would really encourage you to follow along with the sermon.

But also look at the questions that are in there. And start to jot down. Your response or different ways that you might phrase the question. It's really going to help your group discussion when you're actively listening, writing down, and preparing for it.

Awesome. All right, guys. Thanks for your time. Time to join us this week.

I'll catch you on here next time.