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. Well, happy new year, Life Group leaders. This is John Thomas here.
It's so great to be with you as we start off 2023 together. It's amazing to say that. I can't believe that. Here we are.
It's 2023. This is gonna be a great year together as we're kicking off this amazing series called On the Table. Hey, just real quick, before we get going and I introduce our special guest today, if you have not already listened to the series overview that we released on Wednesday with Eric Geiger, go back and listen to that. It's about 40 minutes, but it is so worthwhile.
That's gonna give you an overview of this entire eight week series that we're starting this weekend on the table. So push pause. If you haven't listened, go back and listen to that. Right now we're gonna be looking at week one on the topic of can.
We trust the Bible. We're gonna walk you through some of the topics here and the group discussion questions. But I'm not doing it by myself. I've got a good friend here with me.
The only other guy on staff I know that has an incredible nickname. It's on his lanyard. I'm Lon John, because I'm on the lawn every weekend, but who do we got for us today, folks? Hey, the black rhino himself.
I'm Christian Moon guy in the house. I know. I'm not a very cool voice right now, because I have a sore throat. So right now it's sound like mufasa.
I'm not a fan like mufasa. Black rhino has become mufasa. Simma, you have forgotten who you are. Simma, look to me and therefore forgotten who you are.
I love it. Just me. People are driving around right now, like, what is going on? Don't address adjustment, basic or trouble.
Black rhino lawn John, we're gonna walk you through this a little bit today, but man, thanks for spending time with this. It's good to see you man. Good Christmas happening. You hear the whole thing, right?
That's what I'm talking about. Hey, I love that you're sitting with us for this topic. Can I trust the Bible? One of the things that I admire about you, and there are many things, man, because you are, you're the real deal, dude, but one of the things I've always been struck by with you is not from a performance, not from a performance, but the way that you pray.
The way that you pray. You are somebody who models a passionate conviction around the scriptures, that when you pray, you are praying the scriptures, because it's a so a part of who you are. Like if we were to cut you, you would bleed scripture, like all day long. And so I love that we're gonna have a conversation around, can I trust about how do I navigate the Bible?
I wonder if you could, this is just an impossible question to try to address, but man, the impact of scripture in your life and your journey. What does that look like for you? I think firstly, it was just a model for me by my parents. So I didn't get into it by choice.
It was by fault, just cause to this day, if you go to my house and my mom now is by herself, she'll always read scripture before going to bed. So that was a habit, it was cultivated. And you know how it is, you raise your kids in one way, and then somehow I've yet offered me, but it was really embedded in me. So what I've been actually hard to do is to work hard to actually speak like a normal person.
There's no word in on it. Yeah, these good chases is just the thing that's getting calculated in me. But I've had to own my own faith with time, especially during challenging times. But for me, it was just one of those things that where I was favored by God to be in a home and family where scripture was central to our lives, like every single night we read scripture.
So God to understand, learn it, and then I happened to go to India in 2017, and India was really tough for me. And the only thing I could do is lean on scripture. And I was part of a Christian fellowship that was a little on the radical side. So they made us make sure that we understand scripture, we read, you know, for us is that people don't usually read and you know, which he looks like name on, you know, right.
He, you know, and finally, you know, and so that kind of ship my thinking and my thing for for faith, but I've had to own it with time and understand it and move it from my head to my heart. That's good because of the head. It's one thing to have this scripture in your head, but it's another thing to drive it down into your heart. That's right, absolutely.
Because it's not just a collection of ancient manuscripts and writings, it's a living, breathing word of God, right? That is supposed to impact and inform everything that we are and everything that we do. And so I love that we're starting here in this important series because it becomes a foundation, the bedrock, of all the questions that we're gonna address over the next eight weeks. We're gonna talk about the standpoint of culture and where we see the influence, but it all points back to the living, breathing reality of what scripture is.
And one of the things that Eric talked about last week was the role of scripture is authoritative. It sits over us. We don't sit over it, that we get our cues from God's word, not the other way around, picking apart things. And so, and it's a grand story, right?
That's something that Eric talks about this week of being caught up in this incredible story that has an arc that is huge. We're not the main characters of it. That's really good news. We are a part of it, but it's God's story that we're invited into.
Isn't that right? That's so good, man. So I'm gonna read one of the anchor passages for this week for your sermon discussion question. It's in our look down.
After you lead your group through this leaning question, you're gonna talk about the elements of story and what makes a good story. We're getting people opened up to the idea of God's word, being a grand narrative. And then once we move to the look down, 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17, it says this, all scripture is inspired by God. It's profitable for teaching, for rebuking, uh oh, and for correcting, and for training and righteousness.
So that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Scripture, I'm curious just as you hear that passage, what stands out from you in that text, they're gonna lead their group to this discussion now of what you learned about scripture from this passage. Anything jump out to you? Yeah, I think just right from the beginning from the onset, all scriptures inspired by God.
And when you have to think about that, you think about the authority of the nature of God, meaning that there has to be something that is transcendent, something that is timeless, immaterial, that actually creates everything that we get to see. So when you see scriptures, all scripture is inspired by God, meaning it's a transcendent being entering our world. And so that in self-use, you just have to acknowledge, you know, you're facing some existential questions, like where does it all come from? Where does it all come from?
And so it has the idea of being scripture being inspired by God. This has to be an author of life because there's an order to life. And therefore, we know that we get to understand that all scriptures inspired by God and it's profitable and heil what it does to us. It's always guiding, directing, you can't correct it, and training us to be attuned to one who formed and created us.
So we have a creator, we have a knowledge, and God, the creator formed us. And so for us to understand ourselves, we have to go back to the original author of life and it says, here's what I have. So it's all scripture, it's inspired by him. It's saying, here is who we need you to be.
And here's how you can get to know me by understanding, by looking at the scripture. So the scriptures are inspired by him. But we have to look at who's the object of inspiration and who's un-created timeless material so that he can have a world that is already caused. He's an un-caused cause.
That allows us to be, we're not, we just been having, all of life that intricacies are complex, they're not just happening. They have to come from where? Somewhere. And therefore what he gives us is manual or a weight of life that comes from scripture.
So I think that your religion, scripture being inspired by an un-caused cause is a big deal. Right, yeah, and who's behind the inspiration? I love that point, right? Because it is, in one sense, a very complex book, right?
I mean, 66 books. 40, something, you can give me a quote, if I'm wrong here, 40 different authors, three different languages, over 1500 years of a collection of writing. There's nothing like it when you look at just the human size and scale of it, but then you realize that actually, this is a by human thought or business, right? And then I like going back to, while our stock scripture by my parents and I was made to memorize it as a young kid, what led me to actually then moving to the inspired word of God is the fact that I had to deal with questions in my younger years, the questions that we all grapple with, the questions of origin, where do we come from?
The questions of meaning, what's the meaning of life? The questions of morality, what is good, what is wrong, what is right, what is wrong. And the questions of destiny, what happens to us when we're gone. So, and you think about scriptures, all to the inspired by God for teaching, it brings a coherent worldview of all these aspects.
So, if you have to grapple with those existential questions, you have to find something that will bring parents, and the only thing that I've found that brings out the parents is this scripture of God that is God- That's right. I love that Eric's walking through both of that. This weekend, the element of sort of the apologetic by, we can trust scripture, it's reliable, it's backed up, extro-typical evidence, that supports it, but not just from, is it true in a material sense. But as he walks us through even Psalms 11 through 6, happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked, but stands in the pathway of sinners, instead his delight is in the Lord instructions.
So that even though it's not just materially true, but we see it play out true through a life lived on the foundation of scripture. And there are all kinds of different things that we can base our life on, right? And different cues that we can take. And actually that's scripture 11 is the impetus for me for prayer.
Because it says instruction for many things. And many things are thinking and thinking and thinking and skill, your heart catches fire. And so the meditation of scripture is that in a healer, I believe, is that the first word in pressure because you know, because what you're speaking is, you hug, you know how to pray, you pray by speaking what he's already told you. And so for me, how do you learn to start as a kid, learn a second language?
Or how do kids learn a language you're spoken to? And when you're spoken to you speak back. So the first word in prayer then gets to be God's word. People just speaking back to him, what he's already told us, not to remind him of what he said, but to remind our hearts and to help our hearts catch fire.
That's the idea of meditation, to ruminate in your signal, and eat it, treat like a cud, until your cud to the heart catches fire. And to the beauty of scripture is you join it, until your heart catches fire. That's right, from head to heart, man, truth on fire, all day long, dude, I love it, amazing. So leaders are gonna lead your group then through the conversation on the passage of Timothy, and then also in Psalms one, just evaluating them.
What is the difference with somebody who really sets their heart on scripture that lives their life from that? What do you notice about that person? What do you notice about your own life? What does that look like when you take your cues or directives, when you allow scripture to sit over you and not the other way around?
What does that look like for you? And then we're gonna get to the lookout, we're talking about this already a little bit. What does it look like for people that maybe don't have the foundation of scripture? Where do they turn to?
If they don't have this kind of this true North compass of the inspiration of scripture coming from the truly inspirational one, the creator of all heaven and earth, and where else do people turn? What does that look like? How do those sources live up to their expectations? And where do you see that person?
Yeah, I think when I look out, we all realize that we all worship everybody, we worship at all times. And it's just an object of our worship. If you're occupied with money, then money is gonna be over. If you're occupied with beauty and looks, that will be over.
If you're occupied with prestige, that will be over. Or worship something. And I think what I love about the scriptures is that now we're being able to consider where do we look and we look into a transcendent being someone that is otherwise. And therefore, someone who's bigger than us, a God who's uncaused and peed.
So you go like, I think for our object of our worship, becomes this guy, otherwise something else will be our God. And so if you wanna know what you really worship, look at what you spend your time thinking about spending money on, spending your energy on that's who you worship, that's your God. And so for us, it's the scriptures, where people don't have the authority of God's work, then you see them having to lean away to other things that are not satisfying or not fulfilling, because those things are not transcendent. Those things are not eternal.
Things that are not eternal are generally useless. So we are worshiping things that are not eternally useful, and therefore we fall short. And that's why our heart should break for those who are out there that don't understand the scriptures, because how do you allow this prophecy to sit above me? Because I think the beauty of it is it's beautiful, it's coherent, but it's also offensive.
It's also offensive. It tells me the very fact that I'm a Christian, I had to be a friend at first, I had to be told I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner, I'm a sinner. I am.
But then to realize that I don't have to pay your work for my friends. He does it for me. And therefore, it's offensive. It's still yet the most beautiful thing, the gospel, the beauty of not only working for it, but God doing it for me.
So it's unfortunate that when people look out in the world and they see what they're worshiping, when we look around all the time, we see we worshiping other things other than God. And in Canada, we never say this, that you never know that God is all you need until you realize that God is all you've got. And at home, there's not much destruction in that way. And so you tend to God wholeheartedly, and his wife becomes the key for it.
That's good. I like that, man. The offensive nature of scripture in the gospel, which is a huge stumbling block, especially when we want to be the heroes of our own story, and we create our project self, and put ourselves in the middle of the narrative, and everybody else is just background characters to the story that we're writing about ourselves. When scripture flips that upside down and says, you know what, I'm the main character.
This is my story. I have a wonderful, beautiful part for you to play. When you come in line with the narrative of scripture. So that's beautiful.
That's it. I'd better wonder when I wanted to send you. Totally, totally. Amazing.
You're already hitting then in some of the thematic questions of the look in. One of the things that's listed here too, though, is like any discipline, right? Like anything. You're in your resolution time all day long, right?
The gyms are full. The salad bars are full. Whatever else is going on. Yeah, totally.
And many of your groups, right? You've got this discipline now, and hopefully you're joining us on our annual read, Jaya Packer, Knowing God Through the Year. But this is a time, right? We want to begin to make those healthy habits of engaging guys who are daily.
Because it's a discipline that you don't reap the benefits from unless you actually actively engage in the discipline. So that's part of the look in, is lead your group through that conversation, appropriately challenged, model that for yourself. But Christian, for you, man, what does that look like? You talked about that a little bit at the beginning, but just this habit of setting yourself in front of God's where your encouragement needs to group leaders as their posture themselves for that this year.
Yeah, you know, an spiritual journey will all under journey of transformation. And what I believe is more than just reading the scriptures, it's not allowed the scriptures to read. It's good, dude. And that for me is when I go to God's word, I'm not just going to, and I'm not just going to look for inspiration.
I'm actually going to look at where it challenges me, where I have a hard time with it. And I think there are many opportunities like that that I look at, and I see how as I get into God's word, I'm asking God's word, where am I being challenged? It's not just going in to look for inspiration, but going like, man, that's difficult, that stuff. And when I find places like I'm a scripture, it's where I sit in it.
One of the scriptures that I love is when Jesus on the cross is tempted and he's told you that the son of God, come down. Now, for me, it's very easy to come down from the cross. Every day I'm being told, come down from the cross, and I come out and I just do justice on people. I'll come down from the cross really quickly.
Somebody turns me with, hey, a few days, if you're that, I wanna prove myself, I wanna be the hero. So I'll come down from the cross, but when I see Jesus staying on the cross, it doesn't even behoze me to then stay when I face opportunities where people are telling me to come down from the cross. So you see, the scriptures reads me. It reads me and tells me that it shows me the lacking or how it shows me the brokenness in the heart.
And so more than just reading the scriptures, it's allowing the scriptures to read me and knowing that it's a daily thing. It's not every other week, it's a daily thing because you're sitting down in these inspired God, this is teaching and surviving and correcting for the fullness, for the full transformation of the whole match. So I think I love going to scripture just cause it reads me now sometimes and maybe it's a deal too, but what happens is that I wanna play or sit in somewhere and I'll just be a part of the Word of God and I'll just allow you to just connect with you because sometimes I'm going to grow and pick and transform because I'm still on a dragon growth. So all the leaders were there, you yourself, you're on a journey and it's hard to pour out into people which you don't really have.
That's right. It's good, man. It's beautiful. It's often attributed to Mark Twain.
I don't know if he said it or not, but you know the quote, it's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand. It's the parts that I do understand leading into that and actioning it out because that's where the growth comes. It's the transformation of action, right? So this is good, man.
Christian, thanks so much. We've spent a time with us. Appreciate you, man. Leaders, man, this is gonna be an incredible series.
So lean into it, model it. Don't miss a week, man. Engage these conversations. We're gonna be with you with you.
We can't reach out, resourcing you through this podcast, but let's keep in touch too. One of your guys moving in into your group for this great series. All right, you guys have a great week. And we'll see you next week on this.