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, my good leaders, welcome in. My good leader podcast, Ladger here for our series overview of our upcoming series, Overwhelmed.
What do I do when life is overwhelming? As we do during our series beginning of our series, we've got our senior pastor Eric Geiger here to help guide us through. We're really excited for this teaching series, can't wait to dive into it together. And thank you for spending time with us today.
May I love it? Inside in the series. I'm so thankful to be able to hop on here and do this. I really thank for all our group leaders.
And I really believe God's going to do a gracious work of people's lives in this teaching series. And I know that our group leaders are a major part of facilitating important conversations and shepherding people well. So honored to jump on for this podcast. That's right.
And we're recording this just a day after we had our first launch of our written session here at Mirrors Revina. We're just talking about just the overwhelming stuff that Brad is here that we both have. It's a good and gracious work that God is doing through his people. That people are jumping in.
They're hungry to grow here. They're hungry to connect here. And life groups leader, you are a part of that's massive. I mean, the life group leader is such a critical role in what God's doing at our church.
And so that God has nudged you to play this role right now for the season is massive because this is how people are shepherded. We believe that people grow when they're in community. And we are really not going to be able to give people in the community without great leaders who lead these groups. Healthy groups are led by healthy leaders.
And healthy churches have healthy leaders. And so the reality that you've stepped in to serve people through leading a group is so significant to what God's doing in our church. And what God's doing in our church is really important because we're talking about serving people out in California. The church is the means by which God has chosen to make his wisdom known to the world according to the Ephesians.
So you playing a significant role in your church is awesome, but it's also God's playing. And so thanks for jumping on. Yeah, that's it. Awesome.
Fantastic. Why don't we jump into it? We've got a five week series here. I love it.
I love it. I love it. It's even the title of it. Overwhelmed.
I know everything is with great intention. All you have to do is Google overwhelmed and you'll see everything from scholarly articles on the factors that have led to people saying overwhelmed to research based articles. Gosh, there was one that said, Gen Z work the Gen Z workforce. Those who just recently moved into the workforce.
92% are saying that they are overwhelmed. So there's research tidbits about the reality of people being overwhelmed. There's scholarly articles that people are writing about why are people overwhelmed. Then there's philosophical articles, debates on are we really more overwhelmed right now or do we just talk about it more or do we just feel more overwhelmed because we have news 24 hours a day, seven days a week in our pockets while when I was growing up, my parents watched the news from 10 to 10, 30 and watched Masha, 10, 35.
The only time that they saw the news was for 30 minutes a day. So for 30 minutes a day, you would have a sense of, wow, there's some overwhelming things happening. We just live with a constant feed into our brains of all of the overwhelming things taking place in the world. So some say it just feels more overwhelming.
Others say no, it actually is more overwhelming. I will create some tension in week one about which one is it. But I believe when you say the scripture, you will conclude that, well, actually the world is going to get more overwhelming, but there's great hope in that. It shouldn't crush a Christian because you have a savior, Jesus who has overcome our overwhelming world.
But there is a lot of reasons that people are overwhelmed and we're going to surface the pain for five weeks. You'll have to spend a lot of time on the pain, just surface the pain and then get to the good news of hope that Jesus offers us. But we're going to surface five different places or ways in which people feel overwhelmed. That's great.
I love that. Awesome. What do we walk through? I'm just by week here.
You have starting on week one when decisions are overwhelming. Well, I mean, some say, yeah, we want about overwhelming nature of decisions. Many say it's because we make so many as many as 35,000 decisions. That's too many.
That's a lot. How about a short count? Yeah, that's a lot of decisions. And part of that is our independent world.
We want to have authority over so many things in our lives. A couple hundred years ago, you didn't make as many decisions as we make now. You took on the profession of your parents. You didn't think about moving across the world.
There wasn't 38 schools to consider going to when you were a high school senior. There were less choices. There were less choices. So we like choices though, but choices come with an downside because there's a lot of paralysis.
There's a whole lot of written on decision paralysis, decision fatigue, decision regret. And that doesn't change the reality that there's so many choices that we make in our lives. How do we make good ones? How do we know if we are making the choice that God wants us to make?
How do I know if I'm a God's will? It's a bit of God's will, but framed under... Yeah, I'd say it's a God's will sermon, but because it's a series where we're saying, hey, this is a great series of bring friends who don't know God. I think that's a very cliche Christian way to say it.
It's a great question. And I will hit it that there's so much times that we in Christianity talk about discovering discovering God's will, but the emphasis on scripture is doing God's will. That's right. If you just open into discovery, it's more of the focus is, hey, there's a whole lot of things that God's already made clear.
If you'll just do those, life will be so much simpler. So that's where we're laying. There's some things that are so clear for you to do based on the scripture to do those and then the number of decisions that you make, they actually get less and the ones that are left over are less significant. So they're less overwhelming if you just will do what God's already made clear.
Yeah, I appreciate that too. I appreciate that in just the everyday reality of life to the simplicity of choice. I don't have a standard uniform for myself, but I get the wisdom and the abundance of choice, man, dark t-shirt, dark jeans, let's go. There's a reason people did that.
It's the job, same outfit everyday because it freed up his mind for the more important things. So I think for someone who's not yet a Christian, even though God's will is a great question, what people are wondering is, how many good decisions, there's so many decisions, is there a better way and that's what we'll answer the first week? She's helpful. Amazing.
All right. So the week two, when regret is overwhelming. This is going to be an I believe weekend as well and it's going to call people home to faith in Jesus in beautiful ways. Well, the reason we have a lot of regret is because we've made some bad decisions and we're going to look at David, who horrific decision to sleep with Bathsheba, then to try to commit this elaborate cover up when she informed him that she was pregnant, to murder of Uriah, and yet God sent the prophet Nathan in front of David, he confessed to sin and then the story gets really beautiful because he goes to God and receives mercy and forgiveness.
And so all of us at some level have some pain, regret from choices we've made. Not once people have made two of us, but once we've made and you don't have to live with that. You don't have to live with a burden of regret because God's grace is bigger than any choice you've made. It's going to be a sermon where we call people to receive God's grace and we just help people see the beauty and his forgiveness and his mercy.
Beautiful. And I love that we're used to them. We can be paralyzed with the abundance of choice. You can also be paralyzed with regret.
It's not a way to say overwhelmed where you form an identity around it. You feel like I am what I did. This is it. So if there's nothing else I can do, I'm stuck in this place.
Yeah, I am that. I am that struggle. I am that sin I committed. I am how I was known.
I am the reputation I wish I didn't have. You totally people become overwhelmed with that and paralyzed with that. Yeah, totally. Let me see that in every demographic.
I'm younger, younger and younger. Like the decisions that we make at a younger age, they feel like just so much weightier than I think I remember when I was a change of real parents, I mean, you know, God's grace is beyond the poor decisions that we all make. That's good. Okay, we've been sadnesses.
Sadness is overwhelming. This will be a real personal sermon for me. I actually had a different topic when I first put the sermon bridge together, which was over a year ago, which was before my father passed away. And these are lessons from Psalm 42 that I really have learned in the grieving process.
My dad is now, I just crossed six months of life without my dad. And Psalm 42 is a great, beautiful passage about what do you do when you are overwhelmed with grief and sadness. So I think, well, I know everyone's going to have this moment at some point in their life where you're overwhelmed with sadness. What do you do in that moment?
What do you do when you're overwhelmed with sadness? I'm so thankful that the Bible's not chlorinated from the difficult reality of living here in this broken world and provides us wise instruction and hope. And that's what we'll talk about week three. Right.
And we'll give this the template for the reality of the human experience where we voice that. We don't ignore it. We don't run from it. But also because of hope.
Totally. Totally. I hope we on it. Yep.
And there's a way to talk to yourself when you're sad. And so we'll look at it. We'll really help. How do you talk to yourself when you're sad to get through the sadness?
Not to in a dishonoring way, get through the sadness. You know, if you're sad from the loss of somebody, you don't want to decide, you don't want to be like a dishonor in the person, but you don't want to be debilitated by the sadness. Yeah. And that's going to be a weekend as well.
We're going to offer extended prayer. We offer prayer ministry every weekend and week out in all of our different congregations. But it's going to be a space where we can invite people into that. We have to.
I do not want to teach that sermon without being there to shepherd and pastor people. That's great. All right. Moving on to week four.
Yeah. When this world is overwhelming, Hebrews 12, you know, shakeable. Oh man. This is an amazing passage.
Yeah. It feels like the world is shaky at times, but there's a massive shaking still to come. And this is a little eschatology. Oh, it says every door?
Let's go. Yeah. In the end of the Bible, there is this massive earthquake that no one has. Ever even thought to consider how massive this earthquake is going to be.
Those are Christians. We are not fearful of this at all because this is the transferring of this old world to a brand new world that God's going to give believers. We inherit the new heaven and the new earth, but the current earthquakes, the current trials that we have, according to scripture, those are just labor pains for the ultimate shaking that's going to come. Now, labor pains, my daughter is about to be mold is about to be 17.
I remember when we I went to like birthing class with a, you know, this is a long go. I think I missed those. I can't remember the first one. I remember the first one.
Come on. If you missed it, you missed it. I don't remember. Oh, man.
If you, then you didn't miss it because if you remember it, yeah. Probably. Well, in virtual class. They were, they were encouraging us that, hey, the, when the pains happen, you know, help remind your wife that there's beauty on the other side of this pain, that the labor pain is only closer to the glorious moment when your child enters this world.
The labor pain is not pain without hope. There's great hope on the other side of the labor pain because you're, there's a new creation entering this world. Well, the scripture says that's what the late, the earthquakes that we face now, the natural disasters, the wars, the rumors of wars, that the world feeling unsettled is only labor pains for a brand new world in which everything is right and now. Right.
So the labor pains are with hope. This whole world is when they're going to be shaken, but you have a kingdom that will not be shaken. Yeah. So focus on what will not be shaken.
When the moments of labor pains hit focus on what's coming. That's great. And we shouldn't face that reality with fear or no. It's actually a cost for cost for health.
Great. That's right. That's right. Great hope.
I want to hear more about that. The most class that I missed maybe off. I can, I can remind you of the, the beauty of what you missed. Yes.
Awesome. We, we, we had expectations are overwhelming when expectation. Well, I mean, there's, I mean, this is one that people say all the time. I mean, I feel like I'm not ever doing enough or the expectations put on me.
I put on myself expectations for a certain kind of lifestyle expectations for a certain kind of, I want my, does my marriage need to look like that Instagram couple, you know, there's, yeah, but there's a lot of pressure in this world, a lot of expectations place on us and what we do with expectations where we're willing. Yeah. I think it's really helpful for people. Yeah.
Yeah. Really good. I love it. And it's going to be a great look at God's word and attention.
Look at God's word and as always, right? God's word is, it's alive. It's active. It moves us.
It shapes us. And so these are going to cultivate some really good discussions within our, our life groups weekend. We can, we can, we can, because everything that's in here, this isn't like it's, well, that's for somebody else. That's, that's good.
This is real for every single one of us. We face it. We face it. We face it.
And very degrees throughout our walk. And so it's going to be great. Great series together. Awesome.
Thanks for your time. Looking at the new outdoor worship center. It's coming close. I can't wait.
Every day, I look at that window. More, more's, more's happened. Yeah. It's going to be amazing.
That's right. We can't wait. We can't wait. That's doing great.
Thanks. All right, guys. We love you all. And we'll see you around on weekends.