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 leaders. This is week three of our series Overwhelmed.
Today we're going to be looking at Psalm 42 one through eight. We have a great discussion through the message and the questions this week about how do we navigate when we're overwhelmed with sadness. And so I've got a great guest here. It's been a while since he's been on the podcast with us, but this is our care recovery pastor, Mr.
Paul Hahn. What's happened Paul? Hello everyone. My name is Paul.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be able to speak to you guys today and really I want to start off by thanking you. I'm so grateful for our life group leaders, for you guys who are shepherding members of our church. And I know from speaking to people on the patio from different conversations that I've gotten to have this series is really hitting people in a great way, right?
In a great way of exposing places where we are feeling overwhelmed, but also that they can have hope in the midst of all of that. And so thank you for your part, the part that you're playing in shepherding our folks. Yeah, that's right. And I love that we're hitting this very important discussion that hits us all, varying degrees of different circumstances of life that every single one of us, we encounter moments, journeys of sadness and grief.
And we got to see that Erica love teaching through just great vulnerability, his journey of grief through the loss of his dad. And I love that we're a church that we don't hide those things, but we address those things and why do we do that because scripture doesn't hide those things. Scripture also addresses those things. And so it's going to be, you know, it's in many ways beautiful, but can be quite emotional when we talk about journeys of grief and sadness and how do we navigate those scripturally and well through that.
And of course, we don't just do that on the weekend. We don't just do that through our life groups. We've got some great workshop environments, things that Paul, you're leading out. So I think even before we did to the questions, why don't you just equip us our leaders here?
What are some other environments that we're offering care for sure? I love that we're not bearing the lead, right? Yeah, yeah. That's helpful for you guys.
And so I do want to invite you to a couple of things we have coming up. The first is on Sunday, September 29th, immediately following the 1130 service. You guys can join us for that one and then come up to the upper room afterwards. And we're going to have Dr.
Jon Townsend, who is like, I want to say world-renowned. At least renowned, and we're in a wrong country. Wrong time member of the congregation. Yes, our church.
He loves our church and he loves our folks. But he's going to be coming and giving a practical hope workshop on overwhelmed and the practical tools and skills that we can develop from a biblical framework of how to work through situations in our life where we may feel very overwhelmed. And so hopefully that is a helpful resource for you or any group members who are walking through difficult situations and are looking for biblical based but really practical tools and skills that will help them cope with and navigate through challenging and overwhelming situations. So that's Sunday 29th.
And then Monday, the very next day, Monday the 30th, we have something. So the 29th is open to come one, come on. The 30th is really for our leaders, group leaders, leaders, live leaders, doctors, what's happening on that huddle on the 30th. Yeah, we're having a leaders gathering on the 30th where we're going to invite you to experience kind of the best of Monday nights, Monday night, care nights at Mariners direction.
So we're going to start together with a time of worship. What I love about Monday nights and worship on Monday nights is that it is a place where you are either desperate to experience and taste and see the goodness of God in your life or you've already experienced freedom. And so we get to worship out of a place of desperation or freedom and do that together. And then you're going to hear some stories of life change of what God is doing in and through care and recovery ministries.
Then our leaders are going to receive a really important training from some Christian counselors in our community who love our church and want to equip us on how we can best serve and care for folks who are walking through pretty difficult situations, whether that's ideas of self-harm. Yeah, ideation, mental health harm, those kinds of things. Like how do you navigate that? First, what are the resources?
What's my role? What am I responsible for? Like we've all been in those situations of groups and you may think, man, where do I go? How do I navigate this?
Not just where do I go, but how do I navigate this? So that on the 30th is really going to focus on that as a really grateful to have these specialists in their field who are coming in and approaching it from a ministry context. They are approaching it from a church leader lens of how you guys as leaders, what you're responsible for and what you're not responsible for. And where you would reach out for further help and what you can do in those moments when these difficult conversations.
Thank you for leaving that out and providing this environment of equipping us as leaders to navigate these things well. All right, why don't we jump in, right? So we'll start with our lean in question here. We're talking about sadness and we feel overwhelmed, but the lean in question is along that trajectory, but also you want to try to make a lean in question, engaging, vibrant fun at the same time, right?
So it says what kind of things cheer you up when you are feeling down? What you got Paul? Well, I just experienced this yesterday and it might be too on the nose, but a good meal with trusted friends. Nothing wrong with that.
Well, it's the idea of community, right? Community has been so important to me in seasons of breathing. And yesterday after we had dinner, like we were just messaging each other, like, man, it just felt really good to laugh. Like it felt good to laugh in the season of breathing.
And so thank you for just being a safe person to laugh with and feel that relief and that release of laughter. That's so important. We need people in our lives and where we can go to safe spaces, we can be ourselves, let our guard down a little bit, make fun of each other. That's a good thing.
That's a healthy thing. And then we're going to be talking about laughter for sure. Physical activity to, if I'm feeling a bit just down out of sorts, staying down is often not physically just staying down often. I know that's not good.
Like getting out and going for a run and enjoying nature, enjoying a good food, these kinds of things and just doing an activity that you like. And it's not a masking thing not to cover up, but there is something too, man, like focusing on something that brings you life and enjoy. These things are good for us. So what about for your groups?
Have a discussion along those lines. All right, I'm going to read over to Psalms 42. Before I do that, we've got a few different look down questions, which just again, I know we say it quite often. You want to read the look down questions before you read the passage because that helps your group to look for these different things, right?
So here's some questions to help guide as you look at the passage. This is what does the passage tell us about sadness? So what do you learn about sadness from the passage? What does this passage tell us about how God meets his people in their sadness?
And then where does David ultimately look for hope amidst his despair within himself or somewhere else? So what do you learn about sadness from the passage? What does it tell us about how God meets us in our sadness? Let me read the passage and then we'll interact with it a little bit here.
I'm going to read it in its entirety, 42, one, three, eight, as a dear longs for the flowing streams. So I long for you God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God?
When tears have been my food day and night? Well, all day long people say to me, where is your God? I remember this and I pour out my heart. Yes, that's the page.
It sounded a page turn. How I walked with many leading the festive procession in the house of God with joyful and thankful shouts. Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in so much turmoil?
Put your hope in God for I will still praise him, my Savior, am I God? I am deeply depressed. Therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Herman from Mount Mizar deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and all your billows have swept over me.
The Lord will send his faithful love by day. His song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life. This is the word of the Lord. Lots of richness packed in these eight verses.
But what are some things we want to draw attention to? What should we pull out of this passage? Anything set up to you Paul? It's right there.
Yeah. I think I'm sorry, I'm like emotional reading. It's beautiful. Yeah.
But I know I'm skipping ahead to the second question of like, how does the Lord meet us? But for whatever reason on this reading, his song will be with me by in the night. That stood out to me. Even just recalling the other day, my niece was having a rough day at school.
I lived with my sister and my niece and nephews. Just even that idea of my sister coming close to her daughter who had a rough day and at bedtime can sing a lullaby over her or sing a song together and bring comfort that way. And then imagining, wow, the God of the universe, the creator of all things, are all powerful. God still desires to draw near-tesan that kind of way where we could be having the roughest season, but he sings over us.
I don't know. I don't know. It was really powerful. Yeah.
That's great. Yeah. I mean, obviously there's a deep longing here. I mean, just even the imagery of a dear longing, my soul pans after you.
It was a deer thirst for water. So my soul thirst for you. It's a different translation. It's a translation that's ingrained into my mind there.
There's a sense of like, it's my life. You are my life source. You're my everything. Like I'm desperate, desperate without you.
And of course, God is never not with his people. He is always with his people. But there's this acknowledgement of grief that is overwhelming that, and this is what grief could do. Grief can seem so much more real than often even God's presence in our lives.
That's what grief does. It could mask up what's most true about us. And it does create this longing, this desperation to experience more of the reality of God's goodness in our lives when we feel dejected, when we feel overwhelmed with grief. Like I'm longing for him, thirsting for you.
I'm panting after you. The things that I'm coming after, they're not doing it. There's a spiritual longing. There's a relational longing.
There's even a physical longing that you can see in this passage. Yeah. And it's a poetic way to kind of ask that question that's so common to us of God, where are you in the midst of all of this? And I think that kind of indicates that panting, that longing of feeling that distance or feeling that void of like, God, where were you in this or where are you in this?
Right. Yeah. I think you also see him. A sense of remembrance.
He's calling back to where he's seen the goodness of the Lord through the people of Israel. I've seen you. I've seen you. I've seen you.
I've seen you. I've seen you. I've seen you do good things. And I know that you are.
I know you're faithful to that. I know that you're the overcoming one that you're with me. And as we talk, Eric talks about in the message, like he's reminding himself about what's most true about God. I love that the song concludes with the Lord will send his faithful love by day.
His song will be with me in the night. Like he knows that. He's assured by that. Even when his things seem not unswaverly, they're moving, they're circumstantial.
But one thing remains, it's true that the Lord will send his love. His song will be with me at night, that he's steadfast with within him. That's right. Let's see.
Anything else in the passage? I mean, Eric talks about this, about the different components of sadness in the passage. She talks about their first being a spiritual component, that he feels a distance from God. Well, God is not distant from us, but we can sometimes feel distant from him.
That a dear, as a dear long, fulfilling streams, there's a relational component. He says, when can I come and be before God? There's a sense of like there's a lack of community, of the gathering of God's of God's people. Back to your point, Paul, what brings you joy being around other people and being encouraged by other people.
Like there seems to be a deficit of that. When he's communicating in the Psalm. And then thirdly, there's this physical component that Eric talks about it from the passage. My tears have become my food by day and night.
There's a physical deficit to it as well. So it's spiritual, it's relational, and it's physical. All these things can blend into sadness. But he's setting himself on what's true about God.
He's remembering his faithfulness and reminding himself of who God is. It's great. When we move into the lookout sections here, it says, when people close to us, how might Psalm 42 equip us to help others face their sadness? So how can we pray the Psalm over others?
How can we show up as this for others in other's lives? What can we encourage others through this passage? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the reminders that I have from this passage is, and Eric talks about this in that deep calling out to deep. There's kind of this deep wave of pain that's met by the depth of God's love.
And when you think of ocean waves, you don't just get one wave and then it stops. And so this concept of grief kind of feeling like wave after wave. And so I think as a friend, just that reminder that those of us who are walking through a grief, it's not kind of a one and done. The grief doesn't end after the memorial, or the grief doesn't end after that first conversation where you're comforting them.
So just to have compassion where it might be even a year later. And it's something that we talk about in grief share where it's called a grief ambush where a song on the radio can come on and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and I'm thinking of this person. And it's another wave, right? Another wave of grief.
So as friends, yeah, to just continue to be compassionate and understand that grief doesn't necessarily stop or it's not one and done. But also, yeah, you get to remind them of the depth of God's love in those times. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, there's a balance is the right word in it, but you see it all throughout scriptures.
There's the reality of calling sadness and suffering for what it is and not hiding it and not feeling guilty for it. We're not asked to put our emotions that are runks somewhere, like bring it, bring it to him. But we also don't form an identity around the hurt, the habit, the hang of whatever, whatever the thing is, that there is an ultimate hope that we can cling to that isn't like escapism. It's not like a coping mechanism, but God's presence is the most healing force in the world.
And that's what it is. Like, that's the most realistic environment of healing is God's presence, is God's word. And so it's like, it's both of that. It's holding on to both of those things that I'm not, hey, man, you don't need to ignore it.
You can bring it before him. Look at the scriptures full of that, that's a massive part of scripture at the same time. Like you don't have to stay in that space. Like that's not your identity.
Like hold on to the hope that comes for God's presence. Look back at what he did. That's in the passage too. If you're sitting across from a friend, man, what was another time where you lived through this?
Where have you seen God bring you through? Something like that. What was the experience of that? What did you learn about yourself through that experience?
Not all experiences are the same, but God's grace is the same through it. So there could be something of like remembering, remembering through that, encouraging somebody to remember that. And then I think I would just look through the passage as we're going to do in the look in and say, man, what's a line here? One or two lines like for you, like what jumps off?
Like, what do you need the hold on to? You're not just reading scripture, allow it to read you. Why don't we look at this together? I'm going to read it.
We're going to take time. We're going to read it. It's not just space for like, what is it that the Holy Spirit is saying? Pay attention to this.
Because it's not just focusing on the hurt, but it's focusing on the salvation, right? So it's not just focusing on the pain, but it's focusing on the promise that comes through God's presence. And God's word is a space where we can do that. So I think, yeah, I think looking back, where have you seen that and then sitting with the passage, and I would encourage you to do that in your look out section, like read it again, read it again.
I mean, Paul, you said, it's just the emotions of just hearing God's word like read aloud. It's so true, and it's so powerful. So I'd encourage you in that look out section, just in the look in sections, and then we're going to read this passage, you know, maybe three times. I'm going to ask you to read it, you to read it, you to read it, and grab a pen, like highlight it.
What are the phrases that are standing out to you? What's the truth that you need the hold on to? I think that can be a really powerful way to end your time and time together. But I just ask you that.
I mean, I'm not going to read it right now, but do you know for you for one? Is there a phrase, something in here where it's like, yeah, that's something where the emotion is drawn to that. That's jumping off the screen. That's a promise that I need the hold on to what you think that might be, even for you.
Putting you on the spot. Yeah, putting you on the spot. Yeah. Other than the his song will be with me in the night, I think.
All your breakers and all your billows have swept over me. And in the context of even how Eric shared of that, that being the Lord's faithfulness, the Lord's love kind of meeting us in the depths of our pain. I know that's giving me a lot of encouragement today as I'm processing through the things that I'm overwhelmed by. Yeah.
Just this reminder of the vastness, the, I don't know, even the mass, the massive quantity of God's love and that he wants to lavishly cover me with that wave after wave. Beautiful. And for me, it's that passage after the verse after with the Lord will send his faithful love by day. His song will be with me in the night.
It's from the moment that I wake up when I lay my head and it's all day, his faithful love is with me by day as I'm going about my day as I'm active, as I'm working through things, I'm pushing through things, I'm in meetings, whatever I'm doing, I can say for love is with me through the day. And his song will be with me at night. So when I'm at rest or maybe when I'm restless at night, when I can't see, I mean, there's so many things that you could talk about around around night, but his song is with me from the moment I wake up all the way through. And he's the God of my life.
He's leading, he's leading through all of that. It feels like to lose a loved one and be led by experts in, in. You know, glad you mentioned him. Yeah, I mentioned this, we can, we're talking about the journey of grief.
And loss was father. That's kind of cool. It's a big experience. Here's our first notice.
And now realizing I never actually processed that. I never actually brought that before the Lord. So great, awesome. And great.
Well, thanks. Well, thanks for joining us. Leaders, thanks for being with us. We'll see you this weekend.