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, practice the spiritual rhythms and changes the world together. Hey, Life Group Leader, welcome back to the podcast. This is Kim, your host today, and I am so excited to be joined by Anthony from the Michigan Ho campus discipleship pastor here with us this week.
We're so excited to have you. Yeah, and I'm so excited Life Group leaders to be with you today and explore Romans 12 and really navigating with your groups today as you guys are looking to deal with what do we do when expectations are feeling overwhelming? That's such a good question. In fact, this whole series, the overwhelmed, even just having that acknowledged that we do live in a world that there's a lot of that.
There's a lot of overwhelmingness that's a word going around. Maybe it's a California thing more than some other places, but certainly it impacts us in so many ways. So leaders, we hope that you have had some great discussions where you can just take a breath and acknowledge things going on in life that are real, whether that sadness or the world's events or whatever that is for people in your group that you've had the time and the relational experiences together to be able to discuss some of that. But this week, especially talking about expectations, that's a big one.
Yeah, and it's all around us. I think living in Southern California, living all around different opportunities and different expectations that people have. I mean, even you jump on social media and there's instantaneous levels of expectation. Expectation for the coffee you had or the coffee you didn't have that morning, right?
So true. So true. Yes. And they compare them like the coffee coming through.
I mean, that alone is one thing. But the expectations with social media, like you bring up, it's not ending. It's from the moment you can make it from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep. And sometimes being able to step away from that changes our perspective in amazing ways, for sure.
But let's jump into some of the discussions. We are so blessed today because Anthony actually is bringing the message to the Visio Campus this weekend. So we're just going to glean from some of what you've got in the scripture and your wisdom in this text. But we're going to lean in with a question to begin with, as we always suggest you do with your groups.
But the leading question here for us is share about a time you had an extremely high expectation for a vacation. Did the trip meet your expectations? Why or why not? What's so funny about this question is that a few years ago my wife and I, we planned a vacation to take our son.
He was one at the time to Disney World. So Disneyland is in our backyard, but we wanted to go above that and actually go to Disney World to have him experience that. And as I'm speaking to some of the life group leaders right now that have young children, you know, and I know that having a child with you on vacation is just simply taking care of your parental responsibilities in a new location. So it's really not vacation.
It's actually just continuing on parenting in a new location. So we had an experience where we had a high expectation. We had the resort stay. We had the seven day experience at Disney World to jump from park to park.
And as you can imagine, with a one year old that did not go as planned from the flight from the time we took off from LAX, nothing but crying, nothing but tears from crying for not getting that specific Mickey Mouse ice cream. And so as you can imagine, so much money, so much planning, so much effort all to be drowned by the heightened expectation and also we flocking, you know, because of our experience. And so it's all around us. It happens.
Did you have anything that came to your mind? It is all around us. You know, I've had a different stage of life where I don't have little bitties anymore, but I feel like almost any time you set an extremely high expectation for anything, that's we are disappointed because it rarely meets that picture we have in our mind to accomplish that. Yeah, I would say our family went to New York one year around the holiday time.
We always wanted to do that. And it was so exciting. We just could not wait to get there. Our kids were in their late teens.
So it was like we had little kids with us, but it was at Christmas time. We thought it's going to snow. It's going to be the perfect picture. We've always seen on television.
It's just going to be the best thing ever. And there was no snow. In fact, we took all our coats and it was so hot. We kept taking them off.
And there were so many things we had planned that when you're walking through all of New York or using the subways, you don't always get there as fast as you expect because we didn't know where we were going necessarily. So we missed several things of it. But thankfully we were able to laugh about it as we went. But it was way different trip than we had in mind and probably better.
Sometimes I feel like those expectations, sometimes if we just back off of them, we find out, oh, this was far better anyway. I didn't know that ahead of time. So leading to that question, have fun with it. Try to get everybody to talk a little bit about a vacation.
They've even thought about doing and participated to get people ready to talk about some of the deeper stuff. So let's look at the text together as we look down at Romans 12, 1 and 2. What a great passage of scripture. I would just love to read it for us.
Therefore brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is good, pleasing and perfect will of God. Romans 12, 1 and 2.
This is the word of the Lord. So good. As you were preparing for the message, Anthony, what stood out to you in that passage? Yeah, I think as we navigate the message portion and thinking about really how do we give people the practical tools to navigate these expectations that are all around us and all the overwhelm that comes with that.
And so what I love really is how Paul, he starts it off and he says, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. And that this is the form of worship. But actually proceeding that, I love that he says, it's because of the view you have of the mercy of God. And so it really shifts from us seeing the world around us and living in response to those things, those expectations, those stresses, those that need to keep up with the Jones' per se, right?
And really shifting from that perspective and allowing our lives to be reflective of the mercy of God. And so immediately I love the Bible, I love really digging deep. And so I just encourage you, read Romans chapter 1 to 11 as you prepare for this. And I encourage you, explore the different mercies that Paul works to actually present to this church.
And you read this, you're going to actually see, there's actually 16 particular mercies that he talks about. He talks about the mercy of adoption, the mercy of justification. And so really what he's trying to lean in at this point in time in Romans 12 is we just discuss all of these beautiful mercies, all of these beautiful graces that the Lord has given to each of us. And as you as a life peer bleeder even leaning into that, I encourage you read 1 to 11, explore some of the mercies that maybe have been impacting your life currently or in the past and really allow that to shape how you're choosing to live your life in response to the mercy of God, how you're choosing to offer yourself and present your own body as a living sacrifice that's holy and pleasing to God.
That's so good. And I love your challenge to read chapters 1 through 11 because setting it up whenever you see the word therefore, you got to read what's before it and knowing what those mercies are, looking for those, that builds our faith to step into the transformation. Why do I want to read in my mind? Why do I want to transform my thinking into something different because I know God's my faithful?
Because as mercies are new and we see them throughout that book. That's a great challenge, leaders. We would really encourage you to be refreshed yourself personally this week by reading the previous parts of Romans when you step into this. And then as you look down together, just look down at the rich word of God.
This isn't really opinion time. This isn't sharing stories, but this part is gleaning from the word of God. What does the word transformed mean? Transformed by the renewing of your mind in relevance to being a living sacrifice, looking at each piece of that.
Yeah, I think what's so beautiful leaders is you're thinking about this idea that comes kind of talking about what does it look like to transform ourselves through the renewing of our mind. I think of it this way that really our thoughts, our thought life in our mind, it's really the beginning journey of seeing transformation. And so it's often said that your thoughts, they oftentimes will become your actions and then the actions will become your habits and then your habits, they become your lifestyle. And so maybe so as you're navigating with your group today, maybe there's people in your group that are unsatisfied with the lifestyle that they've built in terms of trying to keep up.
Maybe it's that very lifestyle that's robbing them of seeing the transformation and that actually begins in their thoughts. So how are we seeing the mercy of God? How are we seeing his grace in our life? And so I just encourage you that we see transformation as taught here in Romans 12 as a form of us first transitioning our thinking.
So transitioning from, as Kim said, not just our opinion of the scripture because our opinions they always change, but the word of God doesn't change. So when I feel like I'm alone, I can look back and say, well, Romans shows me that I was adopted into the family of God. And so that mercy is true for me today. That's so good.
If you need to rewind and listen to what Antieta shared again, please do because that is so rich because this gives us the foundation sitting in this section looking down at the scripture, gives us the foundation to look out at the community around us to look in because those questions are coming up, but it's all relevant to what does not the Bible say and sit on that. This should be a section that you get to just sit and glean from and have such refreshment in. So as we look at look out in the next section, look at our communities, what are some common cultural expectations? I feel like in Southern California, there's a lot of them and it can be overwhelming.
It can consume our mind. So what would you say? What's what are some of those cultural expectations around us? Yeah, I think right now in our cultural context, I mean, we typically lead conversations with people with an attachment to their value based off the expectations we might have.
So let me give you an example. So when you meet somebody, the first question is typically where did you go to school? What are you actively doing? What do you do for work?
How many kids you have? So there's this cultural expectation that you must be doing something in order to validate your words. And so naturally, there's all of this presumption from us as people as we interact that before I can even make a connection with you, I need you to validate with me, you're worth by what you do. And so when you're in a society, I mean, I think about the community is that maybe you're not actively in work or actively doing things in life that may be extraordinary and that feeling and that weight that the expectations of the world that really cripples us.
So I think about that. I think about the expectations that we have to be fit and to be in this glamorous lifestyle where everyone wants the beach body in Southern California, you know, all of the days of the year, all of the 165 of them. And that's just not a realistic expectation. We see that in social media where there's all this inside and information about what you're putting into your body.
So you have expectations on what you should be eating and what you should not be eating and how you're reading a certain passage of the scripture and how you're not keeping up with the prayer life. I mean, there's all sorts of expectations all around us, both in society, in the church. And so what do we do with that? What do we do with that?
That's the question is, how would it, what would it look like if we came up with a question where we're just greeting people, where it was more intrinsic, more seeing the person as a child of God instead of it is, you're right. Like where do you live? What do you do? How many kids do you have?
You're right. That's what comes to our love so much around greeting one another. But seeing the person as a person, what have you done to refuel this week or something that's more within finding God? Even if they don't know the Lord yet, how are you doing?
Is there anything weighing down on you? How can I pray for you? Like I use that a lot when I go to restaurants or shop and I'll just talk with a person checking us out. How are you doing?
How's life going this week? And you have to pray for it all. It's so good. And something that I typically practice as well as it's kind of what we do to not everyone we interact with is going to be a Christian.
Not everyone we interact with is going to follow Jesus. But how could we reorient our ways and how we live our life to actually showcase that the most important thing about us and the most important thing about others is not the expectation of them to perform, to validate. Rather just caring for them as an individual. So a question I like to ask is what's currently bringing you joy?
I mean that's just a very entry level conversation to really open up to people to explore what's truly making them happy in this time. And you don't know what God will do and use through that opening question. That's so good. That's really great.
I love that. Feel free to use that. I think you're willingly going to share that with the leaders, right? Okay.
So just look in and as always we just encourage you to dig down in this section. You don't have to just land on one of these. But keep asking questions to take it to a deeper place because many times this is where life change happens. This is where the aha moment comes out.
What can I do to change my perspective today? Is there something I can cut out of the busyness of life? Is there an expectation I'm putting on myself that is not even a real expectation that my family has or is it even achievable? Is it an expectation I need to wrestle with and bring it back to being transformed by the renewing of my mind based on an expectation that God just wants to be with me and have my heart?
So landing on one of those questions, what does it mean to present ourselves as living sacrifices in our everyday life? Yeah, I love this because just in reading the text and looking at what's going on in that time, the concept of sacrificing to little g gods was not something that was unfamiliar. And so for them, the concept of a living sacrifice though, that really was massive. That was counter-cultural.
Because as Paul is talking about this, he's showing this church that the offering that we bring, the sacrifice that we bring into the Lord was not meant to just be this one off experience, but rather it was to be an ongoing lifestyle of sacrifice. And so that means when I wake up, I'm reminded of myself that my life is a sacrifice to the Lord. So maybe I don't want to wake up and read my Bible, but I'm remembering I need to remember that I'm invited. It's not a, Paul says this is an invitation to literally lay your life down as a sacrifice.
So what would it look like for you to challenge yourself to live in view of that mercy of God, to live in view of his grace and to ask yourself, where in my life is God inviting me? Not commanding but inviting you to live as a sacrifice. Maybe that looks like for you showing up on a Saturday night and serving the Saturday night at Mariners. Maybe that looks like Sunday at your congregation jumping on the guest experience team or the kids team, just knowing that there's something for you to actually live as a sacrifice unto the Lord.
And maybe it could be something as simple as spending time with the Lord before you go to bed, maybe instead of social media and just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, maybe praying for your friends, maybe praying for your family and sacrificing that time that you would use for yourself to be a blessing to others. So good. I love that posture here. You're presenting and stepping into each day with that mindset and that posture changes everything.
So thanks so much for being with us today, Anthony. Life group leaders, we are so thankful for you. Grateful for you, praying for you this week as you meet with your groups that you personally would be filled up and renewed by being in the Word together.