Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. This is week two of Red Letter Invitations, and we are off to a great start already. I love this series, Jeremy, because we get a chance to look at the Red Letters of Scripture, and in the New Testament, in the Gospel, specifically the Red Words being the words of Jesus.
And everything that you read in the words of Jesus is important, but my gosh, he's got some profound invitations for us. Last week, we got to talk through the invitation of Jesus. That was to come to me, and we had a great conversation about when can we come to Jesus and the reality is it's the midst of every aspect of our life. Well, this week, we're looking at the invitation of follow me, follow Jesus.
And so, Jeremy, how are you today? How are you feeling and where we headed this week? I'm great. And as always, this is exciting to talk about where our groups are headed.
In this series, like you said, we're taking these kind of steps sequentially and trying to help people slow down our naturally fast-paced lives and just kind of parse out a little bit about what it means to follow Jesus, right on the heels of Easter, like what does it mean to follow him? So step one would be to come to me. And the question for this week that we want everyone to ask themselves is, am I following Jesus? And before we rush past this, I was just kind of a given question and answered sort of thing.
We need to think, not have I ever in the past kind of had a moment. And there's important milestones and markers in our lives. And not do I believe that certain things are true. We absolutely have things that we believe about Jesus.
But not even am I saying busy with the religious kind of activities and schedule. We even looked at that a little bit last week with the light yoke and the heavy burdens. But am I following Jesus right now in my day-to-day lives? And so we want to ask people to help them identify and remove any excuses that are holding them back and keeping them stagnant in their spiritual journeys.
And that's not just sins, but even seemingly good and normal things like we'll see in the text for this week can keep us from following Jesus. And so I'm excited to help people kind of dig a little deeper into what it means to come to Jesus and then to really follow him. That's so good. Because one of the main things I think we try to do here at Mariners is to help people move from passivity to action.
That we tend, and especially in our spiritual lives, I think we drift towards apathy and becoming quite lethargic really quickly. And when Jesus says, follow me, it's a daily invitation. This is a, I'm so glad you said, I believe. And we're going to talk about that in a little bit here.
But once you say, I believe the invitation daily, almost hourly, is, OK, are you now going to follow me? And there's an intimacy. There's a relationship, a proximity, and an implication to our whole life. If you say, I am going to follow you, well, that ought to mean we're going to follow him in every aspect of our life everywhere we go, right?
Yeah. So then as leaders, as people who are preparing to lead this discussion, how can we prepare best? What would you recommend for us this week? Well, to help people understand this invitation, and this might sound silly or trite, but really, to understand this invitation to follow Jesus, we need to kind of reset this definition.
It's so ubiquitous in our culture. We hear, follow all the time, follow this podcast, follow on social media. And so what we want to do in our leader guide actually opens with kind of an icebreaker to address that, OK? What are some of your favorite follows in social media?
For instance, there's a visual artist, Scott the painter, who's Instagram account that I just, I personally love. I've noticed in Kyle Costello's office. He's got one of his prints in his office as well. Oh, they're so good.
His stations at the cross were so cool to meditate on. They're really great. Yeah. So he's someone that I enjoy following, just kind of seeing what he's doing.
And he just kind of stop provoking and helps me think about my faith in other ways. But then I followed news podcasts and sociology and sports. But the idea is that in our culture, following has become very much consuming content or kind of watching from afar. But when Jesus invites us to follow him, that what he's inviting us to is more.
Like you said, it's we're allowing him to lead us, even when we don't know where he's going. And there's going to be times in our lives, if we're honest, that we have no clue where Jesus is going, but that we just have to trust who he is, even when we don't know where he's going. And so to follow him means that we're in a close, honest relationship with Jesus. And we're becoming more and more like him.
So we want to really help people slow down and think about, is that true in my own life? Or am I really treating Jesus more like with these podcasts and social media accounts? Or I'm just kind of watching and admiring. Am I going to be a big fan?
But am I really in close relationship and becoming more and more like him as we go? It's important for us to remember that Jesus, following Jesus is unlike following anything else in our life, because when we follow him, there is a redemptive transformation that actually takes place in our life. We can become more like him. Who is the son of God?
That is unlike any other follow in our life. You do not become more like God by following anything else. And so the mirror, the measure, is, do you want to know if you're truly following Jesus? Truly following him?
Well, you are if you're becoming more like him. You sound like him, you act like him. If people see him in you, that's a really important distinction between following and just simply studying, observing, knowing. It's a huge difference, right?
I would imagine this leads us into a way for us to create a deep conversation within our group, right? Rather than staying at a surface level, what are some things that we can do? Maybe specific questions or examples of how we can create some depth within our group around this topic. So I love what you introduced last week and just reminding leaders that where we're going over the course of the series is we're going to kind of take things piece by piece.
And even though some of these things all happen simultaneously, like we'll see, to come to Jesus, follow him, next week we'll be looking at denying ourselves or dying to ourselves. All those things kind of happen simultaneously. We can't do one without the other when it comes to being a disciple. But in our conversations, to stop and really think about what this looks like in our lives.
So to kind of go deeper, we want to take the time to be ready with the hesitations that you've had, or maybe even still have. If there's kind of some unknowns and question marks in your life and you're not sure what it might look like to follow Christ in those situations and those different scenarios, kind of brainstorm some of those. And like you said last week, you don't want to overshare or undershare, but you're going to be setting the pace for your group. So brainstorm some of those things.
What are those questions that you have? You want to be honest and then be responsive. And I think that's important as some of these groups are newer coming out of rooted recently and really building these relationships, kind of taking them to the next level over these few weeks. To be an active listener as a group leader, when you ask a question and someone gives a response, don't just sit there kind of blank faced and wait for them to finish and then just move on to the next question.
Assign what they're saying, both visually and verbally, repeat that kind of what you're hearing and build on people's responses, either in the moment asking, have anyone else kind of experienced the same thing or had those same kind of questions or kind of make mental note or jot it down, kind of take a note so that you can come back, circle back to it later while you're inviting other people to share and then say, okay, you know, John said something interesting a few minutes ago about this. I want to come back to that. So pay attention to what people are saying and just let the conversation evolve and let the spirit leave things. And like you said, the point here is to address the need of the room of the group.
And so if you don't get to every question or if you kind of detour a little bit in a way that's meaningful, allow that to happen. One of my favorite ways to do that as a leader is to reframe. So when someone says, I'm really struggling with this in my faith, I'm struggling because, you know, I have, you know, we're wrestling through this cancer diagnosis or something like that. Well, not everyone in the group's gonna have that exact same scenario happen, but as a leader, I like to reframe and say, you know, haven't we all felt completely out of control of a certain outcome?
Haven't we all felt finding that common denominator because not everyone's gonna have the exact same life experiences, but every one of us has probably felt what that person is feeling. And that gives us a chance to say, what does it look like for me to follow Jesus with that reality? Not necessarily the diagnosis reality, but the feeling, the emotion, the sense of loss of control or whatever it is, find Jesus in those moments, right? Yeah, absolutely.
And even when like kind of taking things to the next step, when we're wrapping up our time and kind of looking out at the world around us, hearing each other's stories or struggles can help us kind of identify, you know, and empathize with the people around us. Like what might their hesitations and questions be? And so listening to the people in your group that maybe have different experiences also teaches us how to love the people in our circles of influence who are going through different things. Yeah, that's really good.
Any rabbit trails or pitfalls that we might encounter that you might wanna help us avoid? Yeah, I would just say real quickly, reading over these versus surface level, they may sound harsh. This is an example of a time when it's like, man, I can't believe Jesus just said that. This guy said, let me go home and, you know, my family, this and that.
But if you look at the context, Luke is summarizing just several instances for a purpose. And so this isn't just bam, bam, bam, Jesus is being cold and heartless. Luke is highlighting several instances for the purpose of saying, this invitation to follow a rabbi in this culture was the ultimate honor. And even more so in hindsight, knowing that Jesus was more than a rabbi, he was the son of God himself, that these people still managed to come up with excuses.
Like, yeah, Jesus, I would like to, but let me go take care of this first. And I think that's something we can all identify with. So when we recognize that that's what's happening, the harshness kind of goes away. And we realize this is a summary that's highlighting people's hesitations.
Otherwise it could be like, man, Jesus is, that's kind of cold. Right, so what I'm hearing you say is not to lose the context of who Jesus is from just these single sound bites, right? Yeah, because sound bites, we all know can get a lot of people into some trouble. And that's kind of true for Jesus too at times, right?
Absolutely, yeah, you got to think about who he is. Yes, exactly. And by the way, if you follow him and you have a relationship with him, it won't be that hard to discern who the character of Jesus is in the midst of these things that he said. In fact, you'll actually hear who he is differently because you have a relationship by following him.
And it will make more sense, right? So this week, we really do hope, Life Creator, that you and everyone in your group, experiences the daily invitation to follow Jesus no matter where you are in your relationship with him. This message has an I believe component to it. And so there will be people who will be new to faith that will give their life to Jesus, will accept that gift of grace that's extended to them for the very first time.
And you may have somebody in your group that has said yes to Jesus. And that is amazing. I love that they have been in your group. And now have been ready to raise their hand and stand up and say, I believe.
And please go big with that. That's worth a potluck celebration. Like that is worth a party in your group if that's somebody within your group. And if not, that is okay.
I always pray for my own experience that when we have, and I believe at a church service that God would remind me, resort to me the joy of my own salvation. That when I said, I believe, when I was 18 years old, I remember what that felt like. And every time we do one of these at Mariners, I want to experience that joy again. I wanna relive it in a sense.
Not that I'm also standing up and saying, I believe every single time, I'm not. But I say, God, I wanna remember what they're feeling right now. And lastly, what I'd say to that is, we do these things periodically. The next one's gonna be coming up at the end of this rooted session towards the end of June.
Invite some friends. This is a great lead up and opportunity for people to be a part of the church, see what the faith is all about. And then for them to be given the opportunity to stand and say, I believe. So we are praying for you, Jeremy, any final thoughts for us today?
I'm just excited for everyone to take this step of asking themselves, have I taken that step of saying, I believe, and if so, am I continuing to follow Jesus every day? That's great. It's an invitation for us every morning. It's a challenge.
Every time we hit a circumstance that's beyond what we can control. And yet, I believe that when Jesus has followed me, he has our best intentions in mind. He has our best life in mind. He wants us to become more like him.
Not an easy road, but it is the most beautiful and is the best life any of us could imagine. So as always, thanks again, Jeremy. And life to bleeders, we are praying for you. We will see you next week.