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 back to the Life Group Leader podcast. We are in the red letter invitations week four.
And as usual, I am joined by Jeremy and we are excited to talk through this week's topic of storing up treasures, not on earth, but in heaven. And as you have seen over the last several weekends together, we're trying to figure out really what does it mean to follow after Jesus? And we're paying close attention to those red letter texts in the New Testament, specifically in the Gospels, where we can see the words of Jesus and the invitations that he has for us. And so Jeremy, as we get into our week four discussion, what's the big outcome?
What's our major objective for this week? I would say this week and following, kind of going deeper in this walk with Jesus, that in a single word, I'd say it's perspective, that we see Jesus commands to give, sometimes they seem intrusive or bothersome, like we see commands from scripture, like is he telling us what to do, but his commands are always an invitation into something better. Like he created us, he knows what's best for us. And so we wanna learn to see our earthly possessions and the things that we have from his perspective, as opposed to kind of the world's perspective, and to see that when he instructs us to store up treasures in heaven, that this is really a gracious and glorious invitation to join him in building his kingdom and to invest in where we're gonna spend eternity.
And so just that perspective, and then we'll see as well, the other big takeaway from our time together is gonna be this rhythm reminder of generous giving. So we'll talk about that in a little bit too. Yeah, this is one of those really good examples. When we talk about Jesus being a teacher who's illustrating and articulating the upside down kingdom, this is a really obvious one, because even in the first century, and as we see it here in the 21st century, we are naturally disposed to thinking.
Our natural disposition is to think about saving, and we're thinking about our earthly treasures. We're thinking about all the things that we can accumulate, the things that we can store up. It made sense in the first century in that they're storing up grain. They're literally storing up things that are gonna be their livelihood for the season to follow.
And what Jesus reminded the first century and what he's reminding us now is, hey, don't just focus on the earthly thing. You've gotta look beyond that. You have to think with an eternal implication in mind. And so what are some things that we could do to help our leaders prepare for this discussion as they prepare this week?
So from a fun perspective, brainstorm collections that you may have had in the past, and not in a way to Jesus' to the conversation, but we open with our lean in, kind of icebreaker question of just thinking about things that we've enjoyed collecting in the past, either as a kid, as a kid, I was into baseball cards, probably a lot of us were, but even as an adult now, I enjoyed tracking down original pressings of vinyl records or first auditions of certain novels by certain authors. So just thinking as a way to introduce this idea of what is it that sparks our interest and causes us to go out of our way to pursue these things that we just enjoy collecting and use that as a launching point to say, okay, now let's look at our spiritual lives. And practically, we're gonna look at reviewing your finances and those priorities. If you still have, I still have my desktop calendar.
I don't know if anyone still has their desktop calendar from the beginning of the year, but one of the goals we set back in the Proverbs series was about finances. And so you could look back at that as a leader to say, what were some of the things I thought about, how I wanted to practice this rhythm of generosity this year and kind of reflect on that. And then I would also say just to think back and remember the joy and freedom that you had in your own life of either being blessed by someone's generosity and that also that you've experienced when being able to bless others generously. So thanks to those personal experiences that you've had on both sides of generosity.
That's great. This is one where a leader has to be practicing what they're preaching in this conversation. It's very, very hard for us. In fact, I'll even make it personal.
I teach the week eight conversation at Rooted and that's when we get all of our groups together and we talk about sacrificial generosity. This is the rhythm that shows that we believe we put on display that God has been generous to us. Everything we have has been given to us. And so out of obedience and out of really a response to God has given so much, we give a portion back to Him.
It's not because God needs our money. It's actually because God wants to invite us in to the beauty that comes from being a follower of Jesus. And truly the joy that comes as an outpouring of giving. And I can't stand up at week eight and Rooted and talk about the joy of giving if I don't experience the joy of giving for myself.
And this would be a place where as a leader, I would encourage you prior to heading into this week's discussion have a conversation with your spouse or maybe even a friend or roommate if you're not yet married. And to think about, okay, what is my journey of generosity? Because we want to have an authentic conversation with our group. And it's really important that we at least talk about the beginning of our journey together.
That idea of consistent recurring and proportionate giving. And so my encouragement would be that that is going to be an opportunity for us to take that conversation deeper to move beyond just simply the superficial side of just, yeah, well, I give a few bucks here and there. But really what's the heart and the reason but the motivation behind giving. Jeremy, anything else you'd add on that?
Yeah, this is a topic that we're kind of timid around a lot of times as believers, especially in a more formal setting. I think people are willing to talk about wise investments and things like that that we're excited about in other contexts. But when it comes to church and the Christian life, it becomes a touchy subject. And it can feel very personal, it can feel very intimidating.
But really Christ is inviting us into something that is incredibly joy filled. And so just keeping that perspective, that there's a reason he keeps coming back to this topic so often in the New Testament is because he knows our hearts. As far as taking the conversation deeper, I would encourage leaders to think back over the previous three weeks as far as what it means to follow, when Jesus has to follow me and to deny yourself and take up your cross and just these imitations we've had over the past several weeks. And we're gonna see how each of these sort of build on one another and we've been looking at this idea of denying self and now Jesus saying the same thing in a very practical way.
Here's a practical way that we deny ourselves and invest in eternal things through our finances and through our resources. And then do the same with the applications that people have mentioned in previous weeks. When we look at is there anything you're holding back? And that could be anything.
It could be kind of a more emotional thing or a relational dynamic in your life or it could be this area, something related to finances or career. But kind of have a time to just check in and camp out as long as necessary on, what if we talked about the past three weeks that we feel like Jesus is encouraging us to kind of hold open handedly toward him and trust them with and how are we doing? And so don't be afraid to kind of just pause and look back over where we've been in the past several weeks and check in on those things. It's really a practical thing that you're giving us here to think about the things that we've shared over the last couple of weeks, the stuff that's holding us back.
And then now this week to say, I wanna offer this up as something that I no longer want to hold me back and specifically as it pertains to the earthly things that are holding us down. And oftentimes those are things, are material things or the investments that we make financially, because we think that that's the most important thing in our life and yet what Jesus is reframing for us is, if you have an eternal perspective, none of that stuff's coming with you anyway. So why don't you store up treasures in heaven so that final destination, there's actually something waiting for us, right? Now, as you think about Jeremy, just some common questions or rabbit trails or anything that may sort of keep us at that surface level or take us off on tangents or distractions, anything that we ought to be aware of for this week.
I would say the biggest thing to watch out for is something that I've learned from personal experience is that similar to last week with denying self or dying to self, what Jesus is saying here is not that we can't enjoy earthly things, that to be more spiritually mature, we have to always be sacrificial in the sense that I can't enjoy something new, I can't enjoy something just for the sake of, like I mentioned earlier, I enjoy collecting records. Jesus isn't saying we all have to take a vow of poverty and we have to give up all of our possessions. He did tell us the cycles that he didn't have a place to lay his head and we need to be willing to follow him wherever he leads. But we also see the early church met from house to house and in the temple court, so people had homes, people had homes large enough for large gatherings of Christians and so possessions in and of themselves are not Jesus's point here.
He's not saying that you can't have good things. There were, twice when we've moved, I've wrestled with guilt as far as feeling like I either needed to justify, is it okay to move into a bigger house at the season in life? Do I need to explain why we can afford a house that feels big to me, but in hindsight, it's like there's nothing at all extravagant about this. How I've been in this life stage, you're just kind of moving into something new and it's like, do I need to explain to people, crime rates or school districts or whatever made this house more affordable?
Sure. It's easy as a Christian to feel like, if the more spiritually mature thing to do is to not have nice things. But again, this is a hard issue. And I would say one other thing that we address in the commentary and some of the questions is the potential, what looks like a rabbit trail from Jesus himself when he opens with this whole idea of storing up treasures in heaven and he concludes this passage with, you can't serve two masters, but sandwiched in the middle, there's this thing about, you know, if your eye, the eye is the lamp for the whole body.
And if your eye is full of darkness, it's kind of like, what on earth does, like what does that have to do with anything? It just feels like something that got stuck in there. But we talk about again, what you're focused on, like where you're, what you value most, kind of what the apple of your eyes, so to speak. And so Jesus knows our hearts.
And so finally, if people feel like this is redundant and there's just sort of like, it would have been very easy for conversations previously to have kind of drifted into this, some of these areas of our lives. And just to remind them, Jesus mentions these things over and over because he knows our hearts. And so allow ourselves the time to really honestly reflect and seek his perspective on these things. Yeah, thank you for that, Jeremy.
So just a quick reminder on sacrificial generosity, that the invitation for us every single week is that we would learn what does it look like to be generous givers. And the real important thing behind that is that God has given us everything and out of obedience, we give a portion of it back to him. And the two words that we often come back to, scripturally, is recurring and proportionate. So the idea of recurring is that, I know for me and my family, that it's the very first thing that we do with every single paycheck.
It's that we give online and automatically, the first thing that happens is, our money goes straight to the church. And then another set of money goes to savings. Like those are the first two things that we do, and then the rest of life kind of unfolds after that. And the number actually matters less than people realize, right?
Similar to what you were just saying, Jeremy, it's not about the thing, it's about the motivation of our heart. And so proportionate really means that there's a consistent amount that's given rather than just like, well, this much this and maybe this month that that, no, it's like, let's be proportionate. Is that 1% now and 2% next, you know, later down the road and increasing that over time? The point is that it's not about the number, it's about the motivation of your heart and being consistent over time.
And so for some of you, you need to jump into recurring giving. And I would encourage you to begin that journey now because there is truly no joy like the joy of a generous giver. And if you have become this journey of generosity, I want to thank you, but I also want to challenge you, what might it look like for you to have an intentional conversation now about increasing that number, saying we're going to go from 4% to 5%, or 8% to 9%, whatever it is. And saying we're going to stretch ourselves.
We believe that we have to get ourselves outside of our comfort zone in order for us to grow a little bit. So you feel like you might have to take a risk. There's a reason why that word is sacrificial generosity because it requires some sacrifice. We may have to say no to some other things in our life in order to say yes to this, but believing that there is a beautiful end result waiting for us as we become more sacrificially generous with our life.
And so you as a leader, you're going to be out in front of your groups and I would encourage you to be able to share authentically, share with transparency so that we can hold each other accountable to becoming more like Jesus in every area of our life. And we don't want to exclude finance from that conversation. So let's not make it awkward. Let's figure out a way to have this as a normal rhythm.
Within our life group, this won't be the only time we'll talk about it. In fact, it'll continue to come up because this is a core tenet of our faith. This is a practice that we saw in Acts chapter two. It was at the foundation of the church and it still should be.
And so we would love for you to find a way to continue making this a normal conversation within your life group. So with that Jeremy, any final words for us this week? I love what you said that this is a normal practice and a normal conversation. So often it feels weird, but it doesn't have to be like Christ and Bites us into His joy in this area of our lives.
And that comes through practice. That's right. All right, life group leaders, we're grateful for you. We hope that you have a great week for discussion and we will see you next week.