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 leaders. This is Scott and I'm one of the Cyclistor pastors here and I'm with John Thomas.
What's up, everybody? I've been on this podcast with you. I've got to be jumping in and joining you guys. Hey, thanks for jumping in and we're kicking off a new teaching series.
Yeah. Your Father is for your love life. I'm looking forward to this incredible teaching to help us navigate through the love, advice that the world gives. Yeah.
Really what the Bible says as well too. Yeah, really relevant, right? So everybody in every state of life, whether you're single, dating, and gauge, Mary, whatever you're at, this is a very real topic for every single one of us. So there's going to be things in here that are challenging, relevant, very applicable, and I love how it's framed, problems for your love life that if you look kind of weak by weak at the different topics that we're looking at, the wisdom of the world and the advice that the world may give us and all of its different avenues, friends, relatives, social media, I mean, all these different things that feed into us about how to pursue loving relationships and how contrary they are to the truth of God's word.
So we're going to look at those together and it's going to be great to study this together with your life group and give you a little bit of an overview now of how to make the most out of the series, some of the resources that we have for you during the series, so I want to support you as you lead your group through it. Yeah, so many of our life groups are going to be going through the sermon discussion guides. And so I thought it would be helpful to just give an overview of what the series could look like. And so, if you could kind of go through, what are some things that we're going to be talking about?
Yeah, I mean, I'll look at the book of the property just generally, I mean, let me let everybody book about it because it's all God's inspired work for these people. It's authoritative, it sits over us and we don't sit over it. Proverbs is a beautiful book because you have to read it intentionally, right? Because one of the questions I'm asking is, are these all promises of God that we can apply to every situation that if I do it this way, that it's always going to work out in this way?
And yes, there are promises of God that we claim that we enact his word and we follow after his word. I think there's also biblical principles, right? And so, Proverbs is one of those books where there's a lot of biblical principles that we are advised to walk into, but we'll know. I mean, Scott, now we can sit here and talk about so many different areas in our own life.
And so, we can apply a principle thinking it's a promise. Like if I do this, God has to do this, and it doesn't always work out that way. And so, you know, the book of Proverbs is grounding ourselves on biblical truth following after God's precepts, following after biblical truth and principles. Even when seemingly quote unquote, it doesn't work.
I mean, just to give it for an example, Proverbs 1125, a generous person will be enriched and the one who gives the drink of water will receive water. Yeah. Well, yeah, but that doesn't always happen or there's things about, you know, when a person is a problem, 16, 7, when a person's ways pleases the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Well, not always.
It doesn't always work out that way. And so, there might be some you're thinking about, okay, well, I've tried these things in my relationships and it didn't work. What's the thing that's going to be different about it? It's so often following God's word and his truth.
It's not always about the circumstantial outcomes, which we believe in hope for sure, but it's about the forming of our own heart, even despite the outcomes. Even if I do these things and apply these principles and even if it doesn't seemingly again quote unquote, work out on the back end, that doesn't mean that God's unfaithful and I can't trust him. It just means that he's suffering, that he's in control and, you know, it's not about me doing a number of right and correct things to move the hand of God, but it's actually about me following after him my heart being changed and formed despite the circumstances of it. So that's a long like preference to it, just a framing around the book of proper, it's a beautiful book of wisdom, literature, and I think we're going to really enjoy going through this series together.
Yeah. What are you looking most forward to? Like as you've been married for how long? Yeah.
Not as long as you got 21 years. I have it. Yeah. 25 years.
25 years. We were 12 years old and we got married. Not that hard. 21.
You know, actually, I know that because we have a daughter who's at junior high school and I know high school ministry is doing some really cool things to supplement the weekend message and give discussion questions for parents to go through. I think it's a really fun question for us to talk to you with our daughter. The whole Find Your Soulmate. I mean just look at the series week by week, some of the next, you know, Find Your Soul Mate from all your heart, love at first sight, love Find Your Soul.
All of these cultural phrases, I'm looking forward to unpacking those with her. Yeah. Yeah. And wrestling through those two.
We actually, my wife and I, we went to have Sushi last night, it was her birthday. Yeah. And over dinner conversation, I was just kind of sharing with her. We're empty nesters now.
Yeah. Even though we've been making 21. Every moment of it, right? We love it.
We're free. Listen to our future. Oh, but what I was just sharing with her was, you know, Christina, as empty nesters now that we have so much time together, we really got to make the most of our time. We got to be intentional.
Yeah. I know we use that word a lot about our relationship, about our marriage. And this comes as such a timely season because even though we've made it for 21 years, like we got marriage takes work. Relationships take work.
It doesn't come automatically. And so much of what the world tells us is contrary to the advice and the wisdom. The word of God gives. And then also my son has been dating.
He's in college. All the way in New York. And he's tuning in actually online for the weekend services. But these are messages that he needs as a 19 year old in a relationship of what it looks like to have a godly relationship.
Beautiful man. Amazing. So right up the bat, right? We want to come up this weekend.
Let us see you guys all there, not just you and your life group. But this is a great invitational series, right? So come and jump in with us. You were united with God, this is vital.
Not find your soulmate. I love that. So I love the emphasis of, you know, you do what I do. I can't wait to, you know what i am saying?
Let me know! Look. Do you even listen to some of the feelings logically. One person gets it wrong.
The whole thing is off because there's a one for one for everybody. That's a lot of pressure. It's not about two incomplete people completing themselves. I was half a person before I met you.
It's like, God completes me. I'm grateful and I'm gratitude in this relationship obviously, but this elevated myth of a soulmate who's a perfect person. That's going to complete. I love that we're going to address that one.
I love that third week. Looks are fleeting. Not love at first sight. The reality is, as we get older, take for yourself, buddy.
My wife is beautiful. I love her. Careful. But there should be no better.
What I love, the fact is that true love, based on the word of God, is that it's about connecting spiritually, connecting having Christ as a foundation of your marriage, not necessarily the outer appearance. We fall in love at first sight and that's how we're going to feel for the rest of the life. It's not just about feelings, but it's a commitment. There's a really trashy reality show that's called Love Is Light.
It's called Love Is Light. I know the show. Real prayer for those who haven't watched it, you're dating behind basically the glass. You can't see the person behind you and it's all about, can you have attraction just based off of conversation and interest and all this stuff.
It's crazy that you have these conversations and they have a fake engagement basically of they see each other for the first time at that moment. It's kind of the cultural way of saying, trying to say this, love's got to be much more than just attraction, but then how that show just falls off of rails after that. It's like the world tries to emulate that value within that show, but it's just a trident. I'm glad we're going to talk about that.
This is so good. What else are you excited for any more of these? I love also. How about commit and community.
It's just between us. My wife and I lead a married couples life group and we realize that, man, what a gift it is to be in community to the ups and downs we go to in our relationships and it's just so helpful to understand that we're not alone in all of this. And when we share the challenges that we face, it's such an encouragement, I think, doing together. There are seasons of marriage and definitely seasons of parenting, which is for younger for sure, where it's just survival.
We get my day just getting the kids where they need to be and do all of that. And there could be just a sense of exhaustion and we're just happy to have each other, these moments that we have. And it's important to have that base, but it's a base to build from. It shouldn't be a replacement of community that's sharing life with others and super important.
Obviously, we're preaching the choir. He's got a real life roots here and so you're living that out. It's a value that you've got to fight for it. It's just to happen.
It's something that makes things work. You mentioned earlier, JT, how we have actually resources, additional resources for each week. And we're going to have a webpage where you can find all that information. There's courses that your life group can probably be deep together.
We're going to have the Better Us Marriage course that starts in October. When you say for Irvine, October 8th happening in most of all of our congregations this week course, it's a great way to even build community with others. We'll be on the table with a couple of really, really great courses. Marriage Matters, the happens.
Marriage Matters in September and October as well as some other things as well that's going on. And you find all of that in our in our proper webpage. Yeah, final resources that are available for you. But as it is with every series, you get the sipton with it.
Your enthusiasm for a series can really be tangible with the rest of your group. So get in there, meet with your life group during weekends. Let's sit together and then make this the part of your discussion for each each week. We've got to do great things for it.
We know relating to time-talk about relationships. We're talking about a great source of joy, but also great source of pain for a lot of people too. I think we have a professional workshop as well. Yeah, if you pass the really available and shepherding your group well, there could be a part of our conversations for folks.
Sure. Yeah. And the last kind of resources, I mean, we didn't mention was, this series is actually four singles as well. It's just more couples.
We have the How We Love course, the Young and Builds dating panel, a pre-marriage course. So all of those things that we can take advantage of as we partake in this ministry. So that's right. It's gonna be beautiful.
Awesome. Thanks, JD. You got it. Love it.
Hey, we love you, luckily leaders and just praying for you and believe that this series will truly be a blessing to you and to you, after.