Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This week the 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, Life Group Leaders. This is week one of Song of Solvyn Wisdom for Your Love Life.
We are excited to jump into this brand new teaching series looking at this incredibly practical, profound book, eight chapters looking at how God actually does care about how we navigate our relationships, how we pursue our relationships, how we maintain health in our relationships. And of course, ultimately, it points us towards this deep desire for love that we all have in the human form, but it's ultimately meant into God's. So this is going to be a great sermon series. I've got my good buddy Tiffany Linen.
It's the line that's joined in us today. Tiffany, how are you? I'll do a fantastic John, excited to be here. Yeah, glad to have you too.
A little fun fact about Tiffany and I. We'll record this up to Tuesday after the Super Bowl. Paint point for me, high point for you. I'm from the Bay Area.
You're from Missouri. Go ahead. This is your opportunity to go ahead. Go ahead.
I will tell you this, John. I was filled with excitement and I was so happy that we won. But I immediately felt sad for you. Oh, I kind of like a passion.
There was like it was panning. You know, all of you went above all the people that were like hurting. There was one guy from the 49ers just sitting there with all the good buddy and he was so sad and I thought that's gentleman's. That was so sorry.
I was so sorry. But I chose not to wear any sort of gear this week. I appreciate it. I wear a hat today.
It's a hat day and I got an L on my hat. And Tiffany just said, what does that L stand for? And I said, apparently it's a loser because we lost this year. But hey, life goes on.
Life goes on. Crisis on the throne. He's risen. He's coming again.
So good. And football will be back here before you know it. But what can you do? Well, thanks for jumping in.
I'm excited for this sermon series. One encouraged leaders as we always do. If you haven't already listened to the series overview, I did with Eric. Make sure you go back.
He gives us a great overview on the entire message on the entire sermon series. But I'm thinking about loads of different environments where this is going to be encouraging. I think about you out in your role as our college pastor in 30 Thursday nights and how you're shepherding and caring for the adults in our community and just run off the bat just to dispel. Yes.
I think it's a mess serving series. It's all about marriage and marriages. We'll be talking about relationships just to dispel a little bit of that for us. Where we're going.
Yeah. I'm so grateful for Eric and his leadership and the way he talks about this. We will hear in the message that he talks about God's view for signal is and marriage and both are really to be celebrated. And so I'm so excited because this is going to be so important for people who are single, for people who are thinking about getting a relationship or people who are dating, engaged, married, divorced, like fill in the blank, whatever your marital status is, we all long for good relationships.
Yes. And so I think there's not going to be one person that feels left out. Is my prayer? Yes.
Because my goodness, the Bible is applicable to everyone. Absolutely. And both single married high callings and both follow Jesus faithfully through that. And on both sides of that, we both want to cultivate health in our relationships.
Yeah. You're doing that from the people who confines it being married or whether you're doing that from trying to figure out attraction and dating and how do you do it? How do you do it? I mean, both of that.
We're learning principles that are going to put in practice for the rest of our lives. And I love that this book, God cares about that. And he has things to say about that. And so it's going to be a really practical equipping series.
But as you mentioned, rooted deeply deeply in God's word. So we're going to jump into it. Let's do it. The gift of attraction.
Oh my goodness. Good. So far, here we go. All right.
We're going to look at our questions and then we'll draw some things out here that as relates to the message and give you just some insight about how to navigate this well within your life group. So lead in questions or icebreaker question and the principle there is the more you can get people to talk at the first question, the more they're going to talk all the way down through. So kind of a fun question this week. It says, what is one of your favorite love songs and why?
I asked Eric this question last week on the series overview. Oh, what do you say? He did say he saw you lost that loving feeling and you got to go back and listen to it whether you think it was good or not. But he did say it.
So I want to ask you to sing yours. Yeah. What do you think? Oh, man.
Okay. I don't think it's my favorite, but it's the first one that popped to my end and it's old school. Back at one bride with nine. You guys know what I'm talking about?
Oh, yeah. I said we weren't going to see it, but here we go. Come on. That's a great one.
DK, if you're listening, I'm available. Come on. That's great. Yeah.
But I also was inspired by the Super Bowl because Usher was the halftime show. So my boo is so good with bleach keys. Yeah. Yeah.
That was great. I got to be honest. I wasn't paying attention to that time. I was pacing back and forth for the second half of the show.
That was my favorite part of the whole thing. That was great. I like all sorts of stuff. I'll agree.
Let's stay together. I'll say it again. I will try to say it for you now. Mary, you got to have a song.
Our first answer. So it was an... You know that? And the way you look to...
Oh, yeah. The way you look. Yeah. That was called the way book tonight.
I think so. Okay. I should go back and pop the VCR in our VCR tape machine and look at the playback footage. All right.
You ready to get to the passage? Let's do it. Okay. This is from chapter one, verse one, verse one, six.
I'm for the second time. I'm not going to read it all, but we're going to pull out some of the things that are within the passage. Yeah. What a great passage.
I mean, just the way that the book opens up the song of songs, which is Solomon's. Oh, that he would kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for your choruses are more delightful than wine. I mean, just read it. I was like, oh, my goodness.
Who's like my Bible? You know, let's go on here. But there are some things that we can learn here. The question that's supposed to us here is what do you learn about attraction from the text?
What do you learn about attraction? So I want to encourage you in your group, ask that question first. This is the question. What do we learn about attraction?
And then read the passage and then ask people to interact with what they read in the text. And then call back to what on Eric walks us through this passage in the message. And we've seen a bit of the message now. That's if you want to do a few things that you see from what Eric taught, which is written in the text, which is a very interesting message that we can pull out about our learnings from attraction.
I think, you know, I mean, gosh, right out of the bat that first line, attraction is not condemned by God. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Attraction is, I mean, this is a God idea, you know, when it comes to attraction.
And so I think like celebrating attraction is really beautiful in this text. Right. And so especially as I think I'm a single person, so I think like often when we think about talking to single people, we're like, it's easy for us to just keep the narrative on what not to do. And we lose the, oh, wait, it's okay that you're attracted to people.
That's how God's designed you. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think just a celebration of it.
It comes from him for sure. And that's a part, not only a normal part of our human existence, but that's a part of our wire of how we're created it to be. That's right. I love that this whole book is calling, is calling on calling that out.
And that physical attraction is certainly a part of that. And song of solvent doesn't shy away from that in any capacity, but also there's some deeper cuts here too, which I walked us through. Why don't you just highlight some of those when we learn about attraction from this passage? A few things that he pulled out here.
Totally. Yeah. I love that he walked through because when we think about attraction is so easy to only think about one asset or one down layer. Right.
We think about the initial attraction of seeing somebody and being attracted to them, but that there was multiple layers to this thing. And so we see that she's a woman of character. Right. You know, you know, you're a first three, right?
Yeah, your name is poured out. I'm sorry. He says this opinion. He's a man of character.
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so she's attracted to his character. I love that we talked about even just understanding what beauty was in that particular day.
And for this, for this, like this region of the world at that time, if you were pale, that was like, that was a good thing. And so which would be great for me right now. But that's not how I was doing it. So the idea of being tan means that you're working hard, the fields, you're out there working.
So that makes her character. That makes her hard working. Yeah. He says that verse six, stare at me because I'm dark for the sun has gazed on me.
That's it. I'm not talking about her ethnicity, but the applications there are somebody who's working in the fields and her son that she had to support her family. And so yeah, there's something about her work ethic and taking care of others. So yeah, there's something about this character, something about her work ethic, which is tied in into the character as well.
Yeah. Totally. And at the same time, knowing her worth, knowing who she is and knowing your worth is so valuable. So yeah.
Right. So yeah, of course, physical attraction is a part of it, but there's a depth here that we're introduced to. Yes. And that we're invited into.
It's not just a biblical principle, but we're being invited into that reality in our own lives that she doesn't shy away from the physical attraction part. But there's, as you said, more layers to that and more of those layers that we can lead into and appreciate the more depth we're going to have in our relationships. That's great. So then we move to the lookout section that says, where have you seen our world have two narrow if you have attraction?
What does a narrow view look like and what does it lead to? So many things that we can say, there are so many things. I mean, yeah, of course you think about, and here it talks about this quite a bit of the message about the hookup culture, the advent of some of the dating apps and those are great resources and incredible, incredible tools, but how those can also be used as placing people as commodities to consume and hookup culture. Totally.
And when attraction is just surface level deep, but does it create sustaining relationships? Just by the one thing, if you make that one thing, whether it's just physical or whether it's attracted to the mental, it's got to be holistic, right? Right. Absolutely.
Yeah. We see a lot of things flare out when that's not the case. What else have you seen with that? Yeah.
I think you're so right. It's easy to see that the physical attractiveness of somebody like it can live just there. I think even Eric referred to, I forgot what the study was exactly, but there's an expert that was describing relationships and saying that really attraction, like if it's only at that one level, it could only sustain for a certain amount of time, right? And then you have to then that like, you know, hit an excitement or whatever goes away.
You have to get that somebody else. Like it dies. Yeah. And so anyway, and so it's easy for us to it's not a bad thing if that's what initially draws you, but then of course, yeah.
So live there. Like you said, that's that's not going to be sustaining. And also, I think too, if we live in just the, hey, that person looks awesome, I'm attracted to them because of the looks and that's where you live, then you're always looking around a season. Is there somebody else?
Is there like a better option? You know, like, I mean, we have a hard time committing to like going to an event because there might be a better event that comes by. Yeah. And I think that with the admin, even the dating apps and I'm not down with the dating apps, I'm all the dating apps.
Yeah. So, but it's easy to be like, but there could be somebody better. Right. And there's just so many options.
There's a dating app that I'm on. That's a Christian one. And if you swipe so many times, it'll say like, hey, you just looked at 40 people made in the image of God. And I was like, man, that's beautiful.
Like that's awesome because it's easy just to be like, you know what I mean? Like, to be like, oh, no, every single person is made in the image of God. This would be every single person, but it's a beautiful reminder of that. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I love that.
Thanks to that. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I'm on the other side of it. I've been married, you know, for 23 years or so.
And I can tell you that that is so true. I mean, I'm not sure if you're a Christian or a Christian or a Christian or a wife, but totally. But different parts and different seasons, you need all of it. You need all of it.
We're not always going to have that same level of physical beauty and attraction. There's going to be different parts that you need to invest in and appreciate about each other. I love what you said too, because if you're just making it about that one thing, you could be very easily looking over your shoulder comparing that one thing versus other people, which is a really unkind place to live in in your relationship and you're going to miss the beauty of the holistic person in front of you, right? So that's really good.
That's great insight. All right. Shall we move on? Let's do it.
Move on through here. Let's take a look in questions here. It says, and by the way, we're holding our series guides. So you're going to get this this weekend.
It's got your sermon and discussion questions in here. It says a resource with our staff team. It's going to give you more of a background into the book of Solomon and a timeline and all of your weekly questions are going to be in here too. A lot of the scripture.
So the look in questions for this week, it says from the passage, we see that attraction while physical is meant to go deeper. What lessons have you learned in your own life about sustaining lasting attraction? So we're talking about that a little bit already now. And then what wisdom do you need from God in navigating attraction and either pursuing or cultivating healthy, healthy relationships?
I mean, first thing for me to come to mind is it it takes work, right? Like the relationships that God entrusted us with, they're a gift, but like any good gift, like we need to steward it. And so it takes intentional investment and appreciation and communication and not making just one thing, the singular tone of our of our relationship, like we're multifaceted to people who want to bring that into our into our relationship. So I think what I think is calling that out when we see it in our in our in our in our in our in our relationship with like that whole celebrating what you see in somebody in a multifaceted sense of the word is really helpful.
It's really helpful because it's enabling you to see it, but it's also enabling that person to see that in themselves. So they feel like, okay, I know you love me, but you don't just love me for this part. You let me for all these other parts. And that builds in a sense of like confidence and that builds in a sense of, yeah, God is uniquely wired me in a really holistic way.
And while, yeah, I mean, it was right through there, but man, actually, there's so many different parts about me that are complex and wonderful that are beautiful and calling that out in each other in your relationship. I think it's really valuable because often we're blind to see what others see, CNS. So I think there's a there's a principle for us for us in there. And the tip of what would you say, like just on advice of like cultivating that, pursuing that, like preparing ourselves for that, anything that you would want to draw out for us?
Why can I ask you a question before we go to that? Please. I mean, you've been right how many years have? Oh boy, over twenty, over twenty three, twenty four in August.
Yeah. Cool. So I mean, I would love to and this is a life you're clear podcast. We learn from each other.
That one person is an expert, but I'm just curious in your relationship on that first looking question. Yeah. What are some practical things that you've done as always been natural to a firm, your wife, like in the holistic, you know, of like who she is. Like, what are some like, like, some things that were maybe not natural or natural that you really have seen, like, make a difference.
No, I mean, there's so many things like complimenting just for the sake of complimenting. You know what I mean? Like we might broke itself. Yeah.
I could, you can maneuver your compliments to get something out of the relationship, right? But complimenting just for the sake of complimenting because you sincerely see something in your, in your spouse that is wonderful, that is beautiful. And she may not, you may not know it. And so I want to bring that to you as a way to like serve to serve you and realizing that those things really, really matter that they're like investments, intentional investments that you make in our relationship and builds up like this inventory of like trust and togetherness in a non-elipative kind of way.
Because we don't know what it's like to get like a passive aggressive compliment or call out or whatever it is. And then yeah, the whole thing is so true, right about attraction and the pursuit of attraction relationship, like pursuing your spouse, your mate is a lifelong endeavor. You know, we've been married for a long time and you know, we want to learn from couples that have been married longer than us and the principle of like date your spouse, like date your spouse, like have like for us Fridays is our time, Fridays is our time where we go to brunch together. We do things together.
We have activities together like we carve out time. We're all busy. We've got kids all over the place, the whole thing. And you can make so many excuses not to carve intentional time out to be with your spouse because you can get that whole familiarity, reads content thing and how many relationships have you seen to be sat with where, man, they're functional roommates where they have a contract and so sad, right?
So sad to see that so many times where they're maybe they're together still for the kids and once that goes away, like what do you have? Like your marriage, your relationship with your spouse is a thing that's going to last. Kids are going to move out, your jobs are going to change, work life circumstances are going to change, but investing in the oneness of your relationship through intentional dating, complimenting, all of those things are massive. We don't always get it right.
But man, we see the benefits of it. And you can tell when you're not doing that. You can tell there's drift and you can have drift in your relationship. And we always like completely attracted to your job.
No, we get on to those nerves, but there's a commitment. There's a oneness that comes from intentional investment. So yeah, a couple of things for us. That's cool.
Thanks for sharing. Yeah. Okay, so on like a wisdom you need from God in navigating attractions and either pursuing or cultivating a relationship. I think I'll go with the pursuing, I guess.
Man, I think I need a wisdom for God to reveal this, you know, because it's I have seen so many times and you don't want to live in fear, but I've seen so many times with my friends who love God, pursue someone who doesn't love God. Yeah. Maybe they go to church, but they but God is not like number one in their life. And then I see mission drift like it just totally cool.
So I think that's probably like the number one thing is when I'm looking to see like, okay, do I like this person? Do I look to see their attractive? One hundred percent. But if they're attractive, the next thing I look for is like, okay, do they love God.
Do they not do they just go to church? But what does that look like? And I asked questions like, hey, tell me about a church you go to awesome. Like where do you surf?
You know, like I go a couple of layers deep because it's easy just to throw out a megachurch or throw out a church name and you know, go once every couple months or whatever. But I was like, this is like a main deal for that. And so otherwise there's no way you're going to have that same level of commitment to God. If you're significant, other doesn't.
Right. That's really good. Yeah. That's great.
Yeah. I think something to that even air draws out which is applicable regardless of relationship status. I mean, he says something to be effective becomes someone who someone you want wants to be with, which is that we're working on ourselves for developing deep rooted character and integrity in ourselves. And that never stops.
We've been married for 23 years, whether you're on that journey somewhere between that never stops of, you know, it's not about fighting the perfect person. It's not about fixing the person once you find them. It's about, no, actually, I want to be someone who has a deep sense of integrity and character and is attractive at the best sense of the word and all the aspects of the word because yeah, that's often, yeah, you're an attractant to yourself here. Right.
So I think there's a principle there again, whether you've been married forever, single dating engaged, it starts with really your relationship before making like Jesus. That's got to be the principle primary thing. Thanks for the flow from there. Really good.
Great. Tiffany. All right. Well, thank you so much.
We did it. The gift of attraction week one. This is going to be a great series. Yeah.
I love that you guys are on your listening weekend week out to this and want to encourage you lean into this sermon series. You've got your series guide or else you're maybe getting them this weekend. There's spaces in here for you to take notes like be listening to the message and Bible in one hand series guide the other hand look at the questions as Eric is teaching and jot down your notes, your learning, your interactions with the more that you're prepared based off of the message in the passage, the better your group discussions are going to be. And your group really looks to you to help lead that and facilitate open dialogue and questions.
So preparation preparation is key. Use this resource. Use the guide. Use the podcast all the help you get the most out of your discussions this week.
All right, guys. Well, thanks for your time and we'll see you on here next week.