Today, hope is needed more than ever, and the goodness of Easter is that hope is alive. I'd love for you to gather with us this Easter at Mariners to celebrate Jesus' victory over death and his invitation to new life. Invite your friends and neighbors and join us at one of our many in-person Easter services. We have gatherings throughout Orange County for every comfort level.
If you're not ready for physical gatherings, tune into Mariners Easter services online. We can't wait to celebrate with you. Visit the new MarinersChurch.org for all our service times and locations. Happy Easter.
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 to week six of the unexpected words of Jesus. We are wrapping up this series, and it has been so fun to walk through these unexpected conversations.
Jeremy, I don't know if you've had the similar experience that I've had where we see these stories that are familiar to us, and yet I'm surprised at how what was unexpected in the first century is equally as unexpected in the 21st century. That where we live today, the things that Jesus said, the conversation he had, they are equally as shocking and transformational and challenging as they are today. Have you experienced that as well? Absolutely.
It's been a lot of fun. It was great to go through these guides in group. It was great to put these together and hear the messages. For me, coming into this final week is just the perfect way to wrap up this series and to prepare for Easter, because over and over, we've seen in the series unexpected sayings of Jesus.
Those surprises, to me, have reminded me that we should also expect to have questions. If Jesus is constantly acting in ways that we didn't expect, then we should expect to have questions. Those questions and answers can drive us to a deeper personal relationship with Jesus. We see that in today's text.
In the passage for this week, we're looking at my favorite story in the gospel. I'll keep things brief. I feel like I could write a book on this. I love this story so much.
I can feel your excitement to talk about this one today. If I say the name Thomas, what immediately comes to mind? Everyone would say doubting Thomas. Don't be such a doubting Thomas.
He gets such a bad rap, and I hate it for him. The leader guy would get into some of that, so we won't do that here. Even though this is a resurrection story, it's a great way to prepare for Good Friday and Easter because we're looking at what do we do with our questions and how does Jesus respond to our questions? Doubt.
Doubt. And be a strong word. There are times when we straight up doubt, and then there's other times where we're just uncertain, confused, not sure. We have these questions.
In the story of Thomas after the resurrection, we see two sides of a coin. We see doubt in the painful process of wrestling with questions, especially questions about Jesus. Then on the flip side, we see faith in the joyful worship of a personal encounter with Jesus. I'm really excited about this text.
Yeah, it's going to be a really powerful conversation within our life groups because every one of us has unanswered prayers. We have things that we're concerned about. We have things that, yeah, you're saying doubts are a strong word, and they may be doubts, but they also just may be things where we're confused, stuff that we don't quite understand. And we're wondering, can we actually go to God with those things?
Is God concerned about my doubts? Is that a reflection of my lack of faith? What am I supposed to do with these things that I don't fully understand? So Jeremy, what would you say would be our primary outcome?
What's the great hope for our group discussions this week? Yeah, so this week, we want people to see that Jesus welcomes our questions and that the resurrection is hard to believe, but without it, our faith is meaningless, as Paul says. And so it's really a twofold goal. First, help people be comfortable with and even see the value in being honest with God and honest with one another about their questions.
And then secondly, that central to our faith is the resurrected Jesus, not just his moral teachings or religious customs or biblical interpretation, but a personal life-changing relationship with Jesus. And that involves the conversation of growing in our faith and growing in our understanding, which again, is going to include questions. So help people see the value and be comfortable in that. Yeah, so even as we think about leaders, to try to prepare for a topic like this would cause some fear or concern in me to believe that as the leader, I should be able to walk into my group and I need to have all the answers.
I need to be sure that we don't leave room for any doubt. The last thing I want is someone to walk away from any group discussion. This is, you know what I'm saying? I'm speaking sort of hyperbolicly here.
I've like, you know, I don't want anyone to leave room for doubt. So as a leader, I've got to make sure every question is answered and all that stuff. Can you help me alleviate my own fear, Jeremy? Yeah, sometimes as a group leader, as a follower of Christ, as a pastor, I think one of the healthiest things we can say sometimes is, I don't know, or I'm not sure.
Or this is kind of how I understand it. But if we're really honest with ourselves, we all are going to have room to grow always, no matter what. And I think I found in my own life the closer I get to Jesus and the more desperate I am to know him and follow him with all of my heart mind and soul. I find that some of the simple answers just don't quite do it for me anymore.
It doesn't mean that they're not true. But so as a group leader, if a question comes up that you don't know, like, have the freedom and the boldness to say, I'm not sure. And use that as an opportunity to reach out to pastors, do more personal study, like look for books and podcasts, but never just make up an answer. Yeah.
Yeah, making up an answer is the quick fix to make sure that we don't look dumb in front of our group, right? And the reality is that doesn't create, that's not vulnerable. It isn't honest. It's not just the bonding that we really would love to see in all of our life groups.
We want to create environments where it's okay to not have all of the answers and even deeper beneath that. It's okay if there isn't a good answer for what we're struggling through. I'm in this season of my life where when you first get married, you kind of have the newlywed phase and you got a bunch of friends that are all newlyweds and that's fantastic. And then kids come along and then you're no longer going to engagement parties, you're going to kids birthday parties.
Well, we're now a little bit beyond that. And you know, late 30s, early 40s is kind of all of our friends right now. And we've entered into this new season that I don't understand. It's a season of dealing with more sorrow than joy.
We're walking with three of our close friends. Again, all in their 30s and 40s who are walking cancer journeys right now. And it doesn't make any sense to us. And our life group conversations, our prayer time, our dinner conversation has more questions than answers.
It has more things that we're concerned about than things that we feel confident about. This is what I'm hoping for for our groups. That we can come together and we can deal with the reality of life, the understanding of the brokenness of the world around us and not feel like we have to put a beautiful pink bow at the end of every one of our group times and say, all this perfect now, everything is good. We really did work today and everything is good.
Did you kind of know what I'm saying? Oh, absolutely. And I've had conversations about that even this week with someone who was dealing with just a tragic situation and said, for the first time, I'm really questioning how can there be a good God who allows such terrible things. And I had learned through my own experiences of people giving kind of pat answers to know that in that case, the most helpful thing that he could hear is just that that's hurt, that hurts.
That's meaningful. Exactly what we've been saying. If anyone's following along in the annual read, we've been in Ecclesiastes and Job. And just seeing that his friends were doing, Job's friends were doing a great job sitting with him in his pain.
But as soon as they started giving him kind of their easy theological answers, that in other circumstances would have seemed like good advice. But they were wrong in a way that they were trying to apply this and trying to explain what God was up to. And sometimes we just don't know. But we can come alongside one another.
And one of the things I love about this story, and I want to encourage leaders to do as they prepare, is read the story before you just read through the story and really put yourself in Thomas' shoes. We have to remember that these are stories of real people and real history. And so they would have the same emotions and thoughts, Thomas, or whatever reason, we don't know if Bible doesn't say, wasn't in the room when Jesus appeared on Easter Sunday to the other ten disciples. He appears in the room.
He shows the wounds in his hands and his side. Everyone's there except for Thomas. We don't know why. And they all go and tell Thomas what they've seen.
And his response is, I didn't get that experience that you got. And unless I see those things that you say you saw, I just don't know how I can believe this. And so just put yourself in his shoes and imagine wrestling with this doubt of why I haven't had the same experience that all the other disciples had and having to wait for an entire week until the next Sunday when again in a room locked door, Jesus appears to Thomas and says the exact same thing. He said to the other disciples, so put yourself in Thomas' shoes.
And then two other things I would say is consider questions that you've wrestled with in your own faith journey or even that you may have now, like kind of think through some of those things. Identify on maybe make note and then also consider other people in your group. What questions might they have and be specific as much as possible there to think back through conversations over this past series or just that you've had in the past questions or even hints that they've shared. What kind of questions might they have?
Encourage them to share those. Think through, like you said, life stages or current events that are going to raise questions about what we believe. So those are all important things to do before we come together as a group. It's just a thing through those types of scenarios.
Yeah, there's something so powerful about what you're saying. This idea that we can easily assign this label to Thomas as doubting Thomas when really Thomas just wanted what everyone else had gotten. He wanted to experience the risen Lord, right? To see the resurrected Jesus just like everyone else already had.
And I would imagine that either the leader or people within our groups will be able to say something to this effect. Why is God doing for others that he's not doing for me? Why has God provided for them, healed them? Why has God done for someone else that he's yet to do for me?
And that is an experience that makes us a lot more like Thomas than perhaps we realize. We just want to experience the goodness of God, the fullness of God. And really, we don't, we may not fully be able to explain or understand why that is. We might not understand.
We know why we want that because as Christians, doesn't our spirit long to be full to experience the fullness of Jesus? Who we are wants to be with Jesus. We are compelled towards heaven. We want that experience of being with God because that is our spirit longs for that.
And that is an okay thing. But this side of heaven in a broken fallen world, we are never going to experience that in fullness. Yeah, absolutely. We talk about that.
Talk about these questions that we have and it can be a very healing and freeing thing to acknowledge. I'm wrestling with this and I don't understand. And as leaders, like you said, to acknowledge that we may never fully understand. Jesus says to Thomas, you know, blessed are you.
You've seen me now. And God was going to use Thomas in incredible ways to spread the gospel and help start the church. But he says, blessed are all those who haven't seen and will believe that. That means you and me over the past two thousand years, someone has had to pass down this unbelievable story of a resurrected Christ, the generation after generation after generation until the people listening to this podcast and in our homes and circles of influence are faced with the same news.
Like, what are we going to do with this question? And Thomas, when he gets to see, he makes the strongest proclamation in the gospels, right? It is. That's one of my favorite things about the text is that he gets labeled doubting Thomas.
But what we also see is that after Jesus meets him, he is the only person in all four gospels to ever specifically call Jesus God. And he other people like Peter say, I believe for the Christ. We see the centurion at the crucifixion, say, surely this man was the son of God. When Thomas asked his questions answered and encounters the resurrected Jesus, he says, my Lord and my God.
So I don't just believe it's true, but it's this deeply personal conviction and face that just overwhelms him. It's this joyful, humble, just declaration of praise and worship. It's really pretty beautiful. It really is.
My, I think deepest hope for our life groups is that we would have honest conversations. We could express our concerns, perhaps our doubts, unanswered questions and that we could be reminded that the ultimate goal is not to get answers for everything that we're asking, but instead be reminded that we have access to the God who wants to be with us. We have direct access to him. We get to pray be with experience encounter so that we come to that place where we can say, my Lord, my God.
That's so good. I love that we have access, even if we don't have all the answers and Jesus meets them. So before we wrap up, let's hit just three things real quick that I want to caution group leaders, things to avoid as we talk through this study. The first is to judge or dismiss the human experience, both of Thomas.
It's easy to read like we've already kind of established like, don't be a doubting Thomas. Don't be a Debbie downer, negative Nancy. Like it's easy to dismiss. Oh, how could the people back then not believe?
Like, remember, we have those same experiences and just to have grace in patients with people who I think if you read, actually Thomas's doubt wasn't out of a desire not to believe. It was, he was all in and he just couldn't understand what was happening. And so to be patient with people and not to dismiss or judge people who have questions. The second thing you and I have talked about this is assuming tone.
And this happens in all kinds of texts, but in this story, both Thomas's and Jesus's. Like, don't as you read this, assume that Thomas's tone is one of stubborn or arrogant doubt demanding proof like, unless I see it, I'm never going to believe. Right. And then also don't assume that Jesus is scolding Thomas.
Like showing up like, really, you want to prove here's your proof. And then, you know, I don't know how many people have heard kind of apply a tone of voice to Jesus's closing state and a blessed are you because you believe like, you only believe because you saw, but everyone who believes after you without seeing those are the ones who are really blessed or even great. There's a fun exercise in a group to actually read scripture aloud, which is what it would have been like in the first century anyway, and to apply different tones to phrases. And you see how much of an impact it makes to hear what a loving father sounds like as opposed to a harsh father.
Same words, different tone, very different experience. Yeah. That's such a true point. And the final thing that I want to kind of encourage people to avoid or to be aware of as we talk about doubts and questions.
There's a trend right now in popular buzzword is deconstruction. People may or may not be going through in your groups, maybe even some of these leaders of in a healthy way to ask questions at any point of time in our lives and in cultural moments, we're seeking an awareness and asking honest questions about why we believe what we believe is this biblical or cultural or some mix of the two. Does this reflect the character of Christ or the pride of the Pharisees? Like am I more just insisting on my answers and missing out on the heart of Christ?
Am I humbly listening to others and their questions or am I demonizing them and their questions? And so a healthy perspective in asking questions is willing to give grace to others or even to repent ourselves when we recognize that we've elevated our culture or our own understanding and opinions over that of Christ and true faith and what the Bible actually says. But those are healthy questions or even doubts, but unhealthy doubting and deconstruction as the buzzword goes today is basically throwing everything out about the Christian faith and doubting all of it due to the fact that there are people or institutions who have abused or misunderstood things historically or currently. What we see in this text and throughout the Bible that the Lord welcomes questions that truly desire to know him better while also calling out a lack of faith.
So we want to avoid throwing like baby Jesus out with the dirty bathwater, so to speak, of individuals and institutions that may have misrepresented Christ. So as we encourage questions, we always want to point people to the truth that Christ is risen, Christ is alive and he welcomes our questions, he meets us exactly where we are and reveals himself to us. So just avoid questions that become questions for the sake of questions or doubting because just because something has been misrepresented or abused doesn't make everything about what we believe untrue. That's great Jeremy.
Well, thank you so much for that. I am so grateful for the ways that you have helped and guided through these questions and also this content here today. Life group leaders were praying for you. This is the final conversation before Easter.
Easter is I believe of the two most important weekends of the year, Christmas and Easter, and it is the one where friends will come to church whether they normally do or not. So encourage your groups to invite people to Easter. We have good Friday services beginning at noon on Friday and we have Easter services all throughout Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. You can get all those times on our website and we would love for you to join us for Easter.
It's going to be an incredible weekend. So with that, let me pray for you and then we'll send you on your way. So Father, thank you for these life group leaders. We're grateful for the work that you are doing in and through them.
We pray for this final conversation in this series as a way to bust open the doors of vulnerability and honesty that people may get beneath the surface and actually express to each other and express to you those areas of unanswered questions, confusion, concern, even the jealousy of God. Where are you in the midst of this circumstance? And the reason God we know we can pray those prayers and say those things is because you're not afraid of them. You are not surprised by them.
In fact, God, I believe that you want to be with us in the midst of every human experience, including our pain and our sorrow. And so Father, would you be with each of these life group leaders as they navigate this discussion? We pray all of that in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Amen. Have a great week.