03-01-2020
Dr. E. Dale Locke, Rev. Trevor Johnston, Pastor Efrain Silva
Sermon Series: Best Year Yet
Week 9: Love
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1. Say the memory verse for this series together - 2 Peter 1:3: “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”
2. Read 2 Peter 1:3-8:
“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.“
3. Share how you met your spouse or how you became friends with one of your closest friends.
4. What’s the difference between “mutual affection” (philadelphia) and “love” (agape)?
Agape is who God is.
5. Read 1 John 4:8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
What does John mean when he says that God is love (as a noun)? How is this different from saying that God loves (as a verb), which is also true? What are the implications of God actually being love?
Agape is how God loves you.
6. Read John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Also read Romans 5:6-8: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Describe some ways that God has shown His “agape” love for you. Be as specific as you can about how you personally have experienced God’s love.
7. Brennan Manning in his book, Abba’s Child, wrote: “My life is a witness to vulgar grace — a grace that amazes as it offends. A grace that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same wage as the grinning drunk who shows up at ten till five. A grace that hikes up the robe and runs breakneck toward the prodigal son reeking of sin and wraps him up and decides to throw a party, no ifs, ands, or buts. A grace that raises bloodshot eyes to a dying thief’s request — “Please, remember me” — and assures him, “You bet!”…. This vulgar grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without asking anything of us. It’s not cheap. It’s free, and as such will always be a banana peel for the orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility of many. But grace is sufficient, even though we huff and puff with all our might to try and find something or someone that it cannot cover. Grace is enough…”
What is Brennan Manning trying to communicate here?
8. Share about the time when God’s love first became real to you – when you first began to grasp how much God loves you.
Agape is evidence of Christ in me….
9. Read 1 John 4:9-12: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
What can help us become people who live out God’s love to the rest of the world?
10. Galatians 5:22 says love is a “fruit” of the Holy Spirit within us. What do we mean by that?
11. When there’s a person in your life you don’t feel like loving or can’t forgive, do you just grit your teeth and force yourself to love them? If that’s not how it’s supposed to work, how do you do it?
12. Read 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Look through this passage and talk through everything you can learn here about agape love.
13. What was the most helpful idea from this sermon series for you personally?