Use your group's discussion time to ratchet forward on really loving, and not just agreeing that love is the point!
Thaw
- Best Super Bowl commercial?
- How do the ads serve as commentary about our priorities?
Leader note: Some people like to talk about commercials and media as something made by "someone else". Be sure and embrace humility here, because the reasons ads and TV are what they are is a direct reflection of what we all are. When you consider the research they employ to figure out their targets and the fact that we're all in this society together, WE'RE making them, in a manner of speaking. We just hate to admit it. This kind of reality check is important in embracing humility, because if we divide ourselves in a disgusted, reactionary way, we will not be able to love people the way the Spirit is training us to love.
- What stuck with you the most from Sunday?
Read
- John 3:16
- 1 John 3:16
- Thoughts?
- "Laying down your life", or "giving your life", has the obvious connotation of dying for others. But in the broader sense, it's an attitude (such as is found in Philippians 2:5-8) of choosing to give your self-preferencing, protective ways to others. Going forward in this discussion, think about laying your life down not as taking a bullet for someone, but in the daily choice to live less guarded; free to love others as you'd previously worked to get others to love you.
Read
- John 10:11
- Thoughts?
- How do we emulate a love given even to those who, like to a sheep, can't or won't pay it back?
- What blocks us from loving like that?
- How do we make determinations about who we lay our lives down for? How do we determine who doesn't get that from us?
Read
- Leviticus 19:18, 19:33-34
- Thoughts?
- How does the context of the often quoted Great Commandment help you understand the thrust?
Leader note: Help the group see that it's not just love your neighbor. Without context, many hear "love people that you already love", which Jesus says isn't the point at all in Matthew 5:46-47. In context, the idea is that there are circumstances and people we would naturally want to put up our guard around, naturally want to work to get back from them what they took out of us, or live in anxiety around because of a past wound, or the potential for a present one. These Jesus says love as self.
Discuss
- Who are the people in your life that you are most guarded, distancing or dismissive around?
- How do your fears of difficulty, pain, punishment, or loss of something you'd prefer to have play into how you withhold love?
Read
- John 13:37-38
- What did Peter end up doing and why?
Leader note: Center on the fact that he was poised to lay down his life in even the most literal sense, but then he came under threat of persecution and/or death, ("hey, aren't you one of the disciples that were following that Jesus-guy that they arrested and are questioning inside?") and gripped his life tightly. It's also worth pointing out that the text said he wept bitterly after choosing this (when the rooster crowed, as prophesied), having caused himself more pain and grief than he'd tried to avoid.
Discuss
- How does fear of pain or discomfort affect your ability to love your parents, siblings and other immediate family members?
- How does it affect your ability to love others that see and live in the world much differently than you?
- Rather than your fear of them possibly happening, how do your current, experienced discomforts- whether they be physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, economic, etc- affect your ability to lay your life down and love?
Read
- Galatians 5:13-14
- Rather than providing another, even ultimate, way of protecting ourselves from pain and punishment, Jesus makes us free. Free from what? Free to what?
Leader note: Help the group, to the extent that they need it, understand that we are invited by The Spirit out of an obsession with self and a fearful life that presents itself as a constant consuming of the world. Slaves to fear, and a life serving them by treating others as things to glean pleasure from, or to dismiss if they won't give it to us. Jesus frees us and our clinging hands to "humbly serve one another in love."
Apply
- Who is the person or group that you think will provide you the most difficulty?
- Are there people you can imagine "taking your life back" if it proves to be unfruitful to lay it down for them? How do you think that relates to the kind of "laying down" that the scriptures depict?
- How can this group help you as you choose to lay a little bit more of yourself down to the people in the concentric circles of your life?
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