What If... Series (What If...We Really Loved People?)

This guide is a tool to help you facilitate discussion with your rGroup. Use it to lead your group in discovering, owning, and applying God’s Word. This is a flexible tool, not a rigid task list. Follow the Holy Spirit’s lead as you lead your group. You don’t need to ask every question.

 

Understanding God’s Word: Know and Understand the Truth

READ Luke 6:12-17

• What were three things Pastor Nathan drew from this text that demonstrate how Jesus loves others? 
• What does this passage tell us about who God is? 
• What does this passage reveal to us about ourselves or our needs?

  Living and Applying God’s Word: Give a Vision of Life With God

• Before we talk about the what, we need to talk the why. What is the purpose of our love as Christians? What is the motivation for why we should be a loving people? The impact we want to see from being loving? 
  • Examples: We love others because God has commanded all of his people to love; We love others so that through our love, others might experience the love of God; We love others with the hope that others might come to Christ as Lord and Savior to experience the saving love of God. 
• What does godly love look like, the love that all Christians are called to demonstrate with their lives? Be specific: 
  • In our homes?
  • In our communities?
  • In our jobs? 
  • In our church? 
  • Where we hang out? 
• Loving people in this way doesn’t just happen like flicking a light switch. Loving people this way doesn’t happen if we just keep trying harder or working at it more. It happens when we cultivate a personal relationship with God. Why does a rich, loving relationship with God allow us to have rich, loving relationships with others? 
  • Example answers: 
    • 1 John 4:19 tells us that “we love because he first loved us.” When we are truly experiencing the unconditional, unbelievable, unstoppable, and unparalleled love of God, we can’t help extending that kind of love to those around us. It comes naturally and genuinely to those who truly experience that depth of love. 
    • The more we spend time looking at, hearing, and understanding Jesus, the more we will begin to look like him. That is the point of 2 Corinthians 3:18 is saying. We become what we behold. 
• What are ways that we can cultivate our relationships with God? 

 Assessing the Heart: Identify and Address Sin

• What are some ways you see in your own life or in the church that we are failing to demonstrate godly love? Who are the particular people that you struggle to show love towards?
• Some of us might think that we are pretty loving people, but the motivations and purpose of why we do loving things might not match the motivations and purpose of godly love that we talked about earlier. What are some of the wrong motivations and desires that we use when loving others? (Examples: So we look good to others; to boost our egos; to check another thing off of our list; so someone will owe us; etc.) 
  • To truly love someone in a godly way, does it really matter if there’s a wrong motivation behind our efforts to love people? Why? 
• What are the consequences of our failures to be Christians whose lives are marked with love? 
  • Relationships with others?
    • John 13:35 - People will know we are disciples of Jesus because of our love. If we don’t love, we impression does that give them of Christians? What impression does it give them of our God? 
  • Relationship with God? 

      

 

Turn to God: Confess and Renew Belief in God

• What if God loved us the way that we tend to love others? 

READ Romans 5:8 & John 15:13

• Scripture shows us the truth that brings everything back into perspective. We are all hopeless sinners who are unlovely and unloving. In spite of all of this, what does this Scripture show that Jesus given us? 
  • When we see how Christ loved us and gave everything he had for us, how does your view of God change? How does our view of other change? 
• In Luke 6:17, we saw that Jesus stood with the people on a level place. He didn’t look down on the people around him, and never thought anyone was beneath God’s love or his salvation. As sinner saved by God's grace alone, we should see the world the same way. At the foot of the cross, you are all no better than the prostitute on the street corner, the child molester in prison, or the ISIS executioner in the Middle East. How does the gospel truly allow us to see people this way?
• Later today, next week, or next month we will all fail to truly love others. How do come back to a place where we believe these things and live them out with our lives again and again?