Unit 3, lesson 2: The Life of Love
Lesson Passages: 1 John 3:1-3,10-14
How powerful is love? Powerful enough to transform you. Powerful enough to set you apart from this world. Powerful enough to compel and empower you to live right in a world that worships wrong. Powerful enough to motivate you to live up to your godly potential. Powerful enough to help you love others in an environment where you are disregarded or hated. Recognizing God’s love should transform us from the inside out. Our inner confidence that comes from being called God’s child should compel us to outer actions of obedience to God and love for others. We’re not there yet, but that doesn’t mean we should give up. As we express God’s love and do what is right, we gain assurance in our identity as God’s children and so we look, live, and love more and more like Jesus.
HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO ME?
God’s children in every generation give evidence of their relationship with God not by feeling saved or having some dramatic conversion experience (although there is nothing wrong with feelings and experiences) but by living God’s life of love. We accept the life-changing love of God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ, and then we live God’s life by experiencing and expressing His love daily. If we could actually grasp how great God’s love for us is, there’s no way our lives wouldn’t be dramatically altered. John loved others and called himself the disciple Jesus loved because he had come to recognize the life-changing love of God. He wanted his readers to do the same, for recognizing God’s love creates an inner compelling that leads to outward actions of doing what is right and loving other people.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
One of the focuses of this week’s lesson is to encourage us to live up to our Godly potential 1 John 3:2-3. With this in mind, what do you think?
- What will believers do if their hope is really in Jesus?
- What does believing this do for your self image?
- How does this motivate you to live up to your godly potential?
FOR REFLECTION
In what specific way(s) did you experience God’s changing love this week?
November 10th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I think the greatest challenge in life is to live is to live a life of love. Love is like a powerful weapon. It can destory evil and change people. The tricky part is that this love can only come from God. Human love is really weak. It tends to be more feelings than force. God’s love is a force that only He can provide. We have to learn to be a conduit for God’s love otherwise the only thing that will come through us is the weak expression of human love.
November 10th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
That’s a good and timely word! You are right; love is like a powerful weapon. It can destroy evil and change people. Truly, the power to love comes from God alone, for God is love.
This week’s lesson and your comments remind me so much about Sunday’s sermon taken from Exodus 3:4-10. You started off the sermon with an insightful observation. For me, it was a revelation! Last Tuesday, Election Day 2008, the United States elected its first Black president, Barak Obama. This was 40 years after Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous last speech (YouTube video of speech) and the day before his assassination. King said that he had seen the Promised Land. He would not complete the journey there, but he had seen the future. Likewise, Moses led the Israelites as they wandered 40 years in the desert before they entered the Promised Land. Coincidence? God is still in the process of bringing His people into the Promised Land.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is a powerful, modern-day example of what God’s love can do through the life of a Believer. God’s love compelled King and a generation of believers to love in the face of hate, hope in the face of despair, and fight for righteousness in the face of fear.
How does God’s love compel us to live for Him, to live up to our Godly potential? Here is a reminder of the main points from last Sunday’s sermon:
God has an intentional plan for each of us.
God understands where we are and what we are going through.
God desires to deliver us from our Egypt (Those things that keep us in bondage)
Nothing can stop the power of God from setting us free. (Pharaoh has to let us go)
God will bring us into our promised land. (The abundant life in Christ)
I “feel” Paul when he says in Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can ever be against us?”
December 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
So true Pastor. Human love is weak and pale in comparison to God’s love. I dear to say that we mistake love for a feeling. In other words if we don’t feel it or have the emotion for it, we cannot express it. We can only love the way we are supposed to through the power of God. As children of God we are to love (fruits of the spirit). Just like I cannot will myself to be patient, but accept that patience is a trait I must have but not something I can do in my own strength. Love is the same. God is Love. Love should also describe us. Unfortunately, Love has been demoted to romance far too much in modern day society. Because we have chosen God as our Savior, we have chosen to LOVE no matter how we FEEL and we can only truly Love if we allow ourselves (as Pastor says) to be the conduit of God’s love.