Love Experiment!

After forming small circles of eight, many of us met each other for the first time.  Following a sermonette from Steve, we discussed the following:

DQ.1  Talk about the person you loved and trusted most when you were a kid and why?    (if you can't think of anyone, share what that experience was like.)

The bottom line of trusting and connecting with someone... is love.  But love is a word that is easily misunderstood and misused from what we're talking about this morning.  We don't love others out of a compulsive, unhealthy need to be needed, or a fear of being alone... or even a sense of guilt that we're not doing enough.  We don't automatically have enough love in us to "love the unlovely" either.  The way we love and trust others is heavily influenced by the way we've been loved during our childhoods which varies greatly from person to person. However... In Jesus Christ... we find both the definition of... and motivation for "true" love.

1 John 4:7-12 (New International Version)

 7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

DQ.2   From verses 9-10, discuss what God has done to express love for us and  what it means for us and all of humanity.

DQ.3   Discuss what God's act of love for us teaches us about what's involved in loving others.  

DQ.4  3 different times in this passage, John says "love one another" or "love each other."  Give examples of what loving each other looks like and when you've seen it in action. 

DQ.5 Discuss ways we can "love each other" and the people in our community in ways that reflect God's love?