Relationships

As Veronika and I were planning Monday night Bible study and decided to do it on relationships, I remembered a study that I did at Lakeland Church in Illinois. Seth Fagerland, the youth pastor, did a series on relationships and what they look like in God's eyes. I remembered that I still had the papers, so I told Veronika about them and we ended up basing the first study last night off of Seth's. It was a small group last night, but the conversation was amazing. Here's what we discussed:

1 John 4:7-21

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. We know that we live in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in Him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made compete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And He has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother."

God is love. How beautiful. How amazing to define it in Him completely. God called us to love one another. If we "know" God we will love. Christ showed us the love of God in His relation to us on this earth. That is how we are to love. If we "know" God, we claim to have a relationship with Him. Our relationship with Christ should define all other relationships - not the other way around. Our personal relationship with Christ is the most important. It is Him who empowers us to love as He does.

"If I depend on anything or anyone other than God for my significance (trust, hope security...) I will be unfulfilled. Every human relationship will fail me, and you, at one point or another. God will never fail us!!!"

"Biblical 'love' is not so much a feeling, as it is a decision. Fundamentally it is the commitment to value and esteem a person through words and action. Though it is accompanied by emotion, the emotion is the fruit of it!"

I can't get over how important it is to love as Christ loved us- to love ALL people, not just those who are kind to us. Christ died for All people, not just those who loved Him in return. His love to give us that opportunity to have a personal relationship with Him, the Holy God, is so amazing and so humbling.

God wants us to have relationships with one another and keep each other accountable- to be helpful to each other. He wanted this even from the very beginning. (Genesis 1:26-27, 2:15-18) He gave us relationship with Him, even in the beginning. (Genesis 2:7)

John 17:6-26 ~ Jesus prays for His disciples and all the people of the world ~

⁶"I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. ⁷Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. ⁸For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. ⁹I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. ¹¹I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. ¹²While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. ¹³"I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. ¹⁴I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. ¹⁵My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. ¹⁷Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified."My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: ²³I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ²⁴"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.²⁵"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. ²⁶I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them."