About This Guide: This weekly groups guide, “Do Not Be Afraid,” is designed as a companion to our Advent 2021 teaching series, fostering discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting. Join a group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.
the everlasting love of God
Teaching Text: John 3:16-21
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
A flurry of activity from the silence
Love overcomes fear
Love is what we are invited into
Presence
Meditate on these with others:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son.
God’s answer to our human condition of need, suffering, sin was to restore the connection between humans and himself. The way we were created to exist. His answer was giving his very self again to us. His answer was being present with us.
We were made to be with him.
Pray together:
God, I am sorry for neglecting the very thing you have given me for my joy and wholeness. Being with you. Give me the desire to desire you. Give me an unquenchable longing for you God. Forgive me when I seek other things to satisfy my soul.
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
The reduction of what love is:
Attraction (or lust, or non-sexually just fondness) - we find someone's appearance or personality pleasing and we call that love.
Agreement (or affirmation) - we align around ideological lines and we are being loving when we affirm someone’s belief system or agree with their approach to life, or their politics.
Protection (promising safety) - we say we are loving when what we primarily mean is we are attempting to keep safe.
Provision (material not emotional needs).
Many of our temporary feelings get labeled as love and this can create a deep pain in our actual experience.
One of the most shocking things the Bible says about love apart from that it is essential to God’s nature is that it never fails!
So if love ends - it was something else.
Where have you experienced love that ended and perhaps left you alone or wounded?
Where have you loved in a way that was not like Jesus and where you might have cause pain and hurt?
Each of these reductions might be part of a part of Love but when any of them becomes the whole you get a dangerous distortion.
Love may be lacking or challenged when one of these isn't present but if any of these reductions becomes love for us we are in trouble.
This passage gives us the most robust picture of love in universe. It defines categories in ways that shattered our natural expectations.
It broadens love into the something that can truly hold the world, but also shows how love can shape the smallest interactions of our lives.
Love is essential to God’s nature.
Love is essential to God and the universe - love shapes the fabric of reality - before there was anything there wasn’t just static power or a being or great might, but a dimensional being that defies our categories and has love is his very nature.
Love is God sharing his life.
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. (1 John 4:9)
Eternal life: a share in the God life.
This is what the angels are announcing; This is what Mary seems to know; and this why the wise men travel from afar.
Love cost God greatly.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)
Jesus is born to confront the power and the penalty of sin.
But Jesus also comes willing to take the full burden of our sin on himself.
Sin always brings death. Jesus walked into that death for us.
Love is God’s invitation to us.
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. (1 John 4:11-12)
God says: I want you to have share in my life and my love; I have dealt with the barriers; I am offering you forgiveness and union with me; and I am offering you a share in my life now and forever.
What does it look like to receive this love?
BIRTH: A way to come alive and live (1 John 4:7-9). To come alive in the life and way of God.
FORGIVENESS: A way to be near and be forgiven (1 John 4:10). To be people who know they are forgiven and who can offer forgiveness.
FILLING: A way to be filled and to share (1 John 4:11-16). To be a people filled with the Holy Spirit.
COURAGE: A way of confidence and courage (1 John 4:16-18). To be people who confront and cast our fear. The way of courage is the way of knowing and relying on the love of God.
Fear has a place in a broken world, but it is not meant to shape and define our lives.
God’s love is meant to shape and define our lives. So we have to bring God’s love and promise to bear on our fears.
And this can take practice and help and prayer and therapy and sometimes needs to be helped by medication.
But we are learning to let God’s perfect love cast out our fear.
COMPASSION: A way of compassion (1 John 4:19-21). To be people of incarnate love.
The love of God in Christ influences how we do friendship, how we know our neighbors, shapes how we live in marriage, how we parent, how we date, how communicate online, and how we speak to someone who has wronged us.
In Advent we long for this love and at Christmas we realize something has happened to changed out world forever.
Love
Read these notes and discuss the questions below:
God’s love was made known. It was most perfectly displayed in the incarnation of Jesus.
We are now his body and hands to reveal him to the nations, to the neigborhood we live in. Think about how you can make God’s love tangible this week to your neigbors, co workers, and loved ones.
Some ideas:
Invite your neighbors for a meal.
Plan out by yourself, with your group or family one intentional act of kindness for each week of advent.
Share in God’s nature generosity and learn about The Rebuilders Initiative.
Pray for one another in the group.
