About This Guide
The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.
Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.
pdf download
Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.
Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.
more Resources
Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.
Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.
Love
Teaching Texts: John 15: 9-17
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
Joy Complete – God wants your joy to be complete and Jesus is showing the way.
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Read the text slowly and contemplatively, then share what stood out to you.
What surprises you when you read this text?
How does this commandment compare to what you were taught is most important for faith?
There are 7 staggering things Jesus says to them.
YOU ARE LOVED - as the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you
REMAIN IN MY LOVE
THIS REVELATION IS MEANT FOR JOY
YOU ARE MY FRIENDS - I am telling you what I am up to
I CHOSE YOU
YOU HAVE FRUIT TO BEAR
I WILL HELP YOU
YOU ARE LOVED - as the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you
“The Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existing eternally as one divine essence shows us how God can be the love which no greater can be thought: an interpersonal love that comes from God and is directed toward God, fruitfully freed of all selfishness, eternally generative of still more love. The God who is not a “thing”, but an activity. The Father is the loving of the Son, and the Son is the returning of love to the Father, and from this mutuality of love the loving that is the Holy Spirit is breathed out.” – Frederick Bauerschmidt
REMAIN IN MY LOVE
There are ways to live that make you forget God's love
What ways do you live, that makes you forget God’s love?
There are ways to live that keep you remaining in God's love
In what ways can you live to remember gods love?
THIS REVELATION IS MEANT FOR JOY
‘I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” – John 15 v 11-12
How dows it feel that God’s intent with His commandments and direction is meant for our joy?
YOU ARE MY FRIENDS - I am telling you what I am up to
“You are My friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his Master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” – John 15 v 14-15
We know He isn’t saying if you keep enough of My commands you can be My friends.
He is saying WE ARE FRIENDS and a key way that is expressed in joining this way of LOVE!! - living this JESUS WAY
“The gift-like character of God's friendship with us helps us understand why Jesus was so unconcerned about the perils of befriending sinners and outcasts, so unconcerned about the 'contagion' of sin. The love that is God is present so perfectly, so abundantly in the person of Jesus that his goodness cannot be diminished by contact with fallible and failed human beings. Because God's love is not drawn to our goodness but creates our goodness, because it is active and not reactive, the Spirit can transform God's enemies into God's friends.” – Frederick Bauerschmidt
How does friendship with God adjust how you can go about your everyday relationships and responsibilities?
I CHOSE YOU
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.” – John 15 v 16-17
How does being chosen affect your understanding of your identity?
YOU HAVE FRUIT TO BEAR
Fruit of the Spirit in your ever-forming character - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control
Fruit in your relationships - forgiveness and mercy and peace and generosity and creativity and love
Fruit in the gospel - salvation, healing life and light, wholeness, freedom , JOY JOY JOY
Is bearing fruit a burden for you or do you experience it naturally?
I WILL HELP YOU
“whatever you ask in My name the Father will give you. This is My command: Love each other.” – John 15 v 16-17
JESUS’ WHOLE LIFE IS PRAYER…
“[JESUS’] whole life is a prayer because it is the expression in time of the eternal conversation of love that is the life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the stillness of eternity, God the Father speaks the Son as His Word, and as the Son responds in love, the Spirit is breathed forth. Through friendship with Jesus in the Spirit, we have become part of that eternal dialogue of love.
– Frederick Bauerschmidt
