29 Nov Discussion Guide: Rise and Fall Week 6
Prayer
Take the first 10 minutes of your time together to listen to what God is doing in one another’s lives and pray for any specific needs people in your group may have.
This week we continue our series called Live Big. We will be spending the next few weeks looking at God’s generosity towards us in the Gospel, and how that Truth should impact the way we live, give and serve the world around us.
Discussion Questions
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing – or should we say “seeing”? there are no tenses in God – the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the medial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a “host” who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and “take advantage of” Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”
How would you describe our culture’s understanding of love today?
The understanding of love in our culture today is that love is a feeling you suddenly find yourself caught up in. Love is something you can fall in and out of without warning or sometimes even the knowledge that it is happening. Love seems to be based on attraction, affinity or even proximity. It is something that takes over our emotions and decision making, and it appears to typically be based on the fact that the person we “love” makes us feel happy, wanted, attractive, desirable, and lovable ourselves. However, the moment that person ceases to make us feel those things we suddenly fall out of love with them. The fact is that what our culture refers to as love is really more likely self-centered and self-serving contractual relationships that so long as the other person commits to making us happy we will be happy to return the favor.
How do you feel that type of love has impacted or affected our culture?
This cultural understanding of love has produced a false concept of community and friendship in our society. Because we inherently know that the motivation behind someone “loving” us is ultimately for their own self benefit it causes us to not believe the best about others, to put up walls of self-defense, to not be completely honest with others about who we really our and what we actually feel about a situation. It has produced the Facebook phenomenon where people portray a social appearance they think others will celebrate without every really allowing themselves to be known. This cultural idea of love has produced a nation of self-preservationists who hold their possessions and their hearts as close to their chest as they can. This, by the way, is the same effect the serpent’s lies had on Adam and Eve. When God’s love for them was doubted, then their love for one another had to follow suit. In that moment, love went from it’s pure, covenantal roots to a perverted sense of self-gratification.
How is that cultural concept of love different from the kind of God-love Lewis describes here?
The kind of love Lewis ascribes to God in this quote is a love not based on title or feeling, but of sacrificial choice and commitment to another when it is most difficult and least deserved. God loves us by offering Himself to us knowing that we will take advantage of and misuse that love for our own self-benefit. God, who is love, is secure enough in that love to make Himself vulnerable to us, susceptible to rejection, knowing that without the opportunity to reject Him we also do not have the opportunity to love Him. But, regardless of our response He continues to pursue and welcome us into His love.
Matthew 5:44-48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
According to Jesus, there is something we can be perfect in. What is it?
We can be perfect in the way we love others. This may sound impossible, but if you stop to think about it, love is actually the only thing we really can be perfect in. We can’t be perfect in obedience because “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We can’t be perfect in righteousness because one sin of imperfection mars the perfect righteousness God designed us to walk in. But you can be perfect in believing the best about someone else. You can be perfect in forgiving someone. You can be perfect in serving and laying down your life for someone. You can be perfect in staying committed to someone. Reflecting the perfect love of God through continually loving others is the one thing we actually can be perfect in, but it takes the knowledge of God’s perfect love for you to empower you to do so.
According to Jesus how can we be perfect in love?
By not just loving our friends and those who are easy to love, but by loving our enemies and those who it is most difficult to love as well. In this, we are most reflecting the image of God in which we are made. Loving your friends is understandable because you receive something in return, namely the love of that friend. But, loving someone who has neither want or desire to love you back, or to give you anything in response to your love, well that is what the heart of God is all about. It is only in those moments that the world can see we truly value someone and something more than anything this world has to offer.
Do you find this command to be perfect in love not just towards our friends, but also towards our enemies, to be easy or difficult? Why?
Is there currently a relationship in your life where you are finding it difficult to love? If so, what makes that situation so difficult?
Romans 5:6-10
”For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
Why does Paul call us ”enemies” of God?
Because if God is the King of the Universe and has enacted His laws to govern the Universe, including our very lives, then any rebellion to those laws is an act of treason and as such we have become an enemy of the state. Any person attempting to overthrow the ruling authority of a country or kingdom is by definition an enemy. In our rebellion against God, our treason, we have made ourselves to be His enemies.
How did God demonstrate love to you in your sin and animosity towards Him?
Give people an opportunity to specifically explain how God was gracious to them in their specific situation and testimony. You may need to encourage people to share, remind them that group is a safe place. Perhaps start by sharing your own story of how God’s grace and love invaded your specific situation.
What does God’s response do to your heart? How does it maybe change your perspective on those situations where you find it difficult to love others?
Closing Thought
Athanasius of Alexandria (293AD – 373AD)
“Christians, instead of arming themselves with swords, extend their hands in prayer.”
Is there a difficult, relational situation you currently find yourself in that the rest of us can pray for?