Relational Spirituality Study 6

Relational Spirituality

Week 6

LOOKING BACK (Care and Accountability)

· How was your week (highlights, difficulties, challenges, etc.)?

· In what way did you influence someone this week in their relationship with the King?

LOOKING UP (Scripture and Discussion)

“As a communion of three persons, God is a relational being. He originates a personal relationship with us, and our high and holy calling is to respond to his loving initiatives. By loving God completely, we discover who we are and whose we are as we come to see ourselves as God sees us. In this way, we become secure enough to become others-centered rather than self-centered and enables us to become givers rather than grabbers.”

Part Three: Loving Others Compassionately

“The closer our walk with God, the more we are empowered to manifest our love for Him through acts of love to others.”

This Week’s Focus: How we love others demonstrates the depth of our love for God.

Directions: There are assigned passage(s) for five days each week. Read them in light of the Relational Spirituality theme and the Week’s Focus found directly above.

A daily spiritual discipline is to learn to hear God’s voice from his Word. Please don’t look at this as a homework assignment.

Find a quiet place each day to read the passage(s) slowly a couple of times through. 


DAY 1 PASSAGE: Matthew 22:34-40

Matthew 22:34–40 ESV

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

1. “What was said?” 
 Write down what the author was saying to his original audience. Love, that is the way of God, the way to please God, love Him with all that we are and have and love others as if we are loving ourselves.

2. “What was God saying?” 
Write down what God was/is saying. Jesus in this setting is trying to invoke a feeling, a response, a realization. Love sounds easy, but is it? Can you truly do this? If this is what all the commandments boil down to then we cannot keep the commandments. We are incapable of loving God with all we are and are absolutely incapable of loving others like we love ourselves. If that’s the truth, then how desperate are we for a Savior.

3. “What is God saying to you?” 
Apply the passage’s meaning to you today. That being said, can I be more loving? What stops me? Selfishness? A lack of desire? What is the most loving thing I could do for God and another? What is it God did and why?

4. Be prepared to share how some of the Bible passages impacted you and how you can apply this in your life in your weekly group meeting?

DAY 2 PASSAGE: 1 John 3:23-24

1 John 3:23–24 ESV

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.

1. “What was said?” 
 Write down what the author was saying to his original audience. The twofold commandment of God, believe in Jesus and love on another. If we don’t do these then we are not in fellowship with God. But what is going to keep us obedient and enable us to do this? The Holy Spirit whom God has given us.

2. “What was God saying?” 
Write down what God was/is saying. Loving one another is loving God. See Matthew 25:35-36

Matthew 25:35–36 ESV

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’

Matthew 25:40 ESV

And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

We won’t do this from the heart with pure motives if we don’t know Jesus and believe in Him.

3. “What is God saying to you?” 
Apply the passage’s meaning to you today. Do your actions and your lack of actions betray your confession or profession? James would say that true faith is always accompanied by action. Where is my action?

4. Be prepared to share how some of the Bible passages impacted you and how you can apply this in your life in your weekly group meeting?

DAY 3 PASSAGE: 1 John 4:7-12

1 John 4:7–12 ESV

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

1. “What was said?” 
 Write down what the author was saying to his original audience. Let us continue, let us do, let us love, for if we are in Christ then the love of God is in us. God demonstrated this love in Christ’s life and death for us, sacrifice, if He loved us that much, shouldn’t we, if we are truly in Him, love like that?

2. “What was God saying?” 
Write down what God was/is saying. I showed you what true love is, laying down your life for another, not just in death, but to bring life by knowing God. I’ve given you this love, ought you not be loving others in this way? Don’t you fully comprehend my love, have you experienced it? It is our job to help others experience the love of God by our actions for and to them.

3. “What is God saying to you?” 
Apply the passage’s meaning to you today. Repeat—where is your love? Where is your service? Where is your death to yourself and life on my behalf? True life is found in denying yourself and serving others. Go and live!!

4. Be prepared to share how some of the Bible passages impacted you and how you can apply this in your life in your weekly group meeting?

DAY 4 PASSAGE: Only 3 passages to meditate on and apply this week

DAY 5 PASSAGE: Only 3 passages to meditate on and apply this week

LOOKING UP (Scripture and Discussion)

· What did you hear God saying in the readings this week?

· What did you hear God saying to you in the readings this week?

· What word, phrase or passage got your attention this week? And why?

· How has it changed the way you live or the way that you see the world?

LOOKING FORWARD (Prayer and Commissioning)

· Personal: Based on our time today, how can we pray for you and for one another?

Mission: How can you influence someone this week in their relationship with the King?