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The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.
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Love
Teaching Text: John 15: 11-17
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:
Friendship
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Think of a childhood friendship. What aspects of that friendship did you particularly enjoy?
Who do you most unlikely friend? Why does this friendship surprise you?
Lent: Historically, the season of Lent in the church year is a time of preparation, repentance, and renewal. We remember and mark Jesus’ time of fasting and temptation in the wilderness. We ask God to help remove our sin and anything that has entangled us or is keeping us from experiencing our union with Jesus.
In our text today, Jesus is talking about friendship in one of the most crucial hours in the history of the world.
God is a relational being - the Trinity
The world is a relational world
The Kingdom of God moves along relational lines
So friendship is one of the most powerful forces in this world
If we can see an enemy become a friend, it is one of life's great miracles
It happens to be at the heart of the Gospel.
What is a friend?
How can we make friends?
How can we keep friends?
What makes a good friend?
Share with your group something that stood out that a friend did for you.
What a friend is:
A friend is someone you share with and who shares with you
That’s what we hear Jesus saying here. You are my friends and not something else like a servant because I am sharing with you.
Friendship and Selfishness. Two of the great defining realities of human experience. It’s wild how often selfishness feels safer, but over time diminishes us.
“Each of us has contact with hundreds of people who never look beyond our surface appearance. We have dealings with hundreds of people who the moment they set eyes on us begin calculating what use we can be to them, what they can get out of us. We meet hundreds of people who take one look at us, make a snap judgment, and then slot us into a necessary category so that they won’t have to deal with us as persons. They treat us as something less than we are: and if we’re in constant association with them, we become less.
And then someone enters our life who isn’t looking for someone to use, is leisurely enough to find out what’s really going on in us, is secure enough not to exploit our weaknesses or attack our strengths, recognizes our inner life and understands the difficulty of living out our inner convictions, confirms what’s deepest within us. A friend.”
– Eugene Peterson
When you stop sharing, friendship will diminish. This can happen in a well established relationship or a brand new one.
When we look at Jesus life.
We see Enemies, Multitudes (Neighbors), 120 disciples, 12 apostles, and the 3 close friends.
The difference in a real way was He shared more as the relationships grew in intimacy.
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
– ACTS 2 v 42-27
That word FELLOWSHIP there is a Greek word KOINONIA and it means SHARING.
“It is no small thing to open our hearts and our arms and allow another to enter there, to grant another person the same worth, the same consequence, the same existential gravity that we take for granted in ourselves. The fact is that our natural tendency is to treat people as if they were not “others” at all, but merely aspects of ourselves. We do not experience them as the overwhelming, comprehensive realities we find ourselves to be. Compared with us, they are not quite real. We see them through a haze, the haze of our own all-engulfing self-hood.”
– Mike Mason
How can we make friends?
Jesus says here to His friends that He made a choice. He chose friendship with these whom He is sharing the meal with
Friends are discovered and friends are made
We aren’t joined in Christ by mutual compatibility similar demographics. We are joined by the love and mercy of God revealed to us in Jesus.
One the most beautiful and needed aspects of church life is we don’t curate who is here. We brought together and we discover friendship. By first sharing the mercy and grace God has given us with each other.
We don’t begin with the old resume lists for friendships. We, together at the communion table, offer the grace we have received.
Friendships in Christ are discovered, but they are also MADE, and I think it comes back to sharing.
When you share time, share honesty, share a love of something, share a sense of humor, share an effort, share suffering even you see bonds strengthen.
Companionship becomes friendship through intentional sharing.
C.S. Lewis said it’s hard to find friends if you just want friends. Because friends bond over something shared.
Pursue deep friendship with Christ - Jesus will shape and reshape your heart with grace
Helps ground your identity
Go after your loves, passions, and talents. Pursue the things God has made you to love and be good at and care for most
Your passions may be a clue to your friendships
We keep showing up to serve together, to create together, to practice together, to enjoy something together
Pursue God and what God has given you to care about and then…
Pay attention to whom your fellow-travelers are.
When you see a potential friend
Take the risk of sharing
That intentional paying attention and sharing can build and strengthen friendships
***I HAVE SOME FRIENDS WHO HELP ME WITH THIS***
Friendship has risk
Someone could move away, or hurt you, or not give as much as your giving to the relationship
It might cost you time at some achievement or accomplishment
It requires investment and some of those are without guarantees
Some of you have seen a regression in your willingness to pursue friendship in
”To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
– C.S. Lewis
Sometimes People Use the Word Friend When They Mean Something Else
Internet acquaintance
Someone I am networking with to get what I want
People I compete with and compare myself to
We won’t be able to be friends with everyone even some of our companions and that’s ok
We have lost the art of loving confrontation, confession, and forgiveness
Friendship has to be maintained by resolving differences
If we cant confront, confess or forgive - our friendships will be short lived or shallow
If you get close to someone they are going to hurt you.
How can we keep friends?
We do have to lay down our lives for one another.
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
– JOHN 15 v 11-13
We keep friends by walking in the way of Jesus - the way of forgiveness and mercy and self-giving love.
But also we keep friends in Christ because we share in His death to share in His resurrection.
What aspects of your friendships do you feel to pay attention to and change?
Where do you withhold sharing more of yourself?
Are there any friends that you need to share forgiveness with?
Any friends you want to build and share more of your resources asnd even yourself with?
