Proof of Life: More than a Feeling
1 John 3:11-24
Connect:
Share how you have seen God in the Highs and Lows of your week.
Prayer:
Pray that God would lead your discussion time and bring fresh insight, conviction, and hope through your time together.
Review:
This series, Proof of Life, is looking at how we KNOW that we are saved, born of the Spirit, alive in Christ… and what that looks like in our daily walk! This week we looked at our life in Christ and the way we live it out, expressing His love in our words, actions and relationships…
The Grand Tour of the message: Thinking back on what you heard this Sunday…
o What did you learn about God?
o What did you learn about people?
o What did you learn about yourself?
o What do you want to commit to putting into practice?
Reflection:
Personal Experience:
Share a time when someone changed their behavior around you or got curious about “Why are you different?” Maybe people stopped swearing around you (or apologized when they did). Maybe someone just came up and asked you, “Why are you so different?”. Maybe it was a lot of crude jokes that all of a sudden people stopped telling you… what happened when people saw Jesus in you?
Group Discussion:
Read 1 John 3:11-12
When someone is in your life who is “hard to love”, what do you do?
What would it require of us if we were actually commit to loving one another? How would that affect our habits, our reactions, our thought life, our conversations, our attention, our prayer life…?
Read Gen 4:1-7. Talk about the nature of sin and how it affects our worship of God. (PS 59:2, Ps 66:18, Prov 15:8, Amos 5:22-23, Matt 5:23-24, Hebrews 11:6)
Read Gen 4:8-16. Cain killed Able his brother. How did, ‘I will just execute my own brother’ make sense to Cain, and how did that contrast with God’s view of the whole thing?
Why does the world rejecting Jesus hate those who accept Jesus? (John 3:19-20, John7:7, John 15:18-19; 2 Timothy 3:12; 1 Peter 4:3-4)
Read 1 John 3:14-18
What does it mean that we have “passed from death to life” if we believer in Jesus? (John 5:24, Romans 6:1-14, Eph 2:4-5, Col 2:13, Rom 8:10-11, 2 Cor 5:17)
Why is a person who hates a brother/sister a murderer?
We are called to lay down our life for our brother/sister; How does the example of Jesus set guard rails on that so we do not become enablers of unhealthy behavior or mindless drones of another’s will? (John 13:34-35, Gal 5:13, Phil 2:3-5, Col 3:23-24, 2 Thes 3:10-12).
Read 1 John 3:21-24
Someone says, “It sounds like John is saying that if we do what pleases God, we can have anything we want!” How would you refine that statement; what’s missing?
A 12 year old asks you, “What does it mean to believe in Jesus?” How would you respond in a way that will be Biblically accurate/complete and understandable to a 12 year old?
What does it mean to know “God lives in us… by the Spirit He gave us”? (John 14:16-17, Gal 4:6, Romans 8:7-10, Rom 8:13-16, 1 John 4:13)
Application:
If being a Christian was a crime, would there be enough evidence to have you convicted? That’s a challenging question, but one that is necessary to consider. Spend some time considering if there is something holding back the work of God’s Spirit in your life, and turn that area of your life over to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Prayer:
Spend some time praying together that God will give us each grace to let His love be expressed in our relationship with each other and those in the world who don’t know Him.
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