The Process Love (Part 2): What Does God Have To Do With It?

TO START

Welcome back to Small Group! We’d love for you group to start this week by simply taking some time to reconnect as we jump into the Fall! Invite your group members to  share “one thing” from their summer. Here’s a list of possible prompts:

  • One funny thing that happened this summer. 

  • One difficult thing that happened this summer. 

  • One thing I learned this summer. 

  • One place I saw God this summer.

  • One thing I’m trying to accomplish these days. 

  • One problem I’m trying to solve these days. 

Additionally as you welcome your group back and jump into discussion, you might take a minute to make a plan and set goals for the coming year. Expectations related to how often you’ll meet, when you’ll meet, childcare, special group meetings, who is willing to host, any things y’all would like to do together, etc…We would encourage y’all to set some time throughout the year to have fun (go to a ballgame or a park, serve in the community, go to a movie, etc.) 

TO DISCUSS

This week, we jumped into part 2 of a series called The Process of Love, a series that invites us to come to terms with how to love those who are hard to love in our lives. Over this series, we will unpack 1st John in hopes of unpacking how we might receive and extend love to those who aren't always easy to love. 

  • Who in your life right now is difficult to love? And why?

This week, we take a look at the good news of how God’s love changes us even when we fail to love.

  • In this past week, was there a moment where you failed to love someone? If so, what was it and what got in the way of you choosing to love? How could it have played out differently?

Read 1 John 1:5-2:2

Zane mentioned that oftentimes, we only think of sin in an individualistic way when John in the passage actually speaks of sin on a much larger scale as a way, a pattern or an activity that we just find ourselves in. 

  • How do you see sin acting on a larger scale in the world or at least in your community around you? And is it hard for you to think of sin as a communal/societal versus individual? 

The heart of God’s desire to show us how to love flows from God’s light which invites us to abandon a life of attempted perfection for a life of confession because that is where we need Jesus to meet us in our lives. 

  • When you read 1 John 1:9,  how does that make you feel? Is confession a regular part of your life? Why or why not? 

The beauty is that when we come to realize that we are loved in our most unloving moments, we realize the love we are called to receive and to release to those who are the hardest to love. 

  • When in your life have you experienced the love of God in the midst of one of your most unloving moments?

TO CLOSE

This week, Zane invited us to consider how God’s invitation to confession brings about beautiful fellowship with God and with others in a way that alters our capacity to love. This week, I want to invite y’all to pray this communal prayer of confession from the Anglican tradition TOGETHER:

Merciful God, our maker and our judge, 

We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed;

We have not loved you with our whole heart,

We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves;

We repent, and we are sorry for our sins.

Father forgive us. 

Strengthen us to love and obey you in newness of life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Matt DeLano