Love
What Love Is This?
- List the words and phrases that describe God’s love in the following verses:
Isaiah 54:10 Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD, who has compassion on you.
Jeremiah 31:3 The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.
Ro 8:35–39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 John 3:1–2 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
- List the words and phrases from the following that describe how God has
demonstrated His love for you. Then summarize in your own words what these
verses say.
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Ro 5:6–8 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Eph 2:4–5 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.
1 Jn 4:9–10 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
- Reread Romans 8:35–39. If nothing can separate us from God’s love, why do you think many Christians still have a hard time living in the embrace of God’s love from day to day?
- We can learn a lot from the psalmists about how to take hold of the love God has promised to us. For each of the following passages, list ways in which the psalmists kept God’s love in their consciousness.
Ps 26
Ps 40:1–10
Ps 57
Ps 63:1–8
Ps 86:5–13
- Select the verse or passage from the previous questions that most emphatically speaks to you of God’s love. Write it out on a card that you can carry with you. Explain below why you chose this passage.
- Zeph. 3:17 says God will "quiet you with his love." What area of your life needs "quieting" today?
Zeph. 3:17 The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."
- How does God’s love apply to that area?
- Paula Rinehart’s article suggests that for God to quiet us with His love, we may need first to seek out quiet. Where and when can you pursue solitude and silence before your loving God this week?