—–love one another—-John 15:12 Everyone knows that the Bible puts a great emphasis on the importance of of love.And, we talk a lot about loving people. The problem is that we don’t always walk the talk! We know it is our duty to love one another, but we fail to do it–more often than we like to admit. So how can we learn to love one another? Pastor James MacDonald wrote about “a love experiment” one of their small group leaders told him about. This is what he said:
“Our small group realized that we weren’t making progress in “doing life together.” We met each week, hardly thought of each other till the next week. That changed when we determined we were going to work at really loving each other. We vowed to learn to:
1. Lose ourselves in others. It’s about you, not me.
2. Listen deeply and hear what someone is saying/ not saying.
3. Love the unlovely-in our group and in our community.
4. Leave our mistakes at the Cross. Love fuels forgiveness.
5. Discover God’s plan for our lives. We pray and seek the Lord for each other.
6. Lean on the Holy Spirit when we don’t know how to help or pray.
7. Lead others to Christ. Our family is not complete yet.
‘Loving one another earnestly’ (1 Peter 4:8) is not a slogan in this small group, it has become an astonishing reality.”
That sounds like a plan to me. And, remember–“he who fails to plan is planning to fail.”
