We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4:19

“Reactive attachment disorder,” is a condition that develops in children who grow up without a person in their lives who consistently responds and cares for them. They don’t know what love is because they haven’t experienced it. These children tend to be emotionally withdrawn, and seldom seek comfort from others. Fortunately, the condition is reversible. When adopted into a nurturing family, such kids can learn to love and trust others.

There’s a lesson here: People learn to love from experience. Not from a textbook or lecture, but from a real, live person expressing it to them repeatedly.

This week, we’re going to learn how to become more loving people. I’m going to give you a five-step process straight from the Bible. If you put these five steps into action, practicing each of them often, you will become a master at loving others.

Your first step to becoming a master at loving others is simple, but life changing. Like a child who needs the experience of being loved by a bigger person, you need the experience of being loved by God. His love is real, and perfect, and available to you in this very moment.

Last week we learned from John 3:16 that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

Everlasting life isn’t just life in heaven after you die. Everlasting life is a quality of life that begins when you invite Jesus, the Son of God, to become your Lord and Savior. In Revelation 3:20 He promises that If any hears my voice and opens the door [to your life], I will come in to him, and eat with him, and he with me.

If you have never formally opened the door to your life to Jesus, right now is the best time to do that. Say to Him, “Lord Jesus, I believe You came to earth to pay the price for my sins by dying on the Cross. I admit I have sinned and ask You to forgive me. I invite You to come into my life and live with me. I ask You to be my Lord and Savior, and purpose to follow You from now on.”

If you prayed that prayer just now, God, through His Holy Spirit, has just entered your life. Your past is forgiven, and God is now living within you.

1 John 4:19 says that the reason we are able to love is because “… he first loved us.” From now on, you will experience the love of God personally.

Whether today is the first day of your experience with the love of God, or you’ve been a Christian for a long time, the first step to becoming more loving is to experience love from God. There are four ways this will happen for you.

How to Personally Experience God’s Love
1. In your heart. Romans 5:5 says, God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Pay attention to this. At every moment, God is with you, expressing His love to you, directing your thoughts and attitudes as you pay attention to Him.
2. Through the Spirit’s inner witness. Romans 8:16 says, The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children. At every moment, God is testifying to you, assuring you that He is with you, and all of His promises in Scripture are available to you. Again, pay attention to this.
3. By remaining in Christ. John 15:9-10 says, As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love. In the passage, Jesus compares Himself to the branch of a grapevine, and us to the vine that’s attached to it. As long as we stay attached, we experience all that He has for us, including massive doses of His love.
4. By obedience. You remain in Jesus by keeping His commands (John 15:10). In John 14:23 Jesus also says, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

Step 1 in the great assignment of becoming a more loving person is to experience what real love is like, by experiencing it from the Master of love Himself. Start today in paying attention to how God goes about loving you from the inside out.

Pray this: Lord Jesus, I receive Your love for me today. Help me to learn to love others like You love me! In Jesus’ name. Amen!

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Galatians 5:22-23

In the side yard of my house I have an apple tree. I didn’t plant it; I just discovered it one day. My only explanation for how it got there is that somehow an apple core must have fallen out while I was taking our trash to the bin.

When it first stuck its nose out of the underbrush, I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but from the looks of it, it seemed to be a tree. I like trees, so I let it continue to grow until one day, it had blossoms, then buds, and by early summer, those buds were becoming nice, beautiful apples.

From my perspective, all those apples happened by accident. But biologically, you and I know that that tree produces apples because that’s what God designed it to do. An apple tree needs soil, sunlight and water to grow. All three of those were naturally present when I accidentally dropped the apple core some years ago. In its early days, I didn’t do anything to help the tree. But now that I know what it is, I do three things to help it produce fruit. I prune it in the fall, fertilize it in the winter, and water it in the spring and summer. It grows more and better apples when I do these things.

Yesterday we started in on a process of becoming more loving people. Step 1 is to experience love in order to give love. Step 2 is to do what you were designed to do, which is bear the fruit of the Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love.

Galatians 5:22-23 lists nine traits of a person who is bearing the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Some Bible scholars say that each of these nine are unique traits unto themselves. Others say that love is the fruit of the Spirit, and the other eight qualities are all descriptions of what love looks like when it’s put into action.

For the sake of the week’s assignment, let’s assume the latter. Let’s assume that the fruit of the Spirit is love. In other words, when you and I look like what we were designed to look like, we’re like a tree with branches sticking out, and on every one of those branches are bushels of love.

In one sense, our love bushels should just come out naturally. If we sit in the right soil, absorb enough sunlight, and drink in enough living water, the tree that is our life will burst out with love. This is God’s plan for us. If you’ve received the Holy Spirit into your life through inviting Jesus to be your Savior, this fruit should be happening without conscious effort on your part.

And it might be. But my experience with pruning, fertilizing, and watering tells me that I can produce more and better fruit if I intentionally do things to nurture the fruit the Holy Spirit is trying to produce inside of me.

So let’s get intentional. As Christians, we have the Holy Spirit within us. He is producing the fruit of love in our lives. There are some things we can do to assist in this process. We can choose to be good soil. We can absorb the right nutrients. And we can keep ourselves from doing things that will damage our fruit.

We’ll talk about each of these concrete actions over the next few days. For today, your assignment is to continue to pay attention to the Holy Spirit within you, as we learned yesterday. And now also to be aware that the Holy Spirit is deliberately working to produce the fruit of love in your life.

Pray this: Lord Jesus, today I am giving You my full cooperation in producing in me the love You designed for me to produce. In Jesus’ name. Amen!

Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

Lee Strobel tells a story about his very young son playing soccer. During the first part of the season, Strobel’s team lost every match. They never even took a shot at the goal. In frustration one day, Lee sat his son down and said, “Kyle, the purpose of the game is to put the ball in the net.”

That changed everything. The moment the game started, Kyle stole the ball from his own teammate, sprinted down the field, and kicked the ball directly into the goal. He repeated this over and over again, changing the way he and his team played for the rest of the season.

This week we’re learning the process of becoming a more loving person. Step 1 is to experience God’s love. Step 2 is to begin to bear the fruit of love in your life. Step 3 is to know what love looks like. In the game of loving others, you can’t score a goal unless you know what a goal looks like.

First century Las Vegas In 54 A.D., the Apostle Paul received a letter from the church in Corinth. The church had questions and divisions, so they wrote Paul to ask for help. In response, the Apostle composed the letter we know as “1 Corinthians.” In that day, the city of Corinth was like Las Vegas. Lots of sex masquerading as love. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul gave the Corinthians a detailed description of what true love looks like.

Reread the verses at the top of this page and count the number of actions listed. (The answer is fifteen). Paul’s description is fifteen actions, zero feelings. And every action is a choice to elevate the interests of the other person. This is what the game of love looks like.

Walk through them with me in the next sixty seconds. (That’s four seconds per action.) At the bottom of the page, jot down thoughts as they come to you.
1. What does it take to be patient with another person?
2. What does it take to be kind?
3. What do you need to set aside in order to not envy?
4. What do you have to do to keep yourself from bragging?
5. What do you need to do to think humbly of yourself?
6. What can keep you from being rude to someone?
7. How can you keep yourself from seeking your own good above others?
8. When you’re tired or hungry, how do you keep from getting irritable?
9. How will you stop yourself from keeping a record of other people’s wrongs?
10. What does it look like to rejoice when the morally-right thing happens?
11. What does it mean to bear all things?
12. What does it mean to believe all things?
13. What does it mean to hope all things?
14. And what does it mean to endure all things?
15. How is it that love never ends (or never fails)?

Mastering this Biblical description of true love will make you a master at loving others.

Pray this: Lord Jesus, as I look over this list, I can see that You were always patient and kind, never envied anyone, never boasted about Yourself, were never arrogant, rude, self seeking, or irritable. You never kept records on how people wronged You. You never rejoiced when bad triumphed, and You always were happy when good came out on top. You bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things. And to this day, Your love has never failed. Help me to retain this idea, and live it out. Bring it to my mind often, I ask, in Jesus’ name!

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… Matthew 5:44

He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-39

The Nature of God’s Commands
I’ve been watching my children give commands to their children recently, and discovered three things.
1. His commands are good for you. The first is, because they love their children, they never give a command that isn’t good for their child. God doesn’t either. Every time you feel the inner witness of the Spirit nudging you to do something loving, remind yourself, “God never asks me to do things that aren’t good for me.”
2. His commands are doable. The second is, my children never command their kids to do anything the kids can’t do. Sometimes what they ask is stretching, but it’s always doable. Likewise, every time the Lord asks you to do something, you can do it!
3. You get to choose. The third is, every time my children give their kids a command, the kids have a choice. They can obey, or disobey.

Yesterday, 1 Corinthians 13 showed us that love isn’t a feeling. It’s an action. Today let’s add to that: love is not only an action, it’s also a choice. It’s an act of your will. Every time you’re presented with the opportunity to love, you get to decide whether you’re willing to do so or not.

Read this out loud: “Love is a choice I make.”

In Matthew 5:44 Jesus gave us a choice: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… You can choose to pray for them, or not.

In Matthew 22:37, Jesus gives us another choice: love the Lord your God with all your heart. You can love Him, or not.
 
The same is true with Matthew 22:39: love your neighbor as yourself. (Remember, Jesus never asks you to do something that isn’t good for you.)

When you make a choice, the choice makes you. Someone happens to you every time you make a choice. As you’re making your choice to love or ignore, you become a warmer or colder person depending on which you choose. It’s a principle of life: you make your choices, and your choices make you.

Love takes effort. 
Before we close today, I want to add one more thing.

Paul included fifteen actions in his description of love. If I could refine his list, I’d add a sixteenth: love is work. Since we are by nature self-centered people, almost every time we do something for the benefit of another, it involves effort on our part. You will never be a loving person until you acknowledge this. But once you acknowledge this, loving others will become easier, because every time you think about loving someone, you will no longer have to wrestle with the fact that doing so will require effort.

Our church’s building sits at the east end of an outdoor strip mall. Wind blows from west to east here, so trash from the rest of the mall is constantly floating into our parking lot. Years ago, I made the decision that every time I walk from my car to the building, I will pick up a piece of trash on my way in. This requires a little effort. And by little, I mean, little. All I have to do is bend down and pick something up. And now that I’ve pre-decided that I’m going to make that effort, the effort is even littler.

The first time I thought about picking up trash, an obstacle came to my mind. “If you pick that up, you’ll get your hands dirty. And if you get your hands dirty, you’ll have to wash before you shake anyone else’s.” In that moment, I decided that being the kind of person who is willing to pick up some trash is worth the price of having to wash my hands a lot. So now, I don’t even think about it. I just scan the ground, bend down, and whisk up an offending object on my way indoors. After twenty-five years of this, it’s a no-brainer. I made my decision, and my decision has made me into a person who makes our parking lot cleaner.

Every time you think about doing the loving thing by, say, noticing another person and trying to make their life better, you get to choose. And every time you choose to do the loving thing, the loving thing gets easier.

Pray this: Lord Jesus, starting today, I am making the volitional choice to love You with all my heart, soul, and mind, and to love the people around me, because I am, and want to be, a loving person. Help me to notice people today and do things that make their lives better. In Jesus’ name. Amen!

Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me. John 15:4-5

For three years Jesus had spent day and night with the Disciples. In almost every minute of every day they watched, listened and learned. When they had questions, He answered them. When they needed encouragement, He gave it. When they lacked wisdom, direction, or provision, He supplied it. Then came the Last Supper. I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, He said (Luke 22:15).

It was an important evening. They would never again spend twenty-four hours a day with Him. What could Jesus say that would sustain them without His presence? Jesus thought carefully about that. He chose a metaphor. I am the vine, and you are the branches, He said. Then three critical words: Remain in me (John 15:4). Without Jesus’ physical presence that three-word action is the key to a vibrant Christian life.

A branch that becomes detached from the grapevine cannot live. All its nutrients come from the vine. Likewise, a Christian gets all of his or her spiritual nutrients from Christ. This is why Jesus said, you can do nothing without me (John 15:5b).

When I try to love others in my own strength, I only get so far. On my own, I’m not wise enough to see what my friends truly need. And I’m not patient enough to keep loving them when they get difficult. And honestly, in my own flesh I’m not motivated enough to want to, even if I could.

But when I’m connected to Jesus, He reminds me that this person in front of me is a treasure, and that there are times when I need the kind of love they need right now. He’ll whisper to me, Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13, NASB). Or, …even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45, NIV). Or, Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9, NIV). Or, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25:40, NIV).2

How to Remain in Him 
Of the five steps to becoming a more loving person, Step 5 is both the simplest and hardest at the same time. The simple part is Remain in Jesus. Don’t go anywhere or do anything without Him. The hardest part is Remain in Jesus. Don’t chase after lesser 2 Jesus usually whispers to me in whatever translation I have memorized. 32 things. Keep your mind focused on Him. Resist the temptation to do things that displease Him.

How can you do this? The place to start is with your mind. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says, Pray constantly. In his earliest days as a missionary to the Philippines, Frank Laubach made it his goal to put this into practice by keeping his mind constantly thinking about God. At first, Laubach found this impossible. His mind was easily distracted. So he decided to make up games that would remind him to think about God. One of his games was called, “Game with Minutes.” He’d set an alarm to go off every sixty seconds. The alarm reminded him to refocus his thoughts on God.

Night after night Frank wrote in his journal, “I failed again today.” But he kept at it. And after forty years of practice, he realized that it had been months since he had spent more than a minute without thinking about God. It took decades, but Laubach found that it really is possible to pray constantly.

Romans 12:2 says, Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Every time I turn to my phone, turn on the television, or turn onto the freeway, my mind is fed messages and ideas that want to conform my thinking to this age. 2 Corinthians 4:4 calls Satan, “the god of this age.” If my thoughts are going to remain in Jesus, I need to have my mind transformed by God, not conformed by Satan.

The way that happens is by absorbing Biblical content. There are five levels of absorbing Scripture. I can hear it, read it, study it, memorize it, and meditate on it. I hear the Word through sermons, podcasts, and small group discussions. I read the Word by opening my Bible and putting my eyes on a page. I study by asking and answering questions about a passage. I memorize it by committing verses to rote memory. And I meditate on it when I take quiet minutes to think deeply about meaning, relevance, and application of a passage to my life. King David declared, I have treasured your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you (Psalm 119:11). Applying these levels of Scripture absorption to your life is one of the surest ways to keep your mind and heart connected to the Vine.

Each of what we call “The Spiritual Disciplines” 3 are designed to help you remain in Jesus. Here’s one more that’s crucial: hanging with the brethren. In Acts 2:46, members of the very first church devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple (which would be for large, corporate worship – like our Sunday services) and they broke bread from house to house (like our Life Groups). When we are with brothers and sisters in Christ, they encourage us to live for God more, trust God more, and remain close to Jesus.
 
Pray this: Lord Jesus, You are the Vine, and I am one of Your branches. Today I purpose to remain in You. I plan to think about You and pray to You constantly. I plan to spend time on some level absorbing Scripture, and if not today, very soon I’ll spend time at church or in my Life Group to help strength my bond to You as well. In Jesus’ name. Amen!

…everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher. Luke 6:40

Throughout this week we’ve been learning a process for becoming a more loving person:
1. Receive God’s love by inviting Jesus into your life.
2. Begin to bear the fruit of love through the Holy Spirit’s work in your life.
3. Understand that love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice of the will to be patient, kind, content, and humble. Not proud, rude, self-seeking, or irritable. Not keeping a record of wrongs or finding joy in unrighteousness, but rejoicing in the truth. And bearing, believing, hoping, and enduring all things for the good of others.
4. Every chance you get, make the choice to do the loving thing.
5. Stay connected to Jesus, so that His love can flow through you. As we complete our second full week of work on becoming more loving, your human nature is likely asking, “Is all this effort worth it?” Let’s take a minute to get clear on the benefits of what will happen to you as you become a master at loving others.

Four Benefits of Becoming a Great Lover
(1) You’ll become like Jesus.
According to the Bible, the great purpose of your life is to become like Jesus. Our Lord was the most loving person who ever lived. In His Sermon on the Plain, He pointed out that everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher (Luke 6:40). The more you excel at loving others, the more you will be like your teacher, Jesus. As a result of the love Jesus’ expressed for us, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name (Philippians 2:9). This principle of reaping what you sow applies to you, too. The greater you love, the greater honor, name and reputation God will give you.
(2) You’ll receive more love.
The Law of the Harvest is a universal principle sewn within the fabric of the world. Whatever a person sows he will also reap (Galatians 6:7). The more you love others, the more love you will experience.
(3) You’ll make up for hurts you’ve caused. Love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). You’re never going to become perfect, but as people see your desire to look out for their interests, they’ll like you more, trust you more, and overlook and forgive you when you hurt or disappoint them.
(4) You’ll have less fear. There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment (1 John 4:18a). The more you love others, the more you’ll experience a sense of security and freedom from fear. Particularly fear of judgment. 35 Lord, I want to become more like You. Help me to love today like You love. In Jesus’ name, Amen!