This five week course takes us on path to understand the Way! Most know that the Greek word "agape" has, as it's primary meaning, "the love of God" or "the God kind of love", but few understand what that really means to them and how to appropriate it for themselves in their day to day lives. For many, the problem is that they don't even fully believe that God really loves them—they mentally assent to it, but their daily walk with God is tarnished with thoughts of inadequacy... at some level, they believe that God can't love them unconditionally because of everything that they have done and do. For others, the problem is that, although they know God loves them and that the love of God is within them, they don't seem to be able to pour that love out to those around them. This course will take us on a brief sojourn towards a clearer understanding of God's unconditional agape love, including how we can come to the point of not allowing the "things of the world" to block that love from pouring forth from us to those around us.
Sessions
- What is Agape?
In the first session of this course we will examine the meaning of love, particularly agape, by learning about the various Greek and Hebrew words for love used in the Bible. We'll see that agape is not a human love or a human emotion or a human feeling—God is agape! Agape is not a feeling... it's a choice—not "I choose to love no matter what" but a choice to set ourselves (all our thoughts, emotions and desires that are contrary to God's) aside and allow God's agape to flow through us.
- Understanding God's Love
"For God so loved the world..."—that's us, and the word "loved" used here is from the Greek root agape. Why did God agape us when we (all of humankind) treated Him so badly, and continue to treat Him badly? How did he agape us? And how can we, living in this corrupt world with its corrupt views on love, believe that the almighty creator of the universe can love us with this unconditional form of love? That's what we'll be exploring in this, the second session of this course.
- The Temple of God
The third session of this course could well carry the pivotal understanding for many as to the how and why of letting God's agape love shine forth from us. A number of times in the New Testament we are referred to as "the temple of God" (or "the temple of the Holy Spirit"), but we need to go back to the Old Testament to gain some insight into what this might truly mean. There was only ONE temple in the Old Testament that was described in any detail, and this was the ONLY temple that the Spirit of God dwelt in... Solomon's temple. We will examine this temple in detail in order to understand the differences between "heart", "soul" and "mind" (no, they are not the same thing!) and in order to see how it is that we allow the cares of this world and our past experiences (hurts, unconfessed sins, lusts of the world, etc.) block the flow of God's love from His "Holy of Holies" within us.
- Temple.pdf (Refer to the PowerPoint presentation below)
- Heart, Soul & Mind
In this session, we focus on "the first and greatest commandment"... to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:37) We do this by continually choosing to obey God's word, by continually choosing to trust God's power and by continually choosing to worship and serve God alone.
- As Yourself
Finally, we look at what it means to "love your neighbour as yourself." The reason we often feel like we don't measure up to this mark is because we don't understand agape, so we try and love our neighbours with one or other of the human loves, and at some point this will always fail. This is partly because many have a poor image of themselves; but if we choose to put on Christ and to set ourselves aside and allow Him to work through us, agape will flow out to our neighbours.
Resource
A large portion of the content of this course is based on the excellent book and audio teaching "The Way of Agape" by Nancy Missler. If the above has whet your appetite, I strongly encourage you to purchase the book and MP3 or Audio CD from Koinonia House.
Schedule
- 6 April - 4 May 2013 at Oaks Community Church
(5 x Sunday evening sessions of ~1 hour each)
PowerPoint
Click here to view a PowerPoint slide show of the temple illustration in lesson 3.