John15:12-13

John 15:5-15

New International Version (NIV)

Day 1

⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
^{Day 2
8} This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

 ^{Day 3}

⁹ “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  

 ^{Day 4}

¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  

^{Day 5}

¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.


Step 2 
What Does God's Word Say?
List Facts

¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.   

Step 3 
What Does God's Word Mean?
Learn the lessons
Love as God loves.  Their is no greater love than laying down one's life.
Step 4
What Does God's word mean to me?
Do I really understand how God loves?  It isn't a sloppy enabling kind of love.  It isn't a conditional love.  It is a love that see's beyond the pain, beyond the anger, the lies and sees the person for who they are and who they will become in Christ.  Lay down your life.  Who did this?  Christ alone.  He layed down his life for the forgiveness of our sin, to bridge the gap between us and God.  What example can we take in this in how we are to lay down our lives.  It must be for their greater good.  It must be to pave the way for them to see Christ as savior.


Step 5
How will I respond to God's Word?
Live it out!
I will seek God in the pages of the Bible to understand more fully what it means to love like him.  I will seek to understand Christs sacrifice for all humanity and seek to discern in the big and smalls ways I am to lay down my life.  I will guard my heart in Christ against the ways this world has twisted love and personal sacrifice that is based in fear and self preservation.