What if you’re almost there?

Big Ideas

• Mark 12:28-34
• You’re not far from the Kingdom of God
• Jesus is not afraid of your questions.
• His response to the man is, “Keep going!”
  • You get it. What’s the next step?
• How can we stretch ourselves in this?
  • Don’t obsess with counter examples of the most difficult people to love
  • Focus on the quality of our love, not perfection
• Quality of Love
  • Loving God and neighbor with our everything means the two must overlap and be the same thing
• God is the source of all love
  • He isn’t the most loving, he is love
  • Our goal is to be united to God, to become love
  • God’s vision for us isn’t “rational”, it’s so much better
• The only way for you to become this love is to experience it
  • To experience that the God of the universe actually loves you
  • It doesn’t stay abstract
• He is rejecting all of our rational, tepid love for our neighbor
• Our invitation is to create loving communion with all of our neighbors

Questions

• Do you feel safe to ask Jesus your hard questions?
• Do you feel safe to ask us your hard questions?
• How would your love of neighbors look different if it was the same as your love of God?
• What do you think about the idea that God isn’t “the most loving”, but that he IS love?
• If God’s hope for us is that we would love our neighbors, what’s a step you could take with yours?
• Our hope is to have communion with our neighbors. What do you think that looks like?
• Do you think that someone could directly experience the welcome and affection of God through you?
• How can we help each other do this this week?