Sessions Include:

1. Do You Thirst for God?
2. Are You Increasingly Governed by God’s Word?
3. Are You Becoming More Loving?
4. Are You More Sensitive to God’s Presence?
5. Do You Have a Growing Concern for Others
6. Do You Delight in the Bride of Christ?
7. Are Spiritual Disciplines Increasingly Important?
8. Do You Still Grieve Over Sin?
9. Are You Quicker to Forgive?
10. Do You Yearn for Heaven?

The more a person loves, the closer he approaches the image of God. — MARTIN LUTHER

LET ME GET RIGHT TO THE POINT: Jesus said that love is the clearest mark of a Christian. “A new commandment I give to you,” He announced in John 13:34–35, “that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” If you are growing in your love for others—especially in your love for Christians—then you are growing as a Christian.

Notice in God’s Word the importance He places on love by Christians

• “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).
• “These things I command you, so that you will love one another” (John 15:17).
• “Love one another with brotherly affection” (Romans 12:10).
• “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8).
• “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14).
• “The whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ ” (Galatians 5:14).
• “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Ephesians 5:2).
• “Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another” (1 Thessalonians 4:9).
• “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24).
• “Let brotherly love continue” (Hebrews 13:1).
• “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well” (James 2:8).
• “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart” (1 Peter 1:22).
• “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly” (1 Peter 4:8).
• “This is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 John 3:11).
• “This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us” (1 John 3:23).
• “This commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:21).
• “Now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another” (2 John 5).

Love is the badge and character of Christianity. A Christian may advance in many areas, including the ability to witness, teach, or even preach (“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels”), or biblical insight and knowledge (“And if I … understand all mysteries and all knowledge”), or faith, giving, and sacrifice (“and if I have all faith. … If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned”), but these mean little (“I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. … I am nothing. … I gain nothing …”) without growth in the most important Christian distinctive—love (see 1 Corinthians 13:1–3).

Are you becoming more loving?

Donald S. Whitney, Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (NavPress; Tyndale House Publishers, 2021), vi–3.

Check out our Bible Study on Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health . A bible study on the book of Lamentations as well as some Psalms of Lament.

These lessons are available on Amazon, as well as a part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking Subscription Service. Like Netflix for Bible Lessons, one low subscription gives you access to all our lessons--thousands of them. For a medium-sized church, lessons are as little as $10 per teacher per year.