Learning to love well...

This coming Monday the women at my church are going to begin a weekly Bible study. I'm very excited about it. I've been craving having a weekly meeting with something woman-focused for a long time so I decided to ask around and see if there was an interest from the other women at the church. Sure enough, every woman I asked through my survey answered with a big YES! I was so excited. So I set out in search of a study that I felt would fit all the different types of women that would be in our group. We have young married women like me and Crystal with young children, we have older women with children who are already grown and married and having kids of their own, and we have married women of different ages who don't have kids at all. That was a wide range so I didn't want to pick something that only fit the young mothers or the old mothers...etc. So what I found was a wonderful study by Beth Moore called "Loving Well". This study is a video based study with a weekly journal that takes us through 1 John 4:7-17. It speaks about learning how to love others "well" like Jesus did. She covers loving difficult people, our enemies, strangers and even people who are easy to love. I know that everyone has those categories of people in their lives and we all need to learn how to love better so I really felt led to pick this study as our starting point. Plus, you can always know that anything by Beth Moore is going to be great. My prayer is that through this study, I will learn how to love some people in my life that I really struggle with loving. Some I even consider my enemies even though we are in each other's lives on a daily basis (don't worry, it's no one in my family or even anyone I socialize with but I'm not going to name any names). We all have people like that in our lives and God wants us to love those people just like he loved us when we were difficult to love or even working against His will and could be considered His enemies. Never think you could be considered an enemy of God? Think again! We do things in our lives on a regular basis that go against everything He wants and tells us to do and it works against spreading His love to the world. That's being God's enemy right there! And He still loves us despite all of that! How amazing! Now we are being asked to do the same. Not so amazing...very difficult actually.

So in the spirit of my study, my goal is to memorize 1 John 4:7-19 (yes, through 19 because I love verses 18 & 19 even though she doesn't make them part of her study). In order to memorize them, I'm reading them everyday, writing them in my journal and I want to put them on my blog as well. I want these verses to be everywhere I look (as much as possible) so I'm reminded of what I am to do and able to memorize them better. So here goes:

1 John 4:7-19

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that JEsus is the Son of God, God abides in him , and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 19 We love Him because He first loved us."

NKJV

So there you have it. If you are into Bible memorization and would like to join in on this challenge, let me know and we can keep each other accountable! I would love an accountability partner...or partners. Also, if you live in my area and read this and think this study might be for you and you would like to come, please let me know! We would love to have you as part of our group. We already have women coming who don't attend our church and we would love to welcome more! Email me at: stephanie.perryman80@gmail.com 

Here's to my very difficult quest of learning to love WELL!