Free Bible study lessons for small Christian church cell groups by HFLI

V Indicates Scripture or other reference

When you are born again, the Holy Spirit takes you on a “honeymoon” with Jesus. He shows you – not just in your mind, but also in your spirit – how much Jesus loves you. He shields you from the demands (and the attacks) of the world, the flesh and the devil. During this honeymoon, the joy of the Lord flows through you like a river, and you “go on your way rejoicing”V1 – at home, at work, at school, even when there’s nobody else around. You are so Spiritually in love with Jesus that it may be days, weeks, even months before you bother to look at the world around you – the same world that used to demand your full attention – and realize that it has not changed at all. It’s not the least bit Spiritual; it’s just ... worldly. And that’s when you may begin to ask yourself, “Has anything really changed? Has Jesus really made a different in me?”

Jesus wants you to ask these questions, because He wants you to choose whether He – or the world – will be your highest love. The Holy Spirit will withdraw from you, to let you make up your mind on this crucial issue. And, as you try to think, you can expect the devil to come at you and make a desperate attempt to keep you from having a love-relationship with Jesus. The devil knows he is utterly defeated the moment God’s love comes into the picture[14], and he’ll use his oldest and most vicious weapon against you – the big lieV2. Just as he came to Eve in the garden and hissed, “Yea, hath God said....”[02], so he will come and whisper to you, “You don’t actually believe in some invisible God, do you? Look at the world. You can touch the world! You can set your mind on anything in the world, and go get it! That’s what’s real!”

No; that’s just the devil’s lie. The world is “real” to him because it’s all he’s got – and he’s only got it until the day God casts him (and all his followers!) into hell. You, on the other hand, have eternal life in the presence of God – plus this great opportunity to make the most of that life. Yes, you’re saved. And yes, you’re headed for eternity in Heaven. But you will never be able to glorify God in this lifetime unless and until you fall in love with Jesus.

Happily, God gave everyone in the world the ability to love Him[01]. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, rich or poor, tall or short, slim or chubby ... God created all of us in His image, and that means all of us can have a holy and eternal love for the Son of God.

You can have this love – but will you? At this critical moment, you’re the one who has to decide: “Do I want to be a saved-but-powerless Christian? Or do I want to fall in love with Jesus, so that He can empower me to become everything that God created me to be!”

Do you really want to? Good! Next question: How do you fall in love with Jesus? Answer: the same way you’d fall in love with anyone else. You’d find all kinds of ways to spend the greatest possible amount time with that person. You’d get as close to him or her as you could during that time. And you wouldn’t let anything (or anyone!) take a moment of that time away from you.

When the Person you want to fall in love with is Jesus, a good way to get close to Him is through prayer. What kinds of prayer will carry you into the very heart of Jesus? Any prayer that comes from your heart. If you like, you can begin by using Psalm 100 as a “prayer-guide”:

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

Begin your time of prayer by thinking about everything you have in Christ Jesus– a relationship with the God who created you, who loves you, who died for you, and who wants to enjoy a personal conversation with you (which is what prayer actually is). Once you have that settled in your mind – that He is God, and you are one of the sheep He feeds and looks after – then you may enter into His “gates” (His personal presence) by thanking Him for everything He has done in your life; and then go on to enter into His “courts” (His heart) by praising Him for who He is.

At first, you may spend only ten or twenty minutes in this kind of prayer. But as you will soon find out: the longer you walk with Jesus, the more blessings you will have to thank Him for. The closer you come to His heart, the more you will have to praise Him for. And the more you thank Him, praise Him, and truly appreciate Him, the greater your love for Him will grow, and the more time you’ll want to spend with Him and Him alone.

Psalm 100 calls all of us to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. This includes the joy of music. In Psalm 150, King David – “a man after God’s own heart” – encourages us to make all kinds of music when we throw ourselves, heart and soul, into the praise and worship of our God:

Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary (in your own heart): praise him in the firmament of his power (out in the open, all over the world). Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.

Another way to stay lovingly close to Jesus is to get together with other people who thank Him, praise Him, worship Him, and love Him for who He is. You may find them in churches or in home-based fellowships; and you may very well find them expressing their relationship with Jesus through this lifestyle that the Apostle Paul heartily recommends to all of God’s people:

Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves (that is, to one another) in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear (the awesome love) of God.

Ephesians 5:18-21

You’ll soon see that God’s people are almost always joyful. They may be ill, or poor, or even persecuted; but their hearts are always fixed on their God – not on the devil, poverty, illness, or anything else that would rob them of their joy. God’s people also “submit to one another” (that is, they bless one another, even if it’s at their own expense), because they can’t help loving other people the same way Jesus loves them!

Would you like to see how Jesus blesses people? Just read the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and visualize yourself as the person being blessed in each one of His miracles. It isn’t that far-fetched – because Jesus would work every one of His miracles, just for you, if you needed them all at once, and if He were to come to your home town today.

But let’s not say “if.” Jesus can work all of His miracles in your home town – today – and He can make you a part of those blessings. He says so Himself, in these two astounding promises that He gave to His Church just before He was crucified:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

John 14:12,13

He who has My commandments, and keeps them, he it is who loves Me: and he who loves Me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

John 14:21

All of the miracles Jesus did, His Church will do – and then some! When you believe on Jesus, you are part of His Church. And when you obey the commandments that Jesus gives you – not out of “duty,” but out of a pure and loving heart – then you will know that you are truly filled with the love of God. And then you may confidently expect Jesus to “manifest Himself to you” – that is, to show the world His power and His glory through you!

Jesus has been called “the Bridge” between a holy God and sinful men. He is that – He is the Son who came down to earth to give repentant sinners a way to reach up to their Heavenly Father – but He is far, far more than that. Jesus is also the Bridge between His Father’s Heavenly power and glory, and all the empty vessels here on earth whom the Father longs to fill.

Will you be filled with everything God wants to give you? That’s up to you. As you think about the blessings God has in store for you in His Kingdom of Love, here is our prayer for you. It’s the prayer of Acts 3:14-21 – the same prayer the Apostle Paul prayed for the early Church:

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family [all the Christians] in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man [your spirit]; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height [of His love]; And [when ye do comprehend His love, that ye may also be able to] know the love of Christ, which passeth [worldly] knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness [that is, all the power and glory] of God.

Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power [of the Holy Spirit] that works in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

And Philip said [to the Ethiopian eunuch], If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest [be baptized]. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he [Philip] commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.

And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.

[Jesus said unto the unbelievers], Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.