"The One Jesus Loves" | Overview of John | Matt Carlson

What if the deepest truth about you isn’t how well you love Jesus, but that you are loved by Him?

In this overview of the Gospel of John, we meet the eyewitness behind the story, discover why he wrote it, and trace the heartbeat of his Gospel: see Jesus for who He truly is, believe in Him, and receive the Life He came to give.

John began as a hot-tempered “Son of Thunder,” but after a lifetime of being loved by Jesus, he came to describe himself simply as “the disciple Jesus loved.” That’s what grace had done to him. He was loved, and that love transformed him.

If you’ve ever felt like you should be further along, have more answers, or try harder to become who God wants you to be, this message is for you. Come and see the Jesus John knew...the One who moves toward confused and imperfect people, loves them right where they are, and transforms them by His grace.

What if we learned to see ourselves the way John did?

The one Jesus loves.

FOR GROUP DISCUSSION & REFLECTION:

1. John didn't define himself by his successes or failures, or even by his love for Jesus. He defined himself by Jesus' love for him: "the one Jesus loved." How do you tend to see yourself? And what would change in your everyday life if you saw yourself first and foremost as loved by God?

2. Matt drew a line between advice ("try harder, do more, maybe God will be pleased") and news ("something already happened"). Where have you lived in the exhausting, advice version of Christianity, where you're never enough and neither is God's grace?

3. John was a Son of Thunder who wanted to call down fire on a village, and he ended up the old pastor whose whole message was just love. Grace did that to him, not nagging. Where have you seen the difference between being pressured to change and being loved into it?

4. Every "I AM" names a hunger we're already trying to fill somewhere else: bread, light, a door, a shepherd. Which one lands on a place you've been striving to satisfy on your own? What would it look like to receive Jesus there instead of chasing it?

5. Almost nobody in John's Gospel understands Jesus the first time, and he keeps moving toward them anyway. Comprehension isn't the price of belonging. How does it sit with you that you don't have to have it all figured out to belong to him?

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