5-Day Bible Reading Plan and Devotional Guide
Theme: Loved to Love -- Living the Call of 1 John
Day 1: The Source of All Love
Reading: 1 John 4:7-8 -- The passage teaches that love originates from God, that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, and that God himself is love.
Devotional: It is easy to think of love as something we generate on our own -- a feeling, a decision, a discipline. But John strips that assumption away entirely. Love does not begin with us. It begins with God. Before you loved anyone, God loved you. Before you knew how to love, God was love. This changes everything about how we approach difficult relationships, political divisions, and fractured communities. We are not asked to manufacture love from nothing. We are asked to receive it first, and then let it overflow. Today, sit quietly and ask yourself: Have I truly received God's love, or am I trying to give what I have not yet accepted?
Practical Application: Spend five minutes in silence, simply receiving God's love rather than asking for anything. Let that be your only prayer.
Day 2: Love Made Visible
Reading: 1 John 4:9-10 -- This passage describes how God demonstrated his love by sending his Son into the world so that we might live through him, and that this act was initiated entirely by God, not by any love we first showed toward him.
Devotional: God did not wait for us to get our act together before he acted. He sent Jesus into the mess of human life as the ultimate demonstration of love that moves toward people rather than away from them. As the sermon reminds us, we live in a season of division where people are moving away from one another -- across dinner tables, across neighborhoods, across political lines. The model God gives us is the opposite. Love crosses the divide. Love moves toward the person who is difficult, different, or disagreeable. Jesus did not love from a safe distance. Neither are we called to.
Practical Application: Identify one person you have been emotionally or relationally distant from. Take one small step toward them this week, even if it is only a kind word or a prayer on their behalf.
Day 3: Common Ground
Reading: 1 John 4:11-12 -- This passage calls believers to love one another because God first loved them, and promises that when we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Devotional: The sermon describes a small chapel sitting on the exact geographic center of the lower 48 states -- a place where all are welcome, the door is always open, and a Bible rests on every seat. That chapel is a physical image of what the church is called to be spiritually: common ground. John writes that when we love one another, God's love is made complete in us. The church does not simply talk about love. The church becomes the place where love is made visible and whole. In a divided world, the congregation that chooses to love across difference is one of the most countercultural and powerful witnesses imaginable.
Practical Application: Consider placing the kindness campaign yard sign or a similar visible reminder of love in your home or yard. Let it serve as a daily prompt to you as much as a witness to others.
Day 4: Loving What You Cannot See
Reading: 1 John 4:12 -- This verse notes that no one has ever seen God, but that if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Devotional: Faith has always required us to trust what we cannot fully see. We cannot see God with our physical eyes, yet John tells us that when we love one another, God becomes visible in the world through us. Martin Luther King Jr. said that hate cannot drive out hate -- only love can. John Wesley, writing centuries earlier, longed for the day when Christians would lay down their divisions and sit together as humble disciples at the feet of their common master. Both men understood that love is not passive. It is the most powerful and disruptive force available to the people of God. You are the visibility of God in someone's life today.
Practical Application: Ask God to show you one person in your life who needs to see his love made visible through you. Then act on what he shows you before the day ends.
Day 5: Sent to Love
Reading: John 13:34-35 -- In this passage, Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment to love one another as he has loved them, and states that all people will know they are his disciples by this love.
Devotional: The sermon closes with a benediction rooted in John Wesley's call to do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, for as long as you can. That is not a suggestion. It is the shape of a life given over to love. Jesus told his disciples that the world would recognize them not by their doctrine, their buildings, or their programs, but by their love for one another. In a season of political noise, cultural fatigue, and relational fracture, the church's most urgent and powerful witness is still the same one Jesus named in the upper room. Go and love one another. The world is watching.
Practical Application: Write down one specific, concrete act of love you will carry out this week -- not a feeling, but an action -- and follow through on it before the week is finished.
.
Theme: Loved to Love -- Living the Call of 1 John
Day 1: The Source of All Love
Reading: 1 John 4:7-8 -- The passage teaches that love originates from God, that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, and that God himself is love.
Devotional: It is easy to think of love as something we generate on our own -- a feeling, a decision, a discipline. But John strips that assumption away entirely. Love does not begin with us. It begins with God. Before you loved anyone, God loved you. Before you knew how to love, God was love. This changes everything about how we approach difficult relationships, political divisions, and fractured communities. We are not asked to manufacture love from nothing. We are asked to receive it first, and then let it overflow. Today, sit quietly and ask yourself: Have I truly received God's love, or am I trying to give what I have not yet accepted?
Practical Application: Spend five minutes in silence, simply receiving God's love rather than asking for anything. Let that be your only prayer.
Day 2: Love Made Visible
Reading: 1 John 4:9-10 -- This passage describes how God demonstrated his love by sending his Son into the world so that we might live through him, and that this act was initiated entirely by God, not by any love we first showed toward him.
Devotional: God did not wait for us to get our act together before he acted. He sent Jesus into the mess of human life as the ultimate demonstration of love that moves toward people rather than away from them. As the sermon reminds us, we live in a season of division where people are moving away from one another -- across dinner tables, across neighborhoods, across political lines. The model God gives us is the opposite. Love crosses the divide. Love moves toward the person who is difficult, different, or disagreeable. Jesus did not love from a safe distance. Neither are we called to.
Practical Application: Identify one person you have been emotionally or relationally distant from. Take one small step toward them this week, even if it is only a kind word or a prayer on their behalf.
Day 3: Common Ground
Reading: 1 John 4:11-12 -- This passage calls believers to love one another because God first loved them, and promises that when we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Devotional: The sermon describes a small chapel sitting on the exact geographic center of the lower 48 states -- a place where all are welcome, the door is always open, and a Bible rests on every seat. That chapel is a physical image of what the church is called to be spiritually: common ground. John writes that when we love one another, God's love is made complete in us. The church does not simply talk about love. The church becomes the place where love is made visible and whole. In a divided world, the congregation that chooses to love across difference is one of the most countercultural and powerful witnesses imaginable.
Practical Application: Consider placing the kindness campaign yard sign or a similar visible reminder of love in your home or yard. Let it serve as a daily prompt to you as much as a witness to others.
Day 4: Loving What You Cannot See
Reading: 1 John 4:12 -- This verse notes that no one has ever seen God, but that if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Devotional: Faith has always required us to trust what we cannot fully see. We cannot see God with our physical eyes, yet John tells us that when we love one another, God becomes visible in the world through us. Martin Luther King Jr. said that hate cannot drive out hate -- only love can. John Wesley, writing centuries earlier, longed for the day when Christians would lay down their divisions and sit together as humble disciples at the feet of their common master. Both men understood that love is not passive. It is the most powerful and disruptive force available to the people of God. You are the visibility of God in someone's life today.
Practical Application: Ask God to show you one person in your life who needs to see his love made visible through you. Then act on what he shows you before the day ends.
Day 5: Sent to Love
Reading: John 13:34-35 -- In this passage, Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment to love one another as he has loved them, and states that all people will know they are his disciples by this love.
Devotional: The sermon closes with a benediction rooted in John Wesley's call to do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, for as long as you can. That is not a suggestion. It is the shape of a life given over to love. Jesus told his disciples that the world would recognize them not by their doctrine, their buildings, or their programs, but by their love for one another. In a season of political noise, cultural fatigue, and relational fracture, the church's most urgent and powerful witness is still the same one Jesus named in the upper room. Go and love one another. The world is watching.
Practical Application: Write down one specific, concrete act of love you will carry out this week -- not a feeling, but an action -- and follow through on it before the week is finished.
.