New Believer’s Path · Lesson 5: Giving and Serving · Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself
This lesson in one sentence: Loving God and loving people go together; serving starts with what is at hand.
Timing (about 60 minutes)
- Opening5 min
- Read Together10 min
- A true story5 min
- Discussion25 min
- This Week10 min
- Pray for One Another5 min
Opening
Do you remember a small thing someone did for you?
Read Together
He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
Luke 10:27 · WEB
A true story (ask a group member to read it aloud)
In the mid-nineteenth century the young Hudson Taylor was studying medicine in Hull, England, working as a doctor’s assistant. Going over his accounts one Saturday evening, he found he had only one coin left—a half-crown. The next day, a Sunday, at ten in the evening, a poor man came and begged him to come and pray for his dying wife.
In that room four or five children stood about with sunken cheeks, and the mother lay on a wretched pallet beside a baby only thirty-six hours old. He thought: if only this half-crown were two coins, how gladly he would give them part of it. But it was one coin. He knelt down, and scarcely had he begun ‘Our Father who art in heaven’ than conscience said within, ‘Dare you kneel down and call Him Father with that half-crown in your pocket?’ When he rose, the father begged him to help them, and the words ‘Give to him that asketh of thee’ flashed into his mind. He took out the coin—it was all he had. He later wrote that as he went home that night, ‘my heart was as light as my pocket.’
Source: Hudson Taylor, A Retrospect, chapter 3
Discussion
- Hudson Taylor had only one half-crown left in his pocket. Which moment do you think was hardest for him?
- “and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27)—who is the ‘neighbor’ around you?
- Proverbs says, “Don’t say to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come again; tomorrow I will give it to you’.” (Proverbs 3:27-29) Is there something you keep putting off until ‘tomorrow’?
This Week
Do one small, concrete thing for one person.
Each person decides on one small thing to do for someone this week. Just say ‘for one person’; no need to say who.
Closing
In pairs, pray one sentence for the person the other plans to serve.
Tips for the leader
- This session is about loving your neighbor, not ‘what you give comes back to you’; don’t present it as a reward.
- Don’t compare who does more or gives more; small things are good things.
- If someone in the group needs help right now, the group can serve them first.
General principles for leaders
- The leader is not a teacher but someone who walks alongside everyone.
- Give everyone a chance to speak; with someone who talks a lot, you can gently say, ‘Let’s also hear from friends who haven’t spoken yet.’
- Don’t rush to give answers. If someone is silent, wait a few more seconds.
- For a question you can’t answer, you can say, ‘I don’t know either; let’s look it up together,’ and note it down for next time.
- What is said in the group stays in the group.
- At the opening, the leader can give their own answer first, showing that it can be simple and honest.