Relational Environment and Growing in Love – Your Personal Discipleshift
Relational Environment: Growing in Love
Together Church | Pastor Brandon Werner
September 7, 2025 | Series: Your Personal DiscipleShift
INTRODUCTION
This morning, we’re going to add in the next MAIN ingredient for Your Personal DiscipleShift. Trying to make this shift in your life without this ingredient is like…
- Trying to bake a cake without flour
- Trying to grow a plant without water
- Trying to start your car on an empty tank of gas
What is this main ingredient you need to continue to grow into maturity as a disciple of Jesus? A RELATIONAL ENVIRONMENT!
For Your Personal DiscipleShift to continue, you must learn to grow in love by practicing love in a relational environment.
In the scriptures, growing in spiritual maturity and growing in love are synonymous. You cannot grow in spiritual maturity without growing in love, and when you grow in love you will grow in spiritual maturity.
We see this clearly in…
Ephesians 4:11-16
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Paul lays it out in this passage. God’s plan is that we would grow up into spiritual maturity. Listen to all the language pertaining to growth:
- Building up the body of Christ
- Until we all attain to mature manhood
- Until we all reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ
- No longer children, tossed around by the various storms and adversities that challenge our faith
- Instead, we are to GROW UP in every way into the image of Jesus!
Paul’s driving at this maturing God desires in every believer.
But this maturing is synonymous with love! Look how the passage ends:
- The body of Christ, the church, is supposed to WORK TOGETHER
- To build itself up IN LOVE!
Growing in spiritual maturity is synonymous with growing in LOVE.
And Paul makes this clear: you cannot grow into love on your own! Building up the body is something we do TOGETHER.
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
There’s no “I” statement here. Paul says growing in maturity, growing in love, is a team sport… it’s something we do TOGETHER.
For this growth to happen in your life, we all need a relational environment where we can work together with other believers to grow in spiritual maturity by growing in love.
How do we know we need a relational environment?
Because – and we’ll see it – this is what Jesus did with His disciples.
BODY
- What kind of relational environment do we need?
- What kind of love do we need?
- Where do we get this kind of love?
- What kind of relational environment do we need?
For the last two weeks, we talked about a discipleship relationship shared between an intentional leader and an intentional follower.
Certainly, that’s part of a relational environment!
But when Jesus made disciples, He didn’t just connect His disciples to a relational environment with Himself… He connected them to a relational environment with each other!
Every growing disciple of Jesus needs a relational environment with other growing and maturing disciples of Jesus. We need the good and the hard that comes from being devoted to a small group of people where we are working together to grow in love.
We need the good: the encouragement, celebration, edification, accountability, shepherding, and spiritual care.
We need the hard: the agitations, frustrations, failures, and weaknesses that accompany every relationship.
Jesus knew this; so, He created a relational environment where His disciples could connect to Him and each other for better or worse.
Through the relational environment the disciples shared with each other, the disciples learned so many important lessons about love…
They learned lesson on how to…
- Forgive when others sin (70 times 7)
- Respond in love to those who repent (Matthew)
- Handle others rejecting you (sons of thunder)
- Encourage one another in ministry AND
- Do things that stretch you (2×2)
- Embrace assignments from the leader (5000, donkey for entry)
- Stay the course when others abandon you (where would we go?)
- Truly love each other (washing of feet)
These lessons came from their relationship with each other and with other people they were ministering to! Not primarily from a one-to-one time with Jesus.
STORY: There’s one particular example I love where Jesus and His disciples shared a relational environment together and Jesus used that environment to help them identify and grow in spiritual maturity.
(Disciples walking on the road arguing about who is the greatest.)
Jesus knew that, without the relational environment these disciples shared with each other, their immaturities in love would not be stirred up in a way that they could learn to recognize them and eliminate them from their lives.
ILLUSTRATION: Stirring Up Immaturity (jar)
- POUR BEANS: Jesus knew His disciples had immaturities in their lives. Every disciple of Jesus does! These immaturities are enemies of love.
- LET JAR REST: When these immaturities aren’t tested, they sink to the bottom; still present, but we are unaware.
- SHAKE JAR: Circumstances of life agitate these immaturities! When we are tested, they are stirred up and become visible in our lives.
- FILTER JAR: Jesus used the relational environment He and His disciples all shared together to stir up these immaturities with the intentional purpose of working together to eliminate them from their lives!
As the intentional leader, Jesus depended on the relational environment to help His disciples learn to recognize their immaturities and grow in love! He knew they didn’t just need Him… they needed EACH OTHER.
Here’s my point…
Any intentional leader worth their salt is NEVER just inviting you to their small group to come to a Bible study… they are intentionally inviting you into a mess!
They KNOW you need other people to mature in love…
- People are messy
- Relationships are hard
- Conflict is inevitable
- Storms are coming
And they KNOW these agitations are exactly what you need to grow in spiritual maturity by growing in love.
You need a safe place to discover your immaturities; you need help filtering them out of your life; you need to practice loving others when your flesh doesn’t feel like it; you need to let others grow in love as they learn and practice loving you.
Spiritual growth won’t happen in your life without a place to get in the game and learn to grow in love. So, the kind of small group you need is a group that will encourage you, agitate you even, and help you identify and eliminate spiritual immaturities that don’t look like love from your life. (Out of seats, into the game.)
So, you need a relational environment where you experience love and can practice sharing love with others… BUT…
- What kind of love do you need to share in this relational environment?
When I have conversations with growing disciples of Jesus, and we start talking about love, there’s a phrase from scripture I tend to hear quoted most often. The phrase is…
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
I’ve heard this quoted and interpreted a few different ways…
- God’s golden standard for love is to love others like you love yourself.
- I’ve even heard some say, “Well, this verse is encouraging me to learn to love myself because I can only love my neighbor as well as I know how to love myself.”
If we use this Bible phrase and these interpretations to answer our question, then, to continue Your Personal DiscipleShift, the love you need might be a greater self-love?
Something feels off about that conclusion. Let’s look at the passage where this phrase comes from to get to the bottom of this…
Matthew 22:34-40
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Context is KEY in solid biblical interpretation.
I want you to notice something very important about the context here… the entire context is not about the kind of love disciples of Jesus need to have, it is about the kind of love prescribed in the law of Moses!
- A LAWYER asks – not a lawyer like ours… this is a student of the law of Moses.
- He’s there to test Jesus about the law! Not to learn from Jesus what kind of love God wants him to possess.
- Jesus answers ACCORDING TO THE LAW! In His answer, Jesus quotes two different passages from the law of Moses.
- These commandments are not the key to unlocking spiritual growth in the life of a disciple, they are the basis for all the law and prophets!
Now, to be clear, this passage absolutely lifts up love! Here, Jesus reveals that every commandment, every prophecy, in the law of Moses finds its meaning and fulfillment in LOVE!
But, to be clear, Jesus is NOT teaching HIS DISCIPLES what kind of love they need in their lives.
We find that teaching in another place…
In John 13, Jesus washes His disciples feet. In this action, He shows them the kind of selfless, servant love He desires for His disciples to share.
The love He showed them in that example is not a love that was EQUAL to His love for Himself. Jesus loved them with a love that was GREATER than His love for Himself. He placed them ahead of Himself.
Shortly after He washed their feet, Jesus spoke these words…
John 13:34-35
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Let’s examine the context of this passage…
- Jesus WAS talking to His disciples about the kind of love God wants them to share.
- Jesus told them this commandment was NEW! Not like the command to love in the law. This command was the new standard for how His followers should think about love.
- Jesus had just SHOWN His disciples an example of loving others ahead of themselves by washing their feet (instead of them washing His)
- Jesus was about to reveal the GREATEST example of this love the world could ever know…
Shortly after giving this new commandment, Jesus went to the cross and laid down His life for His friends.
This is the kind of love you need to share in your relational environment.
- Jesus has not commanded you to love others as your love yourself!
- Jesus has commanded you to love others as He has loved you.
This kind of love is so much greater, so much higher, so much more powerful than any love this world can muster up or comprehend.
It is a love that comes directly from God. Without this kind of love, we cannot hope to grow in spiritual maturity.
But that begs the question…
- Where do we get this kind of love?
This kind of love comes from the new birth! It is impossible to know and experience this kind of love apart from being born again by the Holy Spirit of God.
A person without God knows nothing of this kind of love.
Our flesh knows nothing of this kind of love.
The world knows nothing of this kind of love.
This love is the LOVE OF GOD. Any other so-called form of “LOVE” isn’t really love at all.
SCRIPTURE – Greater love has no one than this.
God is love! Jesus is love incarnate. The Holy Spirit has power to shed the love of God abroad in our hearts.
Unless you believe the gospel, you cannot hope to know or grow in this kind of love.
In a relational environment, you can meet other disciples of Jesus who know this love and are living this love in Christ. They can meet you where you are; they can help you identify your immaturities and weaknesses; they can help you learn the gospel; they can help you understand who you are in Christ; and they can show you how to stop defining yourself by what you feel and start believing that you are who God says you are.
CONCLUSION
We’ve answered our three questions, now let’s return to the main idea…
For Your Personal DiscipleShift to continue, you must learn to grow in love by practicing love in a relational environment.
RETURN TO THE JAR – God knows these immaturities are present in your life. Jesus modeled the solution – a relational environment where disciples of Jesus work together to grow in maturity by growing in love.
INVITATION
How should you respond to this message?
- See your need! Immaturities are there. You need the help of God and the help of others to grow in love!
- Believe the gospel.
- Believe in your new birth. God’s LOVE in you and defining you!
- If you haven’t already, join a small group.
- Go to group with a new mindset.
Not here for a Bible study with a church. Here to be encouraged and AGITATED so that immaturities will stir and, with God’s help, be removed from your life so that you can grow in love and help others do the same!
GOD’S MISSION FOR TC:
WE will create relational environments where disciples of Jesus are made.