Love with Jen Oshman
On today’s episode of the Journeywomen podcast, I’m chatting with Jen Oshman about love. This is the second episode in our series on the fruit of the Spirit! Jen laid out more context for the book of Galatians, the letter where we find this famous passage we’re honing in on. This conversation served as a sweet reminder that loving others is a work of the Spirit and that we need his help to do this! We pray it encourages you to look to him as you seek to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
So you’ll know today’s guest a little better, Jen Oshman is a wife and mom to four daughters and has served as a missionary for almost two decades on three continents. She currently resides in Colorado, where she and her husband serve with Pioneers International, and they planted Redemption Parker, an Acts29 church, two and a half years ago. Her passion is leading women into a deeper faith and fostering a biblical worldview.
Can you share a little about who you are and what you do?
What is love and how does it fit into the context of the book of Galatians?
How does God perfectly possess the attribute of love?
How does he show us this love? What was the ultimate expression of his love?
How does understanding who we are in Christ impact the way we understand and express love?
Who is it that empowers us to love one another as Christ loves us?
What would it look like, practically, to love one another to that degree? (I'd love to speak to women in various seasons of life here to try and meet our listeners who may not be married or have children.)
We all face times in the day in which we act in a way that is unloving. When this happens, how can we discern the difference between keeping in step with the Spirit’s work in our lives and laboring in our own strengths and abilities?
How does this fruit of the Spirit work with the other fruit listed in the famous passage in Galatians?
How can we grow into more loving Christians to put God's love on display for a lost and dying world to see?
THREE QUESTIONS I ASK EVERY GUEST
What 3 resources would you recommend for someone who wants to learn more about the fruit of the Spirit, Galatians, or about love?
What are your 3 simple joys?
Who has had the greatest impact on your own journey with Jesus?
NOTEWORTHY QUOTES
“Your faith and your growth is all a supernatural work of our good and kind God through his Spirit.”
“This is a message of freedom. We are no longer slaves. We are free. We are no longer enslaved to the flesh or the law, Jesus purchased our freedom once and for all on the cross. Paul says, ‘it’s for freedom Christ has set us free.’”
“The unique message of Christianity is that in Christ we are undeservedly and immeasurably loved first. It’s from that foundation where God first loved us, that we are called to love God and love others from a posture of gratitude.”
“All of the Law hangs of love: love God and love neighbor. Those are the instructions of God to his people through all of Scripture.”
“The context of Galatians inside the context of Scripture, is that God’s instructions to his people through all of time have been to love him and to love others because he first loved us.”
“This is not a love that is out there or abstract, it’s not sentimental. This a real act of Jesus, leaving heaven, coming to earth, pouring himself out on our behalf. It’s the perfect Son of God bearing the punishment that you and I deserve on the cross. It’s the act of our perfect God willingly laying himself down for you and me. That love is huge, that love is self-sacrificing.”
“If God abides in us, then we will lay ourselves down for others.”
“Agape is a love that is selfless, it’s a love that takes action, it’s a love that moves on behalf of people. A love that lays itself down on behalf of others.”
“Love is a fruit of the Spirit. This is not a fruit of labor or a fruit of the flesh, it’s a fruit of the Spirit. Love is from God.”
“The fruit of the Spirit is the image of Christ-likeness.”
“If the Spirit abides in us, the fruit will grow.”
“To practically love other people requires the Spirit.”
“The Bible is not just for information, but for our transformation.”
“Take time to be still before the Lord and confess to him. Beg him to change you and to renew you from the inside out. You cannot duct tape fruit to a tree.”
“There is no room for score keeping in the life of a Christian. We want to tally our good works and the works of others.”
“It’s out of remembering the gospel that the Spirit empowers us to lay ourselves down. It’s not because anybody deserves it or because we are strong enough or good enough to do it. It’s because Christ died for us first and he alone empowers us then to die for others as well.”
“Love is at the heart of all of the Scriptures. We see over and over how God first loved us, and from there the call to love others.”
“God is love and he lists it first and the others flow out of that.”
“As we embrace the love of God and ask him to fill that love within us to overflowing, then these other attributes grow as fruit on a tree.”
“As our culture becomes more self-focused, we are really going to put forth an apologetic of love. People will be drawn to authentic, born-again Christianity.”
“We are living in a moment that is an opportunity to put Christ on display. We have to begin with prayer and confession. We have to be in the Word. All the narratives around us are going to preach the narrative of self. We’ve got to be with the people of God.”
“Something we ask each other every week is ‘who is God calling you to love and how are you doing?’”
“Our God is so loving.”
RESOURCES
Galatians for You by Tim Keller
Exalting Jesus in Galatians by David Platt & Tony Merida
Reading Biographies of Missionaries (Amy Carmichael or Lilias Trotter)
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What did you take away from Jen’s explanation of Galatians?
How does God perfectly possess the attribute of love?
What passages of Scripture do you think of that exemplify the love of God?
What does it look like in your life to put God's love on display for a lost and dying world to see?
What will abiding in Christ look like for you this week?
SCRIPTURE MEMORY
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:9–11
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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