- 00:04
- So, how can we experience God's love? This is a difficult question to answer because it deals with subjective experiences.
- 00:13
- Nevertheless, we can try and answer it. Generally speaking, love is understood to be a feeling of euphoria, a feeling of some sort of good, something that brings you into a state of well -being, a sensation of comfort.
- 00:29
- However, biblically, love is the concern and action that seeks the best for others.
- 00:36
- John 3 .16 says, Notice that it says that God's love gives.
- 00:50
- That's the nature of love, to give. It is other -focused, other -centered.
- 00:56
- So, in order to experience God's love, we should not look to a feeling, but to that which fits the best description of the other -centeredness that God declares in His Word.
- 01:09
- In Christianity, the greatest example of the experience of God's love is in the person of Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins.
- 01:18
- God loves us so much that He took our place on the cross and died for us. Jesus said in John 15 .13
- 01:25
- that the greatest act of love is to lay your life down for another. This is exactly what
- 01:32
- Jesus did for us. So to experience God's love is first of all to trust
- 01:38
- Him by faith, to trust in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross on our behalf.
- 01:44
- By trusting in Jesus, by looking to Jesus alone for the forgiveness of your sins, through His death, burial, and resurrection, you can then receive the forgiveness of God and experience
- 01:55
- His love for you. There is, however, another way of experiencing
- 02:00
- God's love. All across the world, Christians have had times when they have sensed this presence of God in a very real and powerful way.
- 02:11
- Since God is love, to experience His presence is really to experience
- 02:17
- His love. This experience is often very humbling, and it serves to reveal one's own sinful nature to himself.
- 02:25
- Because when we are in the presence of love, in the presence of God's holiness, we are, as the scripture says, undone, and we see ourselves as we really are.
- 02:36
- This is an enigmatic experience because it both brings us to tears and also engulfs us in His divine presence and love.
- 02:45
- This is not a very common experience, but it does happen, and it does happen to Christians around the world regularly.
- 02:52
- God is real. God is concerned with you, and He wants you to experience Him. But you must first begin with the person of Jesus Christ.
- 03:00
- And if you don't experience Jesus, you really cannot experience the love of God. Look to Jesus first.
