Love in Your Heart
About this series
As we return to Sunday meetings we realise that people may have become weary and lost some focus. So in our next series we hope to help people deal well with their internal space as well as grasp opportunities and return to ‘action.’ Of course, these two things are very closely connected as people always live out what is happening internally. By ‘heart’ the Bible means the core of a person’s being; the seat of emotion, desire, thought and decision. The biblical term ‘heart’ relates most closely to the modern idea of ‘mind’.
About this talk
Romans 5:1-5
Romans 5:1-5 is an amazing passage, packed with wonderful truth about what God has done for us - justification, peace, faith, grace, glory. And about what he is doing in us, even as we suffer: suffering- perseverance-character-hope. Both our delight in the glory of God and God’s work in us as we suffer produce hope. And the truth of this hope never disappoints or fails to encourage because “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” - gushing forth to our spirits from his life within us. To know that we are truly loved and accepted as we are is the most fundamental need of every human being and the Christian, above all others, knows this.
God’s love is both a fact and an experience; to use the Alpha Course’s trio of terms, it is a matter of Word, work and witness. We know God loves us because that’s what his Word tells us, it’s what Christ’s work demonstrates and it’s what the Spirit witnesses to our spirits (cf. Romans 8:15-16).
God’s love poured into our hearts is something he has done (“has been poured out”) and which the Spirit continues to communicate to us.
What can we do to enjoy God’s love poured into our hearts - believe his Word, contemplate what Christ has done, pray, as Paul did, that we will know this love (see Ephesians 3:17-19).
What does it mean, on our part, to “keep yourselves in God’s love” (Jude 21)?
If you have any questions about this talk, want to find out more about Citygate Church, or want to know more about what it means to be a Christian, please fill in our online Connect form at citygate.church/connect.
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