Feeling the Love of God

[Nessa]

need to find a good free voice one!

[1over137]

Skype Conference? Not a bad idea.
Curious about Rick's voice and all.

[Nessa]

it costs though?

[Nessa]

need to know time zones too..cos right now its 9;30pm sunday here

[1over137]

Skype is for free. My time is Central Europe time like in Bratislava.
Hmm. Is there a time folks from US, Europe and Ausie land can chat?

[Nessa]

it is now 10:08pm sunday in central europe and 9;08am monday in new zealand...i know that much

[Philip]

It's always a good thing to realize that God's love for us is immense and unchanging, EVEN WHEN we don't feel His presence or particularly sense Him. And He loves us just as passionately when everything is going wrong and we're in crisis or a long funk and depressed as He does on on days He seems so clear and real to us. He is unchanging. But our sense of Him is constantly changing. No mortal can accurately FEEL the truth on a consistent basis.

[Nessa]

well this truth seems pretty consistent to me....

“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

[melanie]

This has not been my experience.
It has been at lowest points in my life that I have felt God the most. Even though I may not have been still enough to notice at the time. When life gets tough, stressful, chaotic there is so much background noise going on it can be difficult for us to tune into Him. That doesn't mean He is silent or has abandoned us. The poem 'Footprints in the Sand' sums up my experience beautifully..

One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
"Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You'd walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."

He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you."

He has carried me through some really tough times. When I look back I see a lot of single footprints, sometimes when I didn't deserve to be carried but He embraced me anyway. I love Him so very much. He has saved me spiritually but also quite literally. I am so thankful for His presence in my life. I let Him know everyday how much I love Him, I praise him because He is a God so worthy of my gratitude.
Love flows between two people. God loves us, despite ourselves sometimes. God showed me the greatest measure of His love at a time when I had all but shut Him out. He is still present even when we are not but every relationship needs both parties participating. Love flows most freely when we are open to it and reflecting it back. We feel the love most strongly from our spouse when we are openly and strongly reflecting our love on them. When we get in a bit of slump, usually through the pressures of life, the love is still present but not flowing strongly. This is often the case because of both parties but not so with God. His love is always present, always flowing, forever open to us. We need to make sure that the pressures of life, the stress, the chaos is not interfering with our flow of love for God. For that is what makes it difficult for us to feel His love, ourselves. When we open up our love for God, when we open up that barrier that we have put up, not Him then we can start to feel that wonderous love from God that fulfills us on a level that earthly love just cannot fill.

On a side note, it is great to have you here Davidstones. This forum needs more females and definitely ones like yourself

[EssentialSacrifice]

After reading everyone's reply on Feeling God's love, I wanted to find the biblical structure that shows the original and eternal desire, will or perhaps best said "plan" of God's love for us that would be expressed in bible verse.... I found this and decided it would be stupid to try to do better...

In the New Testament, Paul makes clear that all along there has been a true Israel, a remnant within the nation of Israel — the ones who truly trust the Messiah Jesus. “A Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter” (Romans 2:29). “It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring” (Romans 9:8).

And these “children of God,” he goes on to say, are “not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (Romans 9:24). “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek” (Romans 10:11–12).

Then he makes clear that these true Jews — these children of God, these believers on the Messiah — have been loved by God from all eternity, differently from all other people.

Loved with a Great Love

“He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. . . . In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:4–5). He loved us before we were created or adopted — or married. Like a prince looking out on a kingdom of vicious traitors and choosing as his wife one who despised him.

This is what he tells me in the Bible about how he loves me. He saved me “because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave [me] in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (2 Timothy 1:9). Before creation he loved me like this.

Paul calls this a “great love.” And what marks it as great, he says, is that because of it, God came to me in my bloody, filthy, traitorous, deadness of heart, and made me alive. “Because of the great love with which he loved us, God made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4–5). Great love made us alive.

This is jarring. This is often more than I can bear. He found me dead “like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3). But he didn’t leave me dead, though that is what I deserved. He looked into my stinking tomb and said, “John, come forth” (John 11:43). He gave me the gift of faith (Ephesians 2:8; Philippians 1:29). He adopted me. He included me in his people, his bride.

Will You Yield?

This is a world of love that is different than anything we know among men. To fathom this love, to feel this love, is not natural. To know this love, to feel this love for what it is, requires the experience of this love, which is the acting of this love itself.

Do you want to be loved like this? Maybe not. It certainly would be natural to demand that God love more democratically, more universally — that he not choose Israel from all the nations, that he not choose a bride from all the people. Perhaps you don’t want to be loved like this.

But if you understand what he is saying, and if you do want to be loved like this, then yield to this love which is already at work in you, and embrace its fullest embodiment, Jesus, the Son of God and Messiah. “For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). You will find that that you have been loved with a great love from all eternity. I pray that you will.
... by John Piper, author.

I don't think it's so much a matter of "feeling" as it is experiencing and allowing yourself to experience it. It's always been there, it always will be, it's the lowest hanging fruit on the tree, available to all.... freely and with anxious anticipation we will all (individually) take what it rightfully ours with the love and joy it was all meant to "have us feel". Enjoy the feeling now, as I do not think there is emotion in heaven. If there were, all emotion would be required to define one to the other (envy, jealousy etc...) no, I think the love of God is simply a way of life that permeates the very existence of heaven and all who reside there. It is the way of life both there and here and if you can make it happen here, you're a shoe in for there !

[Nessa]

no emotions in heaven yet God never changes and he has emotions himself and we are made like him....hmm interesting.....can almost hear God say in heaven "Stop it..you're feeling joy.. only im allowed too feel that"....oh well at least the angels will be able to still rejoice... or will they..

or does God leave his emotions at heavens door before entering..

[EssentialSacrifice]

no emotions in heaven yet God never changes and he has emotions himself and we are made like him....hmm interesting.....can almost hear God say in heaven "Stop it..you're feeling joy.. only im allowed too feel that"....oh well at least the angels will be able to still rejoice... or will they..

or does God leave his emotions at heavens door before entering..

no, I think the love of God is simply a way of life that permeates the very existence of heaven and all who reside there. It is the way of life both there and here and if you can make it happen here, you're a shoe in for there !

Perhaps think of the air around you and replace it with love. That is heaven. It's not so much you don't "feel" love as you "are" love. You have not given up your emotional breech of personality, you have become that feeling of love.

no emotions in heaven yet God never changes

From a strict theological perspective, God is incapable of emotion. One reason for that is because emotions are changeable. If God could change, then either he would not yet have something or he will lose something—and that is incompatible with the state of being perfect. If he is not perfect, he cannot be divine. His divinity means that he has all perfections. In order for God to weep over the death of a friend, God the Son first had to become man (cf. John 11:32–35).

[Nessa]

that is not true..God displayed emotions long before jesus uttered his first baby cry

but all his emotions would be perfect and holy....will not our emotions be redeemed after death to be pure too?

[Nessa]

God himself IS love to become apart of that feeling of love would essentially make us part God..

[Nessa]

you dont think people angered God in the old T? just what bible are you reading from?