Experiencing God's love

[TheLong]

What does it mean to experience God's love?

Is this love direct or indirect?

By that I mean, do you experience God's love by being part of His creation? Is it, in a way, God's love when you experience love from or for another person (-- seeing as we are all from him)? And if that's the case, if God is love, and faith is dead without love, and Jesus said to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and minds, do we best experience and honor God by showing love and affection for others?

Or is God's love an entirely different, supernatural, divine thing? How do you describe it? How is it different from 'other' love?

 

[BrendanMark]

The first dimension adopted by the one, unchangeable love as it appears before our eyes, is that of human life. Here contemplation is easiest. The person at prayer need only let himself be carried from one picture to the next: in the humanity which he encounters in each picture he will see a revelation of eternal, triune love. First the child as such, with his natural qualities; the boy, the youth with his, then the grown man; each stage and condition of life; waking and sleeping, liveliness and tiredness, solitude and conversation with others, the “feel” of morning, midday and evening; work and rest, eating and fasting, pleasure and the foregoing of pleasure; human emotions and the lack of emotion, festivities and the monotony of the daily round. God the Creator has designed and created every one of these changing conditions of human life, and now, in the fullness of time, he has sent his Son into them, to “taste” them and make them the “experience” of God in human nature, to charge them to his account. Thus he crowns the accomplishment of human life, and by rising from the dead he elevates its truth, its quintessence, into eternity. Now, instead of a vague “similarity in a still greater dissimilarity”, there is a communion in which the transitory becomes a vehicle for the eternal, filled to the brim and running over with the fullness of meaning of divine love.
von Balthasar, Hans Urs – Prayer [1955, Ignatius Press, trans. Harrison, Graham 1983, p 202]

 

[Emmy]

Dear TheLong. There is selfless Love/Agape, and there is Phileo, love for family and friends, and also Eros, love between men and women. God wants us to love Him, with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our minds. He made us in His image, and He loves us as our Heavenly Father. God also told us to love our neighbour, all olthers, whether friend or not friend, As we love ourselves. Treat everybody we know or meet, as we would like to be treated. God`s Love for us is that of a Loving Heavenly Father, who IS LOVE. God`s Love is all around us, and if we really look for it, we cannot help but notice it. I say this humbly and with love, TheLong. Greetings from Emmy, sister in Christ.

 

[christianmomof3]

What does it mean to experience God's love?

Is this love direct or indirect?

By that I mean, do you experience God's love by being part of His creation? Is it, in a way, God's love when you experience love from or for another person (-- seeing as we are all from him)? And if that's the case, if God is love, and faith is dead without love, and Jesus said to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and minds, do we best experience and honor God by showing love and affection for others?

Or is God's love an entirely different, supernatural, divine thing? How do you describe it? How is it different from 'other' love?

God loves us so much that He created us, knowing that we would fall, and then He was incarnated as a man and lived a sinless human life and died an all inclusive death to redeem us for our sins, and He passed through death and resurrection and became the Life-Giving Spirit who can live in us and be our life, our life-supply, our peace, hope, faith, joy and love, our patience, strength and everything that we need.

I experinced His love when He drew me to Him and saved me in His life.
I experience His love when I experience His mercy and His peace and whenever I turn to Him day by day and even moment by moment.

I know that He loves me even though He knows how much I do not deserve His love.

 

[Bible2]

Believers experience God's love when Jesus comes and lives in their hearts: "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God" (Ephesians 3:17-19).

 

[Cribstyl]

Good answer........Emmy and Bible2

 

[annrobert]

God loves us so much that He created us, knowing that we would fall, and then He was incarnated as a man and lived a sinless human life and died an all inclusive death to redeem us for our sins, and He passed through death and resurrection and became the Life-Giving Spirit who can live in us and be our life, our life-supply, our peace, hope, faith, joy and love, our patience, strength and everything that we need.

I experinced His love when He drew me to Him and saved me in His life.
I experience His love when I experience His mercy and His peace and whenever I turn to Him day by day and even moment by moment.

I know that He loves me even though He knows how much I do not deserve His love.

Bible2
Believers experience God's love when Jesus comes and lives in their hearts: "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God" (Ephesians 3:17-19).

Wonderful awesome answers here.So true.
Also when we reach out to the hurting and broken hearted and suffering and the poor we are also allowing God to love people through us, and when people reach out to us God shows us His love through them as well.
However as they said above, that is the greatest, most profound love of God and we return His love in worship and adoration and surrender and trust and obedience and acceptance.