Beloved: Abiding

Living Through Love: How to Experience the Fullness of God's Heart
We live in a cynical age. Trust has been broken so many times across so many institutions that doubt has become our default posture. We scroll through news feeds that amplify our anxieties, navigate relationships scarred by disappointment, and carry wounds from loves that failed us. Even in the church, amid all our theological knowledge and biblical literacy, many of us struggle with a profound disconnect: we know intellectually that God loves us, but we don't feel it.
This gap between knowing and experiencing God's love isn't trivial—it's central to the Christian life. Because here's the reality: you can't be filled with both cynicism and the Holy Spirit. There's a choice that needs to be made.
The Hope That Overcomes Cynicism
The Apostle Paul offers us a different way forward: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope" (Romans 5:5). Notice that word—abound. Not a little hope to get by. Not just enough hope to survive another day. But an overflowing, abundant hope that this broken world cannot touch.
This is the promise of Advent—that into our cynicism, God speaks hope. Into our doubt, God offers certainty. Into our fear, God extends love.
Why We Struggle to Feel Loved
There are legitimate reasons why experiencing God's love feels difficult. We don't live in a Hallmark movie. We live in a world ravaged by sin, and our experiences with earthly love shape how we understand divine love. Some of us had wonderful fathers; others had terrible ones or none at all. Some experienced love as conditional, transactional, or absent altogether.
These wounds matter. They create barriers between our heads and our hearts, between what we profess and what we experience.
But there's another barrier we must confront honestly: sin in our own lives. The temporary pleasures of sin compete with the eternal satisfaction of God's love. Your heart can only love so much. Your focus can only go to so many things. When we choose to seek satisfaction in sin rather than in God, we distance ourselves from experiencing His love—not because He withdraws it, but because we've turned our attention elsewhere.
Here's the beautiful paradox: God's love for us never changes, but our choices radically affect our experience of that love. As Hebrews reminds us, "The Lord disciplines the ones that He loves." Sometimes we feel distant from God not because He's abandoned us, but because His loving discipline is at work, drawing us back to Himself.
The Manifestation of Love
First John 4:9 gives us the key: "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."
Notice that little phrase: "through Him." Not just "in Him" or "because of Him," but through Him. This matters tremendously. It means we don't self-generate spiritual life. We don't tap into some impersonal spiritual force. We don't achieve life through moral effort or religious performance.
Instead, every facet of spiritual life flows through Jesus. He is the mediator, the conduit, the source. We are utterly dependent on Him for everything—not just to escape hell and reach heaven, but for daily, abundant, transformative life.
Jesus isn't an add-on to your existing life. He's a replacement for everything you were trying to find life in before. This is why He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Not "I'll show you the way" or "I'll teach you about life." He is life itself.
Three Practices for Abiding in Love
So how do we live through Him? How do we move from knowing about God's love to experiencing it? The answer is refreshingly simple, though not simplistic: we must consistently choose to put ourselves in the place where we experience and receive the love of God.
First, immerse yourself in Scripture. You won't experience God's love if you don't look for it. The Word of God reveals the love of God—not the love we wish existed or imagine exists, but the actual, revealed love of the Father for His children. We study Scripture not to win at Bible trivia, but to know the God of love and the love of that God. The Word isn't an end unto itself; it's a means to encounter the Word made flesh.
Second, practice prayer as communion, not transaction. We've been conditioned by consumerism to approach prayer as a mechanism to get things from God. But the greatest thing we can pray for is the experience of God Himself. Jesus is the true treasure, not the means to some other treasure. Prayer isn't about manipulating circumstances; it's about relationship.
Consider this powerful truth from Romans 5:5: "Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." We don't generate the love of God—we receive it. So ask for it. Pray specifically, "God, pour out Your love into my heart through the Holy Spirit. I want to feel loved by You. I want to know You as the God of love."
When was the last time you prayed that prayer? When was the last time you asked someone else to pray it for you?
Third, participate in love by extending it. Here's where Jesus takes us deeper. In His final message to His disciples before the cross, He said, "As the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you. Abide in My love" (John 15:9). Then He explained how: "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love... This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
The love of God isn't meant to be hoarded—it's meant to flow through us. We actually experience God's love most profoundly when we participate in it by loving others sacrificially. Many of us aren't experiencing the fullness of God's love because we're too focused on ourselves. Jesus invites us to abide in His love by extending it, serving with it, giving it away.
The Apostle's Prayer for Us
Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 captures what we should be praying for ourselves and each other: that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith; that being rooted and grounded in love, we may have strength to comprehend with all the saints the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Notice—Paul is praying that Christians would know more of Christ's love. He's praying they would comprehend its dimensions: how wide, how long, how high, how deep. Because there's always more. You think you know the love of God? It goes deeper. It's higher. It's wider. It's fuller. There's more peace, more joy, more hope to be found in knowing the God of love and the love of that God.
An Invitation to Abide
This Advent season, as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus—love wrapped in human flesh—let's choose to abide. Let's root ourselves in the truth of God's Word. Let's pray not just for circumstances to change but for hearts to encounter divine love. Let's look for opportunities to give ourselves away in service and sacrifice.
What could God do in us and through us if we were 100% solid in our belief of His love for us? What would change if we truly lived as the beloved?
The God of hope wants to fill you with all joy and peace in believing. The God of love wants you to experience life—abundant, transformative, eternal life—through His Son. The invitation stands: abide in His love.
Because ultimately, Jesus Himself is the pearl of great price. There's no greater prayer you could ever pray than to encounter and experience the love of God in a richer, truer, deeper way.