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  WHAT DOES OUR EXPERIENCE OF GOD'S LOVE DEPEND UPON？
  by John Piper
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes that the experience of God's love being
poured into our hearts is solely the work of the Holy Spirit, not
influenced by our efforts, preaching, or worship. It highlights the
supernatural nature of this experience, underscoring the need for
complete dependence on God. The message challenges the misconception
that one's ability to experience God's love is tied to their family
background, stressing that it is a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit
for both the broken and the whole.

Duration: 4:24 Topics: "Divine Love", "Dependence on the Holy Spirit"
Scripture References: Romans 5:5, John 14:26, Zechariah 4:6, Ephesians 3:16, 1 Corinthians 2:10, Galatians 5:22

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes that the experience of God's love being poured
into our hearts is solely the work of the Holy Spirit, not influenced by
our efforts, preaching, or worship. It highlights the supernatural
nature of this experience, underscoring the need for complete dependence
on God. The message challenges the misconception that one's ability to
experience God's love is tied to their family background, stressing that
it is a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit for both the broken and the
whole.

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CONTENT
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This experience of the love of God being poured into my heart, His love
for me, being poured experientially into my heart is through the Holy
Spirit. Okay, that's number one. It is through the Holy Spirit.

Whatever else this experience is, it is not your work. You didn't make
this happen. Nobody on earth made this happen.

Preaching is important, gave my life to it. Worship in song is
biblically important. They don't make this happen.

This is a work of the Holy Spirit. It's a supernatural work. Which is
why we pray, which is why we're so desperately dependent, right? All the
things that matter in life, ultimately God has to do.

I can't make you love, you feel the love of God. I can't make you feel
the love of God. Only the Holy Spirit can pour God's love into your
heart in such a way that you say, my hope is real.

Only He can do that. Which causes me to just linger for a minute over
some issues. Um, it's sad, isn't it, that we can become so psychologized
about families of origin.

And whether you had a dad who modeled care for you, that we actually
start thinking, well, if you didn't have a good dad, you probably can't
experience the love of God as your father. You ever heard that? Well,
the reason this person cannot experience the sweetness and the
preciousness of the love of God is because their dad beat them up or
left. I think that argument is wicked.

The Holy Spirit does this. Families of origin don't do this, right? Of
course it's harder. Right? Of course, if you've had no help from your
parents to discern what God is like, you got bigger, bigger things to
overcome.

But either this is a work of the Spirit or it's a work of families.
Picture the other side. Picture the other side.

You got now maybe a church full of families of origin that are whole.
Dad was there. Dad cared.

Might not even been a believer, but he was there. He cared. He was
solid.

He was stable. And you now are well adjusted and getting along just fine
and thinking it's the love of God. And it's not.

It's just you and your family of origin. It's just as easy to make a
mistake that my well-being right now that's rooted in that perfect
little family is what this text is talking about. It isn't.

This text is talking about a miracle for the broken and a miracle for
the whole. Miracle for people who came out of absolutely horrific family
situations of abuse, say, and families who are just gold, everything.
They're just right on the advertisement.

And both of them are desperately in need of the Holy Spirit. This is a
work of the Holy Spirit. This experience of the love of God is not
natural.

It doesn't come from bad families or good families. It comes from God.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/ica3d_xp8fk.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/john-piper/what-does-our-experience-of-gods-love-depend-upon/
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