God pours his love into the heart of every Christian through the Holy Spirit, but we may need to learn how to perceive it.

How do we experience God’s love?

In our relationships with people, we experience love through what they say and do. When someone says, “I love you,” those words do something; they are powerful.

But people also communicate love powerfully in a way beyond words and physical expressions like hugs and kisses. We can feel a person’s loving spirit, warmth, goodwill, and enjoyment in our relationship.

Likewise God tells us, “I love you,” but he also communicates his love in spirit. Romans 5:5 says:
“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

The implications of this verse are many.

God’s love in our hearts

1. You can experience the love of God in a way that transcends words and thoughts about God’s love. The verse doesn’t specify whether we are experiencing God’s love for us or an infusion of love into our hearts toward others. Probably both. A Christian may not be able to point to overwhelming experiences of feeling loved by God, but since becoming a Christian he or she may feel more abundant love for other people and relate to others far more often in the way described in 1 Corinthians 13. That could be what Paul describes as God’s love being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
2. The experience of God’s love can be abundant. God’s love is “poured into our hearts,” not dripped into our hearts. The experience of God’s love is described in liquid terms with the analogy of water pouring from a pitcher.
3. However, the experience of God’s love comes from the Holy Spirit, so a person is making this known. This is more than the experience of a shower in impersonal water.
4. God’s love is revealed in “our hearts.” We feel it. If we don’t feel God’s love for us and in us for others, it may be that our mind is getting in the way, that we are thinking wrong thoughts leading to wrong feelings, because at the level of human spirit united with God’s Spirit his love has been manifested.
5. This experience is spiritual, supernatural, divine, not just emotional, for it comes through the Holy Spirit. He gives the experience spiritual substance and reality. It is not just an idea. You don’t imagine it or work it up; rather, you perceive what he is communicating.
6. If we don’t feel we have experienced this, we should ask God to teach us to discern and recognize this love. Make it an ongoing prayer until you can say with assurance, “The love of God has been poured into my heart. I feel God’s love for me. I feel God’s love for others.”
7. If we continue to feel that we have not experienced the outpouring of God’s love in our hearts, we should also ask God to teach us to discern and recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. According to this verse, we should be able to discern his presence. If you believe in Jesus Christ and follow him as a true disciple, you are not just you. Another person lives in you and is one with you, a divine person, the Holy Spirit. Pray that he will teach you to discern his anointing in you, and patiently pay attention to your soul. In a few weeks, months, or perhaps years, you should become aware of God’s movements within.
8. The experience of God’s love prevents disappointment and shame. It makes suffering and endurance worthwhile.
9. The verse doesn’t say anything about this love leaving our hearts. God’s love is there, just as surely as he is there. But we may need to clean away the clutter and dirt that accumulate within and hide God’s love. So, if we quiet our own thoughts that will at times be fleshly and worldly, if we forgive every grudge we hold against anyone, if we repent of all known sin, if we surrender our lives fully to God and die to self, if we consider who Jesus is and what he has done for us, and if we turn our hearts in worship and thanksgiving to God and wait patiently on him, we will likely find the love of God radiating in our hearts.

A few decades ago, Michelangelo’s masterpiece on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was restored. He originally did the painting in the early 1500s, and over the centuries the soot of candle smoke, wax, and air pollution had accumulated on it, darkening and hiding its colors. Although the masterpiece was still there, it had lost its colorful luster. So, the church brought in specialists in art restoration to put up scaffolding, climb to the ceiling, and painstakingly remove the layer of grime. What they found beneath the dirt startled them: bright, vivid colors not seen there in generations. The restorers didn’t normally add color; instead they needed to remove what was hiding the painting’s true colors.

(Check it out here.)