The Love of God Poured Into Our Hearts

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and 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. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
As reformed people we often undervalue the importance of experiencing God’s love, preferring simply to think deeply and feel less deeply. But here is a verse about the deep experience of God’s love in the heart. Not that we experience God’s love apart from a true knowledge of it and of the God who is pouring it into us, but it is still an experience. And one that we can cultivate more and more. It is true that every Christian who has the Holy Spirit has this love, since it is through the Holy Spirit that this love comes. But we can also cultivate more of it.
So, Paul is able to pray in Eph 3:16 “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”  This is what we need: to be strengthened by Him to comprehend just how loved we are.
If we know this more fully, we would be all His in every way. We would not struggle so much with sin, but it would be a struggle to even see sin as attractive in the first place. We would serve with faithfulness and rest with assurance. We are like a small cup under a waterfall of divine love. May God make you larger, so that you can experience more of His love.