So I'm going to read this text with you. This is Romans 5 and we'll read verses 1 to 8 and then I'll tell you where we're going and then we'll pray and go there.

So Romans 5, 1, 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 the hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces 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 man, though perhaps for a good man one would dare even to die, but God

shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So that's worth about a year's worth of sermons.

And we're going to do one, and we're going to focus on verse five.

Hope does not put us to shame. Why?

Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Now that's an experience, that's not an idea, and that's the

experience I want you to have. So let's pray. It happens by the Holy Spirit, Father. It

doesn't happen by John Piper or Michael Boyce or music or reading the Bible. None of these things are sufficient.

It is a work of the Holy Spirit to have the love of God poured into our hearts.

So I ask for it.

For me now and for these friends,

that you would grant us the realization, the experience of verse five.

In Jesus' name I pray, amen.

So God's love poured into your heart is not the same as God's love proven to your mind.

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