The Spirit of Poured Out Love

Prayer is as simple as loving God and letting him love us back. In Romans, Paul tells us that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. The Holy Spirit is both the evidence of God’s love and the means by which we experience God’s love.  

In Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle, the 16th-century mystic’s brilliant and surprisingly practical manual about how we grow in prayer, she insists that as we grow in prayer, we grow in a love relationship with a Person, not an abstract force.  She writes: 

We must not mistake the Spirit of Poured Out Love for an emotion or an abstract force. In fact, Teresa encourages all of her nuns to begin in prayer by speaking intimately with the Person of Christ.  She instructs them to “speak with Him as with a father, or a brother, or a Lord, or as with a spouse; sometimes in one way, at other times in another" (Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, 28:3). Knowing who we are talking to in prayer is of immense importance. We are falling in love with a Person whom the Holy Spirit mediates to us by pouring his love into our hearts — that we may experience and know him better than if we were with him in the flesh. He has come to live inside of us! 

On a practical level, I want to suggest that growing in relationship with the Spirit of Poured Out Love can look like two practical steps: 

1) If we feel love in our hearts for God, stop! This is an invitation to pray. Teresa instructs her nuns to pray by focusing on what stirs their hearts to love: “In order to profit by this path and ascend to the dwelling places we desire, the important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so do whatever best stirs you to love” (The Interior Castle, 4:1:7). If we feel affection for Jesus, the desire to lift our hands, the desire to love him through creativity or some other means of expression, receive this as the gift of  Romans 5:5 and do this. This is the key to building a prayer life that is truly a relationship with a person and not just a ritual. If the Holy Spirit pours love into our hearts and we feel any genuine affection for God, we need to receive this as an invitation to pray.  

2) Let him love us back. Teresa and the other mystics encourage us that as we grow in prayer, we will not just feel our love for God, we will actually feel his love for us. This is a reality for all who grow in prayer, and mystics like Teresa of Avila and  Madame Guyon describe it as a gift to experience the infilling of love in our hearts from God. Peter writes that even though we have not seen him,  we love him (1 Peter 1:8). If we endeavor to build a prayer life, at one point or another, we will find ourselves actually experiencing God’s love for us in the spirit of Romans 5:5. If you experience this love filling your heart, this is also an invitation to stop. Prayer really is as simple as loving him and feeling him love us back.  

For you, does prayer feel impersonal, like it’s more a thing to do than a person to talk to? Does prayer feel more dutiful or dialogical? Have you ever experienced the “I love you” from God, or do you long to experience it afresh today? 

Take a few deep breaths. Maybe as you  breathe in, pray “Come,” and as you  breathe out, pray “Holy Spirit.”

• Where do you find yourself today? Do you find yourself in need of an “I love you!” from God? Or do you find yourself filled with an “I love you!” back to him? 

• Spend some time asking the Spirit of  Poured Out Love to fill you with his love. 

• Spend some time inviting the Spirit of Poured Out Love to help you pay attention today when he is drawing you into an ongoing, dialogical relationship by pouring love into your heart.  

Best,

Ryan

P.S. I am overjoyed to share that there are 29 more devotionals just like this in our brand new prayer resource — Come, Holy Spirit: 30 Days of Growing in Friendship with God. What would it feel like to live in a daily, interactive, conversational relationship with God the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit lives on the inside of us, and yet we can’t see him or hear him audibly. Audaciously, Jesus promises that it would be better if he leaves and the Holy Spirit comes! This 30-day devotional is based on 30 attributes of the Holy Spirit revealed throughout the storyline of Scripture to help us discover the treasure of friendship with God on the inside of us and grow in a daily, interactive relationship with him. Check it out at restlessheartsrestingplaces.com/store.