Quotes & Sayings About Feeling God's Love

Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go ... But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense - love as distinct from "being in love" - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God ... "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it. — C.S. Lewis

Happiness celebrates how we feel, but we can rejoice over what we know is true regardless of feeling. Joy is the realization that we no longer have to live under our own power. The expression of thanks and the vocalization of delight and hope for a greater purpose that we know nothing of is fullness of joy. In that dark prison ward, the ten Boom sisters felt a pleasure not in the fleas but in the God who allowed them. They rejoiced not in the hunger and sickness but in the God who never forgets or rejects those who love Him and seek His face (p. 44). — Hayley DiMarco

Try to feel God in any little thing you do or feel. In a laugh, a smile, a tear, a revelation-a kiss. — Solange Nicole

And even now I experience that blessed feeling. To love one's neighbors, to love one's enemies. Always to love
to love God in all His Manifestations. To love one's friends is human love, but to love one's enemies is divine. — Leo Tolstoy

If you're feeling alone, and your weariness has grown, look up above, and thank God for His love. There's nothing you can do, to change His love for you; hold on friend, it's not the end. Something beautiful will come, the clouds will part for the sun, the skies will break for the Son, and the Father will say 'Well done.' But until then, until then, you're not alone. He can make bread from stone. Hold on to Him, and He'll hold on to you. Take one day at a time, pray for faith and be kind, and when forgetful becomes your mind, remember what He said, 'You are mine.' — Nick Vujicic

nestle up with me now and let us
fall in love with the feeling
of our worries spilling into the sheets.
nestle up with me now,
let us give birth to seeds of whispering moans
and let those coil with our bones
as we tumble in love with the blooming echo.
nestle up with me now,
let us grow old and die delicate in each other's arms
for my god what an exquisite honor it would be
to erode from this crumbling earth
all the while being washed in your
lover's grains,

nestle up with me. — Christopher Poindexter

Joy, like love, is an impenetrable, God-given state of being. The distinctions between joy and happiness and love and affection are important ones under the notion that happiness is an 'iffy' emotion, a highly dependent feeling both aroused and destroyed by external conditions apart from God. And the distinction between love and affection is parallel to such. — Criss Jami

Love is not a feeling; it's giving someone what he or she needs most when it is least deserved. That's how God loved me, and I choose to stick with the program. — Chip Ingram

Withhold no good impulse. You may fear that you will run to excess and squander too much, but those feelings are born of fear. In God's reality, the more you give of yourself-in feeling, generosity, self-expression, goodness, creativity, and love-the more you will be given. — Deepak Chopra

You wonder how long my love will last? Find your answer on a splintered cross, on a craggy hill. That's me you see up there, your maker, your God, nail-stabbed and bleeding. Covered in spit and sin-soaked. "That's your sin I'm feeling. That's your death I'm dying. That's your resurrection I'm living. That's how much I love you." In — Max Lucado

Faith is a decision.It is not a deduction from the facts around us. We would not look at the world of today and logically conclude that God loves us. It doesn't always look as though He does.Faith is not an instinct. It certainly is not a feeling - feelings don't help much when you're in the lion's den or hanging on a wooden Cross. Faith is not inferred from the happy way things always work. It is an act of the will, a choice, based on the Unbreakable Word of a God who cannot lie, and who showed us what love and obedience and sacrifice mean, in the person of Jesus Christ. — Elisabeth Elliot

People are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it. — C.S. Lewis

They saw her husband, this giant of a man in God's Kingdom, this man, that for over fifteen years was their example of what a great man and husband looked like, walking up to his weeping wife, gently embracing her, soothing her, lifting and holding her soul up high while she released her own pains and worries from the last two days, feeling him, leaning into him, and submitting her pain and fears to her husband out of her love and trust. His strength was shown in his softness. He was made strong in his wife's pain. He was her man of God — Lee Goff

You know that feeling just before you're going to laugh? That thing where you get all bubbled up? ... It's like a bubble of laughter, but it hasn't come out yet ... ?
That's what God feels like.
It's a feeling of joy and love and well-being. — Goldie Hawn

There is no power from God that is separated from love. If you want to have influence, you have to join yourself to his love nature. This is more than a feeling or an emotion. It is an attitude of acceptance toward everyone and everything that is God's, even if you can't control it, manage it, or even nurture it. You are called to love. — Shawn Bolz

It is hard to lose the people we love ,but feeling sorry they died is selfish.Dying is going heaven home to God we know your papa is in heaven with our Lady and Jesus.Let us try to be happy for him. — Maryanne Raphael

He was without any comforts of God - no feeling that God loved him - no
feeling that God pitied him - no feeling that God supported him. God was his
sun before - now that sun became all darkness ... He was without God - he
was as if he had no God. All that God had been to him before was taken from
him now. He was Godless - deprived of his God. He had the feeling of the
condemned, when the Judge says: "Depart from me, ye cursed," "who shall
be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and
from the glory of his power." He felt that God said the same to him. Ah! This is
the hell which Christ suffered. The ocean of Christ's sufferings is
unfathomable ... He was forsaken in the [place] of sinners. If you close with him
as your surety, you will never be forsaken ... "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?" [The answer?] For me - for me. — Robert Murray McCheyne

We are overhasty to speak as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours. — George Eliot

But just like believing in God, falling in love is such a sacred feeling that it leaves you with no room for any other passions. — Orhan Pamuk

In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God's existence, God's justice, God's love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living. — Erich Fromm

Grace to me is a little bit of extra help when you're feeling stuck or doomed or, probably, hopefully, out of good ideas on how to save yourself, and how to salvage the situation or the friendship or the whatever it is," Anne Lamott once told me. "I wish it was accompanied by harp music so you could know that's what was happening, but for me it's that extra pause or that extra breath or that extra minute's patience against all odds." On that first trip to Ireland, grace - the kick-in-the-pants, clarifying, cosmic-pause-button kind of grace - didn't just have a harp. It had an entire soundtrack ... — Cathleen Falsani

Biblical hope means confidence in the future. It's a confidence born of faith. Faith, hope and love go together (1 Cor. 13). When we have faith in God, we claim His promises, and they give us hope for the future. Hope for the Christian is not a feeling of "I hope it's going to happen." It's exciting expectancy because God controls the future. When Jesus Christ is your Savior and your Lord, the future is your friend. You don't have to worry. — Warren W. Wiersbe

he woman Caeiro fell in love with. I have no idea who she was, and I intend to never find out, not even out of curiosity. There are things of which the soul refuses to lose its ignorance.

I'm perfectly aware no one's obliged to reciprocate love, and great poets have nothing to do with being great lovers. But there's a transcendent spite...

Let her remain anonymous even to God! — Alvaro De Campos

I am not a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, a Mormon, Polygamist, Homosexual, Anarchist or Boxer ... I do not believe that, in order to be religious in the good and genuine sense of the word, one has to ruin one's love life and has to become rigid and shrunken in body and soul. I know that what you call "God" actually exists, but in a different way from what you think: as the primal cosmic energy in the universe, as your love in your body, as your honesty and your feeling of nature in you and around you. — Wilhelm Reich

The will's operation is quite distinct from the will's feeling: By its operation, which is love, the will is united with God and terminates in him, and not by the feeling and gratification of its appetite that remains in the soul and goes no further. The feelings only serve as stimulants to love, if the will desires to pass beyond them; and they serve for no more. Thus the delightful feelings do not of themselves lead the soul to God, but rather cause it to become attached to delightful feelings. But the operation of the will, which is the love of God, concentrates the affection, joy, plea sure, satisfaction, and love of the soul only on God, leaving aside all things and loving him above them all. — San Juan De La Cruz

Light Breeze

As regards feeling pain,
like a hand cut in battle,
consider the body a robe you wear.


When you meet someone you love,
do you kiss their clothes?
Search out who's inside.


Union with God is sweeter
than body comforts.

We have hands and feet
different from these.
Sometimes in dream we see them.
That is not illusion.
It's seeing truly.
You do have a spirit body;

don't dread leaving the physical one. Sometimes someone feels this truth so strongly that he or she can live in mountain solitude totally refreshed.


The worried, heroic doings of men and women seem weary and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Last night, Bree had been taken. Thoroughly, utterly taken. Gently or roughly, it didn't matter. This man had reached into the darkest part of her mind, had brought out and laid bare the desires she admitted to no one but herself in her most secret, quiet moments. Her hunger had been allowed to run free. There'd been no guilt, no remorse. Nothing was 'wrong'. And God, the feeling of freedom was damned addictive. What did that say about her? How could she love Michael, yet give a part of her she'd never felt comfortable sharing with Michael to this stranger. — E. Jamie

I'm a keeper of flocks.
The flock is my thoughts
And my thoughts are all sensations.
I think with my eyes and with my ears
And with my hands and feet
And with my nose and mouth.

Thinking about a flower is seeing and smelling it
And eating a piece of fruit is knowing its meaning.

That's why when on a hot day
I feel sad from liking it so much,
And I throw myself lengthwise on the grass
And shut my hot eyes,
And feeling my whole body lying on reality,
I know the truth and I'm happy. — Alberto Caeiro

Wherefore it is fitting that ye also should run together in accordance with the will of the bishop who by God's appointment [515] rules over you. Which thing ye indeed of yourselves do, being instructed by the Spirit. For your justly-renowned presbytery, being worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp. Thus, being joined together in concord and harmonious love, of which Jesus Christ is the Captain and Guardian, do ye, man by man, become but one choir; so that, agreeing together in concord, and obtaining [516] a perfect unity with God, ye may indeed be one in harmonious feeling with God the Father, and His beloved Son Jesus Christ our Lord. For, says He, "Grant unto them, Holy Father, that as I and Thou are one, they also may be one in us." [517] It is therefore profitable that you, being joined together with God in an unblameable unity, should be the followers of the example of Christ, of whom also ye are members. [515] — Ignatius Of Antioch

This bruising is required before conversion that so the Spirit may make way for himself into the heart by levelling all proud, high thoughts, and that we may understand ourselves to be what indeed we are by nature. We love to wander from ourselves and to be strangers at home, till God bruises us by one cross or other, and then we 'begin to think', and come home to ourselves with the prodigal (Luke 15:17). It is a very hard thing to bring a dull and an evasive heart to cry with feeling for mercy. Our hearts, like criminals, until they be beaten from all evasions, never cry for the mercy of the judge. — Richard Sibbes

Yes. Just now, I was actually trying to rank 'I love you, I like you, I worship you, I have to have my cock inside you,' in terms of relative sincerity.
Did I day that? he said sounding slightly startled.
Yes. Weren't you listening?
No, he admitted. I meant every word of it though. His hand cupped one buttock, weighing it appreciatively. Still do come to that.
What, even that last one? I laughed and rubbed my forehead gently against his chest, feeling his jaw rest snugly on top of my head.
Oh, aye, he said gathering me firmly against him with a sigh. I will say the flesh requires a bit of supper and a wee rest before I think of doin' it again, but the spirit is always willing. God, ye have the sweetest fat wee bum. Only seeing it makes me want to give it yea again directly. It's lucky ye're wed to a decrepit auld man, Sessenach, or ye'd be on your knees with your arse in the air this minute. — Diana Gabaldon

Feeling offended is invigorating. Feeling offended is a reassuring sensation. It's easier than asking ourselves if the redeeming love of God is evident in the way we communicate with people. — David Dark

After an hour my senses begin to vibrate in a definite rhythm, I tune into the great stillness, I tune in. I gaze at the crescent moon sitting like a white shell in the sky, and I have a feeling of love for it, I feel I'm blushing. It's the moon, I say softly and passionately, it's the moon! And my heart beats toward it with a gentle throbbing. It lasts for several minutes. It blows a little, a strange wind is coming, an unusual blast of air. What is it? I look around and see no one. The wind calls me and my soul bows in answer to the call,37 I feel myself lifted out of my sphere, pressed to an invisible breast, my eyes are moist with tears, I tremble - God is somewhere near looking at me. This lasts for another few minutes. I turn my head, the strange blast of air is gone, and I see something like the back of a spirit wandering soundlessly through the forest. . . . — Knut Hamsun

People everywhere, enjoying life, smiling, and just slowing down to let the world take care of itself for a few hours.
The feeling was contagious. Especially when I stepped into McPherson's Pub to grab a bite of the special and listen to some traditional Irish music. The fiddle made me want to dance with myself, and many did. The drum beat like my very own heart. And some little flute that looked no wider than a pencil reminded me of the Aran Islands floating not too far from Abbeyglen.
God was here tonight. In the strings of the guitar and the call of the singer's voice. I realize how often I overlook him back at home.
And I know I don't want to do that anymore.
The LORD will send His faithful love by day; His song will be with me in the night a prayer to the Gid of my life. — Jenny B. Jones

All the laws and legislation in the world will never heal this world like the loving hearts and arms of mothers and fathers. If every child could drift to sleep feeling wrapped in the love of their family - and God's love - this world would be a far more gentle and better place. — Mitt Romney

Measure not God's love and favour by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof. — Richard Sibbes

Two mystic states can be dissociated: the ecstatic-beneficent-and-benevolent, contemplation of the divine love, the divine splendour with goodwill toward others.
And the bestial, namely the fanatical, the man on fire with God and anxious to stick his snotty nose into other men's business or reprove his neighbour for having a set of tropisms different from that of the fanatic's, or for having the courage to live more greatly and openly.
The second set of mystic states is manifest in scarcity economists, in repressors etc.
The first state is a dynamism. It has, time and again, driven men to great living, it has given them courage to go on for decades in the face of public stupidity. It is paradisical and a reward in itself seeking naught further ... perhaps because a feeling of certitude inheres in the state of feeling itself. The glory of life exists without further proof for this mystic. — Ezra Pound

Thankful to see this day. Feeling God's love, experiencing His blessings & secure in His grace. — LaNina King

To love mankind for the sake of God-that has been the most nobel and far-fetched feeling yet achieved by human beings. The idea that without some sanctifying ulterior motive, a love of mankind is just one more brutish stupidity, that the predisposition to such a love must first find its weight, its refinement, its grain of salt and pinch of ambergris in another even higher predisposition-whoever first felt and 'witnessed' this, and however much his tongue may have stuttered in attempting to express such a delicate idea: may he remain forever venerable and holy in our sight as the man who as yet has flown the highest and erred the most beautifully! — Friedrich Nietzsche

I thought ... it was easy when I thought it was something to do with the flesh. But what I'm seeing is more than that. It's love, and love isn't a sin. So how can God be so cruel as to give that feeling to two men or two women if it's a sin? I've always believed God to be compassionate. Loving. — Joey W. Hill

If she could take my strength. He put his hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. If she could have some of my heart's strength. I'd give years of my life, Lord, if she could use them." He looked at her peaceful face, again looking at her beating pulse. Life seemed so fragile to him. She had become, in such a short time, infinitely precious to him. "A daughter of God. Your daughter, Lord. My wife. — Jan Holly

Because, my dear, God is love. Not just maternal or fraternal love but romantic love as well. Song of Solomon was written to show what the love between a husband and a wife should be, but it was also written to emulate the depth of feeling and love God has for each of us. As intense and wonderful as this young man's kiss made you feel, more so is the passion and love God has for you. No, your feelings aren't wrong, but perhaps the timing is. — Julie Lessman

Now love doesn't stop at death - or if it does, it's a pretty poor sort of love! In fact, grief could almost be defined as the form love takes when the object of love has been removed; it is love embracing an empty space, love kissing thin air and feeling the pain of nothingness. But there is no reason at all why love should discontinue the practice of holding the beloved in prayer before God. — N. T. Wright

The soul does not condemn us. It is not the God of our fathers.

Soul is the essence of existence and it is free and limitless. It gives all things the freedom to be, to grow, and eventually to know. It is not a judge, but a passive observer of all things.

The soul is the feeling of life, without the judgment and separation of the mind and ego. It has no commandments for us to follow, other than to live, learn, and grow in awareness of ourselves and life by experience.

When we accept ourselves as we are and the events of our life, we are following the soul of existence. We are given opportunities to learn, grow, and know our natural self, without judgment.

When we follow the god of the ego, we must judge our actions and our life. The soul is not a judge of life.

The soul allows us to fail in following its love and wisdom, without condemnation. — Robert S. Cosmar

Love ... is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. — C.S. Lewis

My spiritual high naturally dissipated. At some point you've got to come out of the clouds and live real life. Again, it's just like falling in love. The feeling of euphoria is only temporary. — Pattie Mallette

As we experience this love, there is a temptation at times to become hostile to our earlier understandings, feeling embarrassed that we were so "simple" or "naive," or "brainwashed" or whatever terms arise when we haven't come to terms with our own story. These past understandings aren't to be denied or dismissed; they're to be embraced. Those experiences belong. Love demands that they belong. That's where we were at that point in our life and God met us there. Those moments were necessary for us to arrive here, at this place at this time, as we are. Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new. — Rob Bell

There's a difference between, you know, God loves unconditionally in my feeling and religion loves conditionally. Religion spends an awful lot of time dictating who God can love and can't love. — Sinead O'Connor

Love is a virtue and not a feeling. It is fed and fired by God- not by the favorable response of the beloved. Even when it doesn't seem to make a dime's worth of difference to the ones on whom it is lavished, it is still the most prized of all virtues because it is at the heart of the very character of God. — Rich Mullins

God will publish your love story in His perfect time and not your own "designated" time. The more you desperately search for it, the more elusive your prospective love would be.Simply let it find you. Let yourself grow first and be ready to get involved in a sincere and healthy relationship and not just because the "last train" might leave without you on board or that you are lonely and feeling pressured. True love comes when it is meant to be yours and if it is your right time." -Elizabeth's Quotes — Elizabeth E. Castillo

The elder brother compares himself with the younger one and becomes jealous. But the father loves them both so much that it didn't even occur to him to delay the party in order to prevent the elder son from feeling rejected. I am convinced that many of my emotional problems would melt as snow in the sun if I could let the truth of God's motherly non-comparing love permeate my heart. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

The more you come to admire God's wisdom and believe in his love and kindness to each of us, the freer you will be from envying those with more faith and stronger gifts and from feeling superior to those what are weaker than you. — Barbara R. Duguid

Love is beautiful. A gift from God. I think it's sad, how easily we throw around the word without actually understanding the sacrifice behind its meaning. Love in its definition isn't about a strong feeling towards someone, but an action. If people truly understood what it was - our world would be changed. Love is sacrifice, it's holding someone's hand even though you know they can't feel it — Rachel Van Dyken

It's a wonderful feeling when your father becomes not a god but a man to you - when he comes down from the mountain and you see he's this man with weaknesses. And you love him as this whole being, not as a figurehead. — Robin Williams

I had never deserved to be forgiven in the first place when I aas converted. I could do nothing to merit God's favour, His grace, His love. If all I had ever known was unmerited and undeserved grace, how could I then forfeit that which I never earned?... Was I too proud, in some strange, inverted way to humble myself to accept an unmerited forgiveness? I know that it was all of grace, yet my inner being wanted the right to do something to merit it. I was trying to work out my own salvation, to earn God's forgiveness, to prove the sincerity of my repentance...At last I knew that it was true. It was not based on my feeling or on my emotions. It was not dependent on my faith or my obedience. In no way could I merit or deserve it. He loved me. He knew me through and through, better than I knew myself, and yet still, He loved me. Christ died on Calvary to tell me that. Christ lives in Heaven, an unceasing intercessor on my behalf to make that love real to me in my experience. — Helen Roseveare

Compassion isn't just about feeling the pain of others; it's about bringing them in toward yourself. If we love what God loves, then, in compassion, margins get erased. 'Be compassionate as God is compassionate,' means the dismantling of barriers that exclude. — Gregory J. Boyle

Sometimes you find that one person, and you just know. And even if you don't love them right away, you know you will. It's just a matter of time. Because no one you've ever known has come close to making you feel the way they do. It keeps you up at night and drives you fucking crazy, but you pray to God the feeling never goes away no matter how much it's killing you." Sloane stared at him. "Wow." "Shut up," Ash mumbled, looking embarrassed. Like he hadn't realized what he'd said until then. "I've never heard you talk like this." He thought he knew everything there was to know about his best friend. Apparently he was wrong. Ash shrugged. "Yeah, well, almost dying makes you think." "About Cael?" Sloane asked quietly. Ash let out a weary sigh, his gaze falling to his hands. "Like I don't think about him every other day." "What are you going to do about him?" "I don't know. I really thought he'd give me some time, but he's going out for drinks with Seb this Friday." "And? — Charlie Cochet

Ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense - love as distinct from 'being in love' - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. — C.S. Lewis

The mistakes of my youth have allowed me to see what true love is through the experience of its absence. They have allowed me to see that love is not a feeling but an action. It is the laying down of one's life for the beloved. It is not the laying down of someone else's life or body for our own gratification. Ultimately, as a Christian, I have come to see that love is not merely an action but a commandment. We are commanded to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor - and our enemy. Clearly true love has nothing to do with selfishness in any — Joseph Pearce

Love is not first a feeling. Though the feelings come later and grow thick in the basic loam of love, they don't constitute the sum and substance of love. Love is doing whatever good God says you must do for another, to please God, whether (at first) it pleases you or not. You must do so because He says so; and you don't wait until you feel like doing so. Love begins with obedience toward God in which one gives to another whatever the other needs. Love is not a gooey, sticky sentimental thing; it is hard to love. Often it hurts to love. Love meant going to the cross through the garden of Gethsemane. Christ did not feel like dying for your sins, Christian, but He did so nonetheless. The Scriptures teach that he endured the cross while focusing on the subsequent joy that it would bring. — Jay E. Adams

The feeling of emptiness is usually a sign that we have put our trust in something that can't sustain us. It reminds us that we were created to trust in our heavenly Father and nothing else. We were created to enjoy the many things God gives without making them the center of our lives. When we confuse the two, our lives feel out of kilter. To feel better, we try again and search for love apart from God, but when we finally realize that it is elusive, we forsake the quest and quietly despair. Keep probing. Life is ultimately about God. — Edward T. Welch

Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. [ ... ] If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am betrayed and played but right now im feeling nothing pain but to forgive, it's because I love God too much that I can't hate. — AKA

You want to grow in virtue, to serve God, to love Christ? Well, you will grow in and attain to these things if you will make them a slow and sure, an utterly real, a mountain step-plod and ascent, willing to have to camp for weeks or months in spiritual desolation, darkness and emptiness at different stages in your march and growth. All demand for constant light, for ever the best - the best to your own feeling, all the attempt at eliminating or minimizing the cross and trial, is so much soft folly and puerile trifling. — Friedrich Von Hugel

I'm sure we were all feeling blessed on this ferryboat among the humps of very green
in the sunlight almost coolly burning, like phosphorus
islands, and the water of inlets winking in the sincere light of day, under a sky as blue and brainless as the love of God, despite the smell, the slight, dreamy suffocation, of some kind of petroleum-based compound used to seal the deck's seams. — Denis Johnson

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love "the lost". You can't feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as "all lost people".
Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. — John Piper

There was a natural resource in the affective devotion to the saints and to Jesus, and a similar intensity of devotion inevitably became directed to the ordinary human.7 Eleanor of Aquitaine, the paragon of courtly love at the courts of Angers and Poitiers, was a grandchild of Guillaume, duke of Aquitaine, the first known troubadour. In many of Guillaume's love songs 'the vocabulary and emotional fervor hitherto ordinarily used to express man's love for God are transferred to the liturgical worship of woman, and vice versa.'8 The layering of Christian feeling and the new romantic spirit is also witnessed in the roman courtois, the epic stories filled with legendary material and hinged on figures of woman, mystery and quest. — Anthony Bartlett

He swore by all that he ever had loved and reverenced that he would try, try with all his might in the short time that might remain to him ... he would forget himself, he would put his own pain and chagrin and disappointment, his own feeling of defeat and uselessness, his own craving for love and intellectual companionship in the background, and he would see if the more than six feet of bone and muscle that contained his being could do any small service that might come his way for God and his fellow man before he went. Maybe if he could accomplish some little thing, something that would ease the ache of even one heart that ached as his was aching at that minute, just maybe that knowledge would be the secret that he might carry in his breast that would set the stamp of an indelible smile on his face, so that even a child could discern the majesty of the impulse and he would not be ashamed when the end came. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Love is a strange feeling indeed, a feeling that every person must experience at least once in his or her life. A feeling that makes us feel one with God! — Avijeet Das

For years, I have searched and searched for this God. This feeling of complete love and acceptance. He was always out of reach. But here, where food is scare, money is tight, heat is heavy and tensions should run high, God is everywhere. Just as during the night around the gypsy fire, I am mesmerized by watching people who are truly happy. At peace. Kind. Grateful. — Julie Cantrell

Now when you meditate, try to meditate in a sustained way, first of all sustain it. Then you find that you are getting into the state of Samadhi, means at a state where you start feeling the joy and the bliss of God's blessings, and then you start saying "O God, what a blessing, what a blessing, and what a blessing". Once you have reached that state then you have to realize "Who am I". Who are you? What are you? You are the Spirit. After establishing your sustained attention on the Spirit you'll develop a state where you'll be in a complete state of witnessing with joy. — Nirmala Srivastava

I've wanted to be an actor since I was eight years old and I did TV commercials when I was a kid. When I was eleven Saturday Night Live came on and I thought, "Oh God, I'd love to do that." I saw the Pink Panther movies and thought, "God, I'd love to have a comedy series; I'd love to have a character I'd created that becomes a series." I've now pretty-much done everything I've wanted to do since I was eight years old and it's a wonderful feeling, I've got to say. — Mike Myers

When we root ourselves so that we are experiencing love on all levels - feeling it in our body and heart, accepting love, surrounded by love, generating love - then we are giving as well as receiving at the same time that we are connected to God. — Laura Lane

Compassion is the feeling of sympathy which the pain of one being awakens in another; and the higher and more human the beings are, the more keenly attuned they are to re-echo the note of suffering, which, like a voice from heaven, penetrates the heart, bringing all creatures a proof of their kinship in the universal God. And as for man, whose function it is to show respect and love for God's universe and all its creatures, his heart has been created so tender that it feels with the whole organic world ... mourning even for fading flowers; so that, if nothing else, the very nature of his heart must teach him that he is required above everything to fe the brother of all beings, and to recognize the claim of all beings to his love and his beneficence.
Horeb, Chapter 17, Verse 125 — Pirkei Avot

You didn't like him, did you, Dad?"
"It wasn't that I didn't like him," my dad says slowly. "It was just that he lives in a completely different world, and I worried that he didn't really approve of you the way you are, that he was trying to change you into something else."
God, I never realized my dad was that perceptive..
"You see, the thing is," he says after we've both sat for a while in the sunshine, "the thing is that love is really the most important thing. I know it's hard for you to see it now" - he chuckles quietly- "but when I first laid eyes on your mother I thought she was fantastic, and I've never stopped loving her, not for a second. Oh yes, we've had our rough patches, and she can be a bit of an old battle-ax at times, but I still love her. That in-love feeling at the beginning settles down into a different, familiar sort of love, but it has to be there right from the start, otherwise it just won't work. — Jane Green

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one — Rumi

My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. — Adolf Hitler

I always got the feeling with John Paul that if he could have narrowed down the people he met and blessed those he loved the most, they would not be cardinals, princes, or congressman, but nuns from obscure convents and Down syndrome children, especially the latter. Because they have suffered, and because in some serious and amazing way the love of God seems more immediately available to them. Everyone else gets themselves tied up in ambition and ideas and bustle, all the great distractions, but the modest and unwell are so often unusually open to this message: God loves us, his love is all around us, he made us to love him and be happy — Peggy Noonan

They hadn't expected to find quite such a large gathering, however, and Anthony couldn't resist remarking, "My, my, how, what would draw so many children to this room in the middle of the night, I wonder? Jack and Judy aren't hiding behind you, are they? D'you get the feeling these younguns think it's Christmas already, James?"
James had already deduced what was causing so many red faces, and said, "Good God,take a gander at that, Tony. Even the Yank is blushing, damn me if he ain't."
Warren sighed and glanced down at his wife. "You see what your silliness has caused, love? Those two will never let me live this down."
"Course we will," Anthony replied with a wicked grin. "In ten or twenty years perhaps. — Johanna Lindsey

These dogs are not machines, goddamnit. They are alive! They are living, feeling, warm-blooded creatures of God, and they will love you with all their hearts! They will love you when your wives and husbands sneak behind your backs. They will love you when your ungrateful misbegotten children piss on your graves! They will see and witness your greatest shame, and will not judge you! These dogs will be the truest and best partners you can ever hope to have, and they will give their lives for you. And all they ask, all they want or need, all it costs YOU to get ALL of that, is a simple word of kindness. — Robert Crais

I had wanted to call him.
There were so many things I wanted to talk to him about.
And that I wanted to ask him about. But ... I kind of hated myself ... for feeling that way.
Because ... thinking about Nomiya-san ... felt like a betrayal of myself, of everything I'd felt for the past six years.
It made my feelings for Mayama seem like a lie.
Other people might think it's pathetic.
That I'm pathetic.
But my feelings for Mayama ...
My love for him ...
Was the only thing I had.
It was my treasure. My cold, bright treasure.
Dear God. I never wanted to be saved. I wanted to stay miserably in love with Mayama forever.
I wanted to stay in love with him for ten years, twenty years, so he would know just how strong my love was.
... Even though I knew that would be totally meaningless. — Chica Umino

It's the beginning of your day. You awake and look around you, feeling perhaps a joyful expectation, or perhaps an awful dread. No matter which, remember this: God loves you with an infinite love. — Marianne Williamson

The biblical concept of agape love involves giving of yourself for the benefit of another, even at your own expense. Biblical love is defined by passionately and righteously seeking the well-being of another. Biblical love is an act of the will and not just a fuzzy feeling in the stomach. That's why God can command us to love one another. Love really has nothing to do with whether you feel loving at a particular moment. It has to do with the need of the person being loved, not the feelings of the one doing the loving. — Tony Evans

{God's] presence is not contingent upon our feeling it. It simply is. We must learn to remember this and calm ourselves. By His apparent 'absence', He is leading us to a more mature level of consciousness, self-offering, and love. He is leading us from the love of God for the sake of His gifts to love of God for His own sake. — Monks Of New Skete

I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing around me made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need. I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. I had no liking for the safe path without pitfalls, for although my real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul, I was not aware of this hunger. — Augustine Of Hippo

In the unspoilt state of innocent childhood, practically every human being has a natural and direct feeling for the existence of God Almighty. But as time passes, this faith may be deflected and people start believing in other powers - political, economic or social. — Nirmala Srivastava

The relationship between love and appropriate action is demonstrated repeatedly in the scriptures and is highlighted by the Savior's instruction to His Apostles: 'If ye love me, keep my commandments' (John 14:15). Just as our love of and for the Lord is evidenced by walking ever in His ways (see Deuteronomy 19:9), so our love for spouse, parents, and children is reflected most powerfully in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds (see Mosiah 4:30)."Feeling the security and constancy of love from a spouse, a parent, or a child is a rich blessing. Such love nurtures and sustains faith in God. Such love is a source of strength and casts our fear (see 1 John 4:18). Such love is the desire of every human soul."We can become more diligent and concerned at home as we express love - and consistently show it. — David A. Bednar

Where are you going?"
"To get my Bible."
"Right now? You can't get your Bible out right now! I'm, I'm, we're just about to ... "
She'd never be able to go through with this if he got out his Bible. She wiped all humor from her face.
"I believe you. Proverbs 5:18. Rejoice, relish, and romp with your husband."
He chuckled. "I'm serious, Connie, and I won't have you feeling ashamed or unclean over anything we do in that bed, tonight or any other night."
"I won't. I feel unashamed and very clean. I promise. But please don't get out that Bible."
"What? Think you that God can't see us right now?"
Groaning, she slid off his lap and covered her face with her hands. He sunk to his knees in front of her, drawing her hands down.
"I love you. You love me. We are man and wife. God is watching, Connie, and He is very, very pleased. — Deeanne Gist

If you're not feeling good and you want to change the way you feel, or if you want to lift good feelings higher, then take a minute or two and god through a mental list of everything you love and adore. You can do it while getting dressed in the morning, walking, driving or traveling anywhere. — Rhonda Byrne

Feeling the security and constancy of love from a spouse, a parent or a child is a rich blessing. Such love nurtures and sustains faith in God. Such love is a source of strength and casts out fear. Such love is the desire of every human soul. — David A. Bednar

It is characteristic of mature love that it calls into play all man's potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak. Contact with the visible manifestations of God's love can awaken within us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved. But this encounter also engages our will and our intellect. Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the "yes" of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never "finished" and complete; throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains faithful to itself. — Pope Benedict XVI

It's not about finding ways to avoid God's judgment and feeling like a failure if you don't do everything perfectly. It's about fully experiencing God's love and letting it perfect you. It's not about being somebody you are not. It's about becoming who you really are. — Stormie O'martian

Finally, I formulate and say a little prayer to God, and since we haven't officially spoken since my mom and Elliott died that takes up quite a bit of my time.
The rest of it I spend on trying to determine what I think love really is and what I actually feel for Tally Landon at this point. Upon deep reflection, I realize that I must be at the edge of life's abyss. This is me. All there is left of me; and yet, I'm looking over and contemplating its meaning on whether to jump or stay. I'm not sure this feeling for Tally Landon is made up of love any more than it is of hate. This must be a kind of purgatory - the in-between place - because these pervasive feelings of rage and passion for Tally are equalized and actually co-mingle together - like fire and water - each ready to extinguish the other. I've come to accept the truth. There may be nothing left for us. It could go either way. — Katherine Owen

The first real unhappiness I remember to have felt was when some one told me, one day, that I did not love God. I insisted, almost tearfully, that I did; but I was told that if I did truly love Him I should always be good. I knew I was not that, and the feeling of sudden orphanage came over me like a bewildering cloud. — Lucy Larcom

There's something tragic about you. Your feeling for the absolute. You were made to believe in God and spend your life in a convent.'
There are too many with that vocation. God would have had to love only me. — Simone De Beauvoir

I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.
God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind.
But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head.
I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will.
The last cowboy,
Robert — Robert James Waller

We love someone, so we care. That love can morph into feeling responsible for them, then into we're accountable, then into we're to blame for their self-inflicted pain; then it's our fault if they crash and burn; then the fear causes us to hold on even tighter. Walk this in reverse until you get back to, "we love, we care". Now, love with wisdom. Step one in placing someone's life into His hands. — Lee Goff

The rock, when one came to think of it, was the utmost expression of human need; even mere feeling yearned for it; it was the highest comparison of loyalty in love and friendship. Christ Himself had used that comparison for the disciple to whom He gave the keys of His Church. And the Hebrews of the Old Testament, always being carried captive into foreign lands,
their rock was an idea of God, the only thing their conquerors could not take from them. — Willa Cather

His ordeal has stripped away every bit of himself and leaves him feeling completely exposed to his Enemy. He has no way to know when the next full-scale attack will come, only that it will and that he cannot hide or protect himself from it.
Yet even in Frodo's darkness, with the fiery Ring as the only illumination he senses, there is still deep union between him and God. Evil continually forces its way into the hobbit's soul, but God is already there to strengthen him in his struggle to keep the demonic power from overwhelming him completely. As Frodo burns upon the kindled wheel, he becomes a candle set alight by both Light and Dark, a figure 'clothed in flame' (LOTR, 890), as Sam saw by the red light in the Tower chamber. The combination of this torment, God's love for him, and his own love for his world consume him in 'a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God' (Rom. 12:1). — Anne Marie Gazzolo

Love is not a feeling; it's a sensation. Drinking water when you're thirsty is a sensation, not a feeling. Being in nature or swimming in the sea is a sensation, not a feeling. Lying down when you're tired is sensational, not a feeling, although you may say it feels good. Feeling is an emotional interpretation of experience and these sensations don't need interpretation; they are just good or right. Making physical love rightly is a sensation, not a feeling. So is the love of God. The same goes for joy and beauty; both are sensational.' — Barry Long