#188: Spiritual Health: Moving from head to heart: How to experience God’s love with Dr. Curt Thompson

INSIDE: Moving from head to heart: How do you move from knowing God’s love in your head to experiencing it in your heart? Listen to Dr. Curt Thompson.

We’re starting this series talking about knowing and feeling loved by Jesus for one very specific reason: If we do not know His love on a deeply personal level and encounter His love in our busy and full, real lives, then the spiritual disciplines devolve into legalism and empty works. Without recognizing how much we are loved and cared for, everything else we do in that relationship is a striving attempt to be loved.

Because experiencing God’s love for us is a gift we want to receive AND struggle with experiencing, I’ve invited Dr. Curt Thompson to join the show.

In today’s episode, you’ll receive practical strategies and anchoring truths as we process moving God’s love from head to heart. You’ll learn:

How to move Jesus’s love for you from your head down to your heart
How to experience grace in your real life,
How solitude soothes your soul,
And one simple exercise to help you pay attention to what you’re paying attention to.

Why community is essential to receive grace

“Who are the people you will let see the parts of you you hate the most?” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“We walk around like siloed individuals.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Jesus knows finding community is hard to do. He’s not ever leaving the room.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Grace is not a theological concept first; it only comes later. It first is a thing I actually experience because I’ve been in the room with others.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“What my soul needs more than anything in the world is not the solution to my problem. What my soul needs is the presence of another.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Who are the people by whom you’re going to become deeply known?” – Dr. Curt Thompson

Hope and suffering

“The joy people experience, the transformation people experience is not mutually exclusive from suffering.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Hope is a thing we have agency to form.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Hope is a thing we are fashioning as a response to the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit.” – Dr. Curt Thompson

The importance of silence and solitude

“Solitude strengthens your attunement muscle.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“We are not able to recognize God being our rock and salvation until we are silent.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Our commitment to cacophony, our commitment to noise, our commitment to activity as a way to avoid ourselves is something evil takes great delight in.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Solitude leads to our being aware of the presence of God in ways that we otherwise wouldn’t be.” – Dr. Curt Thompson

Moving from head to heart quotes

“Attunement is accompanied by a certain curiosity that I bring to the table.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“We are floating on top of an ocean of fear that itself is sitting on top of an ocean of shame.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“The work of becoming a professional human being is the hardest work we’ll ever do.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Until I feel the love of God in my chest, in an embodied way, it hasn’t yet become fully real for me.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Jesus came with the understanding that His very presence was the gospel.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Jesus is saying, ‘I’m not really as interested in benchmarks, what you’re getting done, as I am in who you are becoming.’” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Allow yourself to be in the presence of Jesus.” – Dr. Curt Thompson
“Jesus will never leave the room.” – Dr. Curt Thompson

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