Hands On Experience Of God’s Love (Part #6) ~ Dr William P. Hohman

God’s Love Experience Overview

In this powerful closing message of the Hands On Experience of God’s Love series, Dr. William P. Hohman brings together six weeks of teaching into a rich, pastoral conclusion that bridges into his upcoming series on the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Drawing from Romans 8:19-21, Zephaniah 3:14-17, John 14:16-17, John 16:12-15, and 1 John 2:15-17, Dr. Hohman explores how God’s love is not born from loneliness or need, but from His very nature as an unchanging, sovereign God who desires to express His love through humanity. He revisits the story of Peter on the shore of Capernaum, where Jesus repeatedly asks whether Peter loves Him with agape love, highlighting how the Holy Spirit must first pour God’s love into our hearts before we can truly love in return. Through personal illustrations, including a remarkable account of God’s miraculous provision during a seemingly impossible septic system permit battle, Dr. Hohman calls believers to stop measuring God’s love by their own character and shortcomings, and instead to receive it freely each morning as a fresh word of unfailing grace. This message is a compelling call to open one’s heart fully to the Holy Spirit as the living, personal presence of God.

God’s Love Experience Outline

• 00:00 – Series Review and Transition: Dr. Hohman opens with a brief review of the Hands On Experience of God’s Love series and introduces today’s message as both its conclusion and a bridge into his upcoming series on the manifestation of the Holy Spirit.
• 07:30 – God Created Man to Receive His Love: Exploring the creation account, Dr. Hohman explains why God hand-fashioned humanity unlike anything else in creation. He shares a pivotal moment from Bible college in Dallas where God corrected the notion that He created man out of loneliness, revealing instead that God is love and needs an object for that love’s expression.
• 17:00 – Peter and the Question of Agape Love: A detailed walk through John 21, where Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves Him with agape love. Peter can only respond with phileo, friendly love, until the Holy Spirit is poured out at Pentecost and transforms him into a bold preacher who leads five thousand to faith.
• 26:00 – Zephaniah 3 and the Dancing God: Dr. Hohman unpacks Zephaniah 3:14-17, revealing two distinct Hebrew words for joy: simca, meaning blissful exceeding gladness, and guwl, meaning to spin and whirl with violent rejoicing. He paints the picture of a God who dances and sings over His people with unrestrained delight.
• 35:30 – Stop Seeing Evil and Looking at the Fallen World: Drawing from 1 John 2:15-17 and Romans 8:19-21, Dr. Hohman warns against the spiritual danger of fixing one’s attention on a corrupted world, corrupt media, and other people’s failures. He calls believers to guard what they receive through their eyes and ears each day.
• 44:00 – The Holy Spirit as a Person Who Relates to You: Using John 14:16-17 and 2 Corinthians 3:17, Dr. Hohman establishes that the Holy Spirit is not a force or concept but a person, referred to ten times with the pronoun he in four verses. He urges the church to relate to the Holy Spirit with the same reverence given to the Father and the Son.
• 50:30 – The Septic System Miracle: A first-person account of how NTC Ministries faced repeated bureaucratic rejections for a septic system permit. After prayer, the land provided miraculous soil quality that caused the head of the DNR and Army Corps of Engineers to grant a permit for 1,400 people, a testimony to receiving God’s provision rather than earning it.
• 58:00 – Morning Devotion and Receiving Love Daily: Closing with Psalm 143, Dr. Hohman exhorts believers to seek God first in the morning before screens, news, or work, asking Him daily to speak His unfailing love. This posture of receiving, not performing, is the key to ruling and reigning in life through grace and righteousness.

Scripture References

Malachi 3:6, Romans 5:5, Galatians 5:6, Romans 8:14, Romans 8:19-21, Romans 5:17, Psalm 23, Zephaniah 3:14-17, 1 John 2:15-17, 1 Corinthians 13:8, Psalm 139:14, Psalm 143, John 14:16-17, John 16:12-15, 2 Corinthians 3:17, Revelation 2

Key Takeaways

• God did not create humanity out of loneliness but because He is love, and love by its very nature must have an object through which it can freely and fully express itself.
• God’s love for you is determined entirely by His own perfect, unchanging character, not by your behavior, performance, or spiritual track record.
• The Holy Spirit is not a vague spiritual force but a distinct divine person who personally leads, comforts, strengthens, and reveals God’s love to every believer daily.
• Faith cannot operate apart from love, because according to Galatians 5:6, faith works through love, meaning that receiving God’s agape love is the very foundation of an effective spiritual life.
• Guarding what enters your heart through media, conversation, and negative thought patterns is essential to maintaining a clear vision of God’s love and goodness in your life.
• Every morning is an opportunity to ask God to speak His unfailing love afresh, positioning your heart before anything else competes for your attention.
• God’s provision, including miracles, healing, and supernatural breakthroughs, flows naturally to those who stop trying to earn His favor and simply open their hearts to receive His grace.

God’s Love Experience Notes

God Is Love Not Lonely

One of the theological anchors of this message is Dr. Hohman’s correction of a common misunderstanding: God did not create humanity because He was lonely. Citing Malachi 3:6, he explains that if God were lonely before creation, He would still be lonely after it, because He is immutable and cannot change. Instead, God is love by nature, and love inherently seeks an object of expression. This distinction is not merely academic. It shifts the entire framework of our relationship with God from obligation to invitation, from earning a place in His heart to discovering we were always already the joyful focus of it.

Peter’s Transformation Through Holy Spirit

The story of Peter on the shores of Capernaum is one of the most emotionally gripping passages in Dr. Hohman’s message. Peter, who had publicly denied Jesus three times, cannot answer with agape love when Jesus asks him three times. He can only offer phileo, friendship. Yet within weeks, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit described in Romans 5:5, that same Peter stands boldly before thousands and five thousand give their lives to Christ. The transformation was not the result of more effort or self-improvement but of receiving the love of God poured out by the Spirit into his heart.

Zephaniah’s Picture of a Rejoicing God

Zephaniah 3:17 offers one of the most extraordinary portraits of God in all of Scripture. Dr. Hohman carefully distinguishes two Hebrew words both translated as joy in English. Simca describes a deep, blissful, exceeding gladness, while guwl refers to spinning and whirling with violent, ecstatic emotion. The picture is of a God who does not merely tolerate His people but who dances over them with uncontained delight. This is not metaphor designed to soften theology. It is the revealed character of a God whose love is relentless, celebratory, and deeply personal toward every believer who has received His righteousness through Christ.

Guarding Your Heart From the World

Dr. Hohman draws a firm practical line from 1 John 2:15-17, warning that an attachment to the things of the fallen world actively displaces the love of the Father. He does not call believers to monastic withdrawal but to a reordering of affections, where nothing, whether sports, entertainment, news media, or cultural noise, becomes more compelling than God’s voice. He is direct about the spirit of confusion that pervades mainstream media and encourages believers to fill their minds instead with God’s Word, the Holy Spirit’s promptings, and the truth of their righteousness in Christ, which is already fully established through the blood of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit Your Personal Companion

Grounding his exhortation in John 14:16-17 and John 16:12-15, Dr. Hohman points out that the pronoun he appears ten times across just four verses when Jesus describes the Holy Spirit. This is no accident. The Spirit is a person, not a phenomenon. He speaks, hears, guides, glorifies, and declares. Dr. Hohman describes the Holy Spirit as the one who now carries out Christ’s office in the world, gently leading, cheerfully encouraging, and constantly bringing the fullness of what belongs to the Father and the Son into the daily experience of every believer who will simply relate to Him as a person.

Receive Grace Not Earn Favor

The closing exhortation of this message rests on Romans 5:17, where Paul declares that those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life as kings. Dr. Hohman’s miraculous testimony about the septic system permit illustrates this perfectly. No amount of human strategy or religious performance solved that problem. Prayer, trust, and the Spirit’s guidance brought state officials to the site who declared the ground unlike anything seen in the Midwest and granted a permit for 1,400 people. The lesson is clear: ruling and reigning in life comes not from striving but from receiving.

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