Pursue love, the first words of 1 Corinthians 14:1, are the two words Rev. Donna Burrows says the Lord impressed on her heart. In this message she teaches that pursuing love is not mainly about trying harder to love others; it is about pursuing a deeper revelation of God’s love for you, until you know and believe it so fully that nothing can shake you. She draws on the Song of Solomon, Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 and the life of John, the disciple whom Jesus loved.
Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps to pursue love and keep yourself in the love of God this week.
Sermon at a Glance
This message was posted on January 20, 2026, at NTC Ministries. Rev. Donna Burrows opens with David, a man after God’s own heart, who wrote that the children of men take refuge under the shadow of God’s wings because His steadfast love is precious (Psalm 36:7). God wants us so confident in His love that we take refuge in it in every situation instead of trying to be the tough one.
From there she moves through a love story, a prayer, a warning and a set of practical habits. The message closes with prayer that the church will pursue love and not let its love for God grow cold.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Speaker | Rev. Donna Burrows |
| Series | Single message |
| Main texts | 1 Corinthians 14:1; Ephesians 3:17–19; Song of Solomon 5; 1 John 4:16 |
| Key theme | Pursuing a fuller revelation of God’s love so that faith receives and the heart stays warm |
| Length | About 61 minutes |
Opening the Door to the Beloved
Rev. Burrows notes that some scholars read the Song of Solomon as a picture of Christ’s covenant love for His bride, the church, with the Holy Spirit as the bond of that love. There is meant to be great intimacy with the Lord, she says, because believers have been made one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17). We tend to gloss over that, but it is worth stopping to think about.
In Song of Solomon 5:2–6, the Shulamite is asleep when her beloved knocks. She makes excuses: she has taken off her robe and washed her feet, and in that dusty land she does not want to dirty them again. By the time she opens the door, he is gone.
She links this to Revelation 3:20, where Jesus stands at the door and knocks. That verse is often used in evangelism, and that is fine, but she points out that Jesus is speaking to believers in the church. The question is whether we open the door of our hearts to Him every day.
The Lord has promised never to leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). Yet, she says, He sometimes withholds the sense of His presence, not to deny us anything but to draw us to seek Him with our whole heart instead of a half-hearted quiet time.
The Shulamite searches the streets at night. When the daughters of Jerusalem ask what makes her beloved better than any other, she begins to praise him: the fairest of ten thousand, strong, not only her beloved but her friend (Song of Solomon 5:9–16). She declares, I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine (Song of Solomon 6:3). That is when he shows up. God inhabits the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3), and when He comes, He begins to praise her in return. It is a two-way relationship, like a godly marriage.
Why Pursue Love? Knowing Him Is Eternal Life
A couple of months before this message, Rev. Burrows says, the Lord impressed two words on her: pursue love. She recognized them as the opening of 1 Corinthians 14:1, which follows the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, Paul’s description of God’s agape love.
Her first thought was that God wanted her to show His love more to others, and she says she can certainly do that. But she sensed it was more about pursuing a greater revelation of His love for her, so that her love would not grow stale. She believes He wants that for every believer, especially in these end times.
When we received Jesus, we came to know and believe God’s love to the degree that we received eternal life. And eternal life, Jesus said, is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent (John 17:3). Not to know about Him, she stresses, but to really know Him. To know His love is to know Him, and to know Him is to know His love.
Paul prayed that believers, rooted and grounded in love, would be able to comprehend the width, length, depth and height of Christ’s love, which passes knowledge (Ephesians 3:17–19). She says comprehend is not passive; it means to take eagerly. We were rooted in love when we were born again and the love of God was poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).
She compares it to a garden seedling. Its roots are short and fine at first. For a large plant to stand through storms, the roots have to go deep, like a redwood’s. A building that will expand needs a foundation that can support it. We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19), and growing in that love is what keeps us standing.
The Four Dimensions of His Love
Rev. Burrows shares the images that came to her when she asked the Lord about the four dimensions in Ephesians 3. She is careful to say this is not all-encompassing, but it gives a way to meditate on His love.
| Dimension | Picture she describes | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Width | Jesus on the cross with outstretched arms | He became sin for us so we could be forgiven and reconciled |
| Depth | His descent and taking the keys of hell, death and the grave | He descended into hell, wreaked havoc and took the keys from the enemy |
| Height | His resurrection and ascension to the Father’s right hand | We are raised and seated with Him in authority |
| Length | The Son of God becoming a human being | How far He was willing to go for our redemption |
On the cross He became sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) and removed our sins as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). Now He is seated at the Father’s right hand, always living to intercede for us (Hebrews 7:25). He is seated because the work of redemption is finished. If believers are seated with Him and meant to reign in this earth, she says, we need a bigger revelation of His love.
On the length of His love, she asks how far Jesus was willing to go. The first answer is the cross, but the crucifixion took six hours, and before that came Gethsemane, the betrayal, the beatings and the scourging. Even that is not where it started.
She reads from a Christmas post by Dutch Sheets that imagines what went through Christ’s mind before the Holy Spirit carried Him into the womb of a young girl. The eternal Son would now feel hunger, thirst, weariness and pain, learn to crawl and to speak, and enter the realm of time He had created. He would bleed. He was breakable. She calls it gracious condescension and asks the church to wrap its mind around that kind of love.
Guarding Against a Cold Heart
There is a second reason to pursue love and a fuller revelation of the love of God. In Matthew 24, among the signs of the end of the age, Jesus said that because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold (Matthew 24:12). Rev. Burrows says we are seeing lawlessness in our day. The warning is not meant to create fear, which is not of God, but to make us aware of our responsibility. God has done His part; we must do ours.
That responsibility is in Proverbs 4:23: keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. In the Living Bible, she notes, it reads as guarding your affections, because they influence everything else.
Paul watched what happens when a believer does not. He told Timothy that Demas had forsaken him, having loved this present world (2 Timothy 4:9–10). John wrote not to love the world or the things in it (1 John 2:15).
That does not mean God does not want us to have things, she says. He is a God of abundance who wants His people to prosper in every area, including finances. He simply does not want those things to have our hearts. We set our affection on things above (Colossians 3:2).
How? Like any strong relationship, it has to be nurtured. We nurture our love relationship with the Lord by spending quality time with Him in His Word, which is spirit and life, and with the Holy Spirit, who gives revelation. Our relationship should keep growing, like a plant, so that it produces fruit that remains. There is always more to know of the love of Christ, because it is infinite.
She points to the woman in Luke 7, known as a sinner, who heard Jesus was at Simon’s house and came with an alabaster flask of fragrant oil. She wept at His feet, wiped them with her hair, kissed them and anointed them with oil Rev. Burrows says was worth about a year’s wages. Jesus told her that her sins, which were many, were forgiven, and she loved much (Luke 7:36–50). She left knowing she was greatly loved. The love of God empowers us to overcome sin, she says, and the enemy has no hold on those who know and believe that love.
The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved
Rev. Burrows believes, while admitting she cannot prove it, that John may have had one of the greatest revelations of God’s love. In his gospel he never used his own name, only the disciple whom Jesus loved. At the Last Supper he rested his head on Jesus’ chest (John 13:23), and from the cross Jesus entrusted His mother to him (John 19:26–27).
She recounts the tradition that the emperor tried to boil John in oil and could not kill him, and so exiled him to Patmos. There John saw Jesus in His glory and fell at His feet as dead (Revelation 1:17). She believes his constant awareness of being loved filled him with God’s presence and carried him through, as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came through the furnace (Daniel 3:25–27) because they knew their God.
John wrote that we have known and believed the love God has for us; God is love (1 John 4:16). She teaches that known in Greek means to perceive, understand and be sure of, and believed means to commit and entrust, here to entrust one’s spiritual well-being to Christ. Reading Ephesians 3:19 in the Amplified Classic, she describes the goal as knowing His love practically, through experience, and being flooded with God Himself.
Her counsel for anyone who wants to pursue love: read the Word until it talks back to you, because that is the Holy Spirit giving revelation. Do not read just to say you did your fifteen minutes. And like John, say out loud every day, “I’m the one whom Jesus loves.” Tell the devil the same. Nothing can separate you from the love of God (Romans 8:38–39); it is an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3). She adds that God loves you as much as He loves Jesus (John 17:23).
Receiving What Love Provides
The love of God poured into our hearts is meant to flow out to others, but it is also our protection. Satan works to distort how we see God and ourselves. On a Tuesday evening, she says, he whispers that you have messed up again and God must be disappointed. Do not entertain those thoughts. Raise the shield of faith and declare that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), that you are accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6).
He also accuses God to us: God must love that prospering person more, or He saved me but may not heal me. She answers that the One who was scourged beyond recognition to remove all your sin is not unwilling to heal; redemption is a far greater work. You cannot fight a thought with a thought, she says, only with words based on God’s Word, the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:16–17). If we think His response depends on our performance, we will struggle to receive, and a double-minded person receives nothing (James 1:6–8).
She relates an account she heard about Kenneth Hagin and a missionary friend who was dying in a hospital. As she tells it, Hagin saw Jesus enter the room to heal, and the missionary sensed His presence and stretched out his hands, then let them drop, saying he could not receive. She reports that Jesus said He had come to heal the man and the man would not let Him, and that the missionary died a few days later. She does not blame God; her point is that something in the man would not believe the love God had for him.
The leper in Matthew 8:1–3 knew Jesus was able but not whether He was willing. He had heard the Sermon on the Mount, about the Father clothing the lilies (Matthew 6:28–30). Jesus touched him and said, I am willing; be cleansed. Our response to a negative report, she says, depends on our trust, and our trust depends on the Word and our revelation of His love.
Proverbs 3:5–6 says to trust in the Lord with all your heart and acknowledge Him in all your ways. She teaches that acknowledge, yada, means to know Him intimately and invite Him into every area of life, including finances, health, decisions and relationships. God’s love never changes and shows no partiality, but what it provides is received by faith.
Keeping Yourself in God’s Love This Week
Jude wrote, keep yourselves in the love of God (Jude 20–21). Rev. Burrows teaches that keep means to guard from loss, even to build a fortress around. Demas did not. Here is how she says to pursue love and keep it:
- Open the door quickly. Get quiet in His presence and answer when your Beloved knocks, without excuses or procrastination.
- Personalize the Word. Put your own name into verses like John 3:16 until you realize how much God has invested in you.
- Pray for revelation. Pray Ephesians 1:17 for the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
- Pray in the Spirit. Keep your love fresh by praying in the Holy Spirit; she invites anyone not yet baptized in the Spirit to receive after the service.
- Let His perfect love cast out fear. Stay conscious of His love, not your own, until fear has no room (1 John 4:18).
- Praise and give thanks. Declare that His lovingkindness is better than life (Psalm 63:3); praise shuts the liar’s mouth and thanksgiving keeps your heart tender.
There is power in consistency, she says, when you pursue love. Run after God’s love every day until you are so persuaded that no room is left for doubt, and others will take notice.
Timestamped Outline
- 0:01 Psalm 36: refuge in His steadfast love
- 1:32 One spirit with Him; Revelation 3:20
- 3:05 The Shulamite makes excuses
- 4:38 Searching for the beloved
- 6:14 He inhabits praise; the words pursue love
- 9:20 John 17:3: this is eternal life
- 10:51 Ephesians 3: rooted and grounded
- 13:24 Width, depth and height of His love
- 16:10 The length of His love: becoming human
- 17:57 Matthew 24: love growing cold
- 21:20 Guard your affections; Demas
- 22:48 Nurturing the relationship
- 24:17 The woman with the alabaster flask
- 26:02 John, the disciple whom Jesus loved
- 30:41 1 John 4:16: known and believed
- 33:46 I’m the one whom Jesus loves
- 35:20 Resisting the accuser
- 39:41 The missionary who would not receive
- 46:59 The leper: Lord, if You are willing
- 50:06 Proverbs 3:5–6: know Him intimately
- 51:59 Jude 20–21: keep yourselves in God’s love
- 55:16 Personalize the Word; pray in the Spirit
- 58:14 Praise and thanksgiving
- 1:00:02 Closing prayer
Frequently Asked Questions
Does pursuing love mean I should love other people more?
That was Rev. Burrows’ first thought too, and she says she can certainly show God’s love more to those around her. But she sensed the Lord was mainly calling her to pursue knowing and believing His love for her in a greater way. The love poured into our hearts does flow out to others, she teaches, but it starts with receiving a fresh revelation of how much God loves us.
Why does God sometimes feel distant?
Using the Shulamite’s story, she explains that the Lord never leaves or forsakes His people, but in the dynamic of the relationship He may withhold the sense of His presence. It is not to deny us anything. It is to draw us, so that we seek Him with our whole heart rather than out of routine. When the Shulamite began praising her beloved, he showed up.
What should I do when I feel I have failed God again?
Rev. Burrows says not to entertain the accusing thoughts. Answer them out loud with God’s Word: there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, you are accepted in the Beloved, and nothing can separate you from His love. She teaches that all your sins were future when Jesus paid for them, and confessing them closes the door on the devil rather than earning God’s love back.
Scripture References
All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:
- 1 Corinthians 14:1 — pursue love
- Ephesians 3:17–19 — the width, length, depth and height
- Song of Solomon 5:2–6 — the beloved knocks
- John 17:3 — this is eternal life
- Matthew 24:12 — the love of many will grow cold
- Proverbs 4:23 — keep your heart
- 1 John 4:16 — known and believed the love
- Proverbs 3:5–6 — trust in the Lord
- Jude 20–21 — keep yourselves in the love of God
How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.
Watch More Messages
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