God is so kindly disposed toward you

“I could not have faith in God if I did not think he wanted to be favourable and kind to me.  This in turn makes me feel kindly disposed toward him, and I am moved to trust him with all my heart and look to him for all good things…

Look here!  This is how you must cultivate Christ in yourself, and see how in him God holds before you his mercy and offers it to you without any prior merits of your own.

It is from such a view of his grace that you must draw faith and confidence in the forgiveness of all your sins.  Faith, therefore, does not originate in works; neither do works create faith, but faith must spring up and flow from the blood and wounds and death of Christ.

If you see in these that God is so kindly disposed toward you that he even gives his own Son for you, then your heart in turn must grow sweet and disposed toward God…

We never read that the Holy Spirit was given to anybody because he had performed some works, but always when men have heard the gospel of Christ and the mercy of God.”

Martin Luther ‘Treatise on Good Works’ vol. 44 p30, 38-39