Ephesians 3:14-21
14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
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I was thinking today how important it is to be rooted in God's love. For me personally, this is something I tend to overlook because I assume that I understand what God's love means for me. Essentially I become unteachable because I assume I already know. In fact, I see God a lot like I see my earthly dad. He says he loves me and I take his word for it. He has definitely shown his love for me by providing for me all the necessities of life, but when it comes to showing affection (a declaration of how I am accepted by him), he's not always so clear. Even though I knew, in theory, that he does love me, and he has said it occasionally from time to time, I have had acceptance issues in that relationship. Whether it's because of me or him I don't know but the point is that it was there. While both characteristics are expressions of love, there's a difference between being provided for and being accepted. Both need to be present for the fullness of love to be known. You can't only provide for someone and expect them to know that you accept them (Ex: Prison officers feed their inmates, it doesn't mean they accept them). And at the same time you can't just give someone lip service about how you care without doing anything (Ex: my love life... haha jk but you get the point (ok that wasn't that funny)). I feel like Christians, specifically men, can tend to look at God's love as only being provisional and not accepting because that's all we expect from him. But if both of these characteristics exist in the nature of God's love, how are we going to see something that we aren't looking for?
We have a tendency, men specifically, to deny our need of being accepted. Acceptance is huge. It drives us. Everyone is looking for it and when we play it off like we're above that, we'll end up seeking it in ways that are self destructive and be too prideful to even notice. Ultimately we would be short changing ourselves out of God's intention for the desire— to be fulfilled by him, "to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge." It's not just about cerebral knowledge, it passes that. It's about experiencing the "fullness of God" who "is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think". When we deny his acceptance, we limit our perception of the fullness of his love. How drastically would our lives change if we seeked to understand God's love by his definition and not by our own? What kind of radical freedom would we experience? Let's ask for God to open our eyes to what his love means regarding our acceptance. And no this isn't a cop-out ending to my note. This isn't a Christian-ese tag to wrap up my statement. I'm dead serious. Prayer actually changes things. The Apostle Paul, the man of the century (behind Jesus), couldn't get around prayer. That was how he started this whole section in Ephesians (not to mention every other part of Ephesians and the planting of the church itself)
"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
Did you read it differently?
