EPHESIANS 3:16-19: “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” NLT
OBSERVATION: Am I growing in my relationship with Jesus Christ? Is my faith deepening? Do I live in a sense of awe of His glory? These are the questions that I am pondering as I read Paul’s prayer in his letter to the Ephesians.
We live in a finite world. We are trained to deal with life through our senses. As we live in this finite world, limited by time and space, it is easy for us to begin to treat our spiritual life in much the same way. While God’s Word is always practical in its application, it is never limited or exhausted by our human measurements or understanding.
We are called to go deeper!
Going deeper into the things of God does not mean that we begin to invent things that the Bible does not reveal. There are many today who are purporting to have received a revelation of some new and unknown truth from the Bible. This is the pathway where cults have begun. We are not talking about discovering something new that the Bible does not say. We are called to discover the One who is the Word – Jesus Christ our Lord!
I have been a bi-vocational pastor all of my life. In my secular job, I have worked in the food industry. Our company is an importer and distributor. I have dealt with shipping logistics all of my life. When you work with shipping you need to identify if a truckload will weigh out or cube out. There is a maximum weight for a truckload – 45,000 lbs. However, if the product is light, and if the boxes are big, the issue is how many cubic feet can you put in the trailer, as the weight will not be the determining factor. A cubic foot is determined by measuring the box’s height, width, and length in inches and then dividing it by 1728.
When we think of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we ponder His love, are we treating it as an ordinary box? Is the Love of Christ something that we can measure, hold in our hands, or put in a box? Whenever we begin to view God’s love in a formulaic manner we are limiting His power and glory – and our spiritual growth! We cannot measure the cube of God’s love. Paul gives us a new formula to measure God’s love.
- “And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.”
How do you measure God’s love? First, you need to realize that it has a fourth dimension. It is not simply how high, wide, or long it is. Paul calls us to measure the depth of God’s love. Picture if you would the plausibility of this call. Take a tape measure in your hand. On a clear night, as you gaze into the stars in the heavens, as you look upon the galaxies that God has created – measure its height, width, and length if you can. And, measure its depth. As you stand there, tape measure in hand, ask yourself – can you ever really know and understand the love of God?
I believe people go off on tangents in their Christian walk because they stop searching to know the love of Christ. Their life of faith becomes routine. They read the same passages, sing the same songs, say the same prayers, and everything seems measurable. They stop looking upward with awe and wonder. The church of Ephesus fell into this trap and Jesus had something to say about it.
- “But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches.” Revelation 2:4-5 NLT
For a long time, the United States was dependent upon other countries for their oil. Now, we are energy independent. How did this happen? We discovered a way to go deeper. There were vast reserves of oil under the surface that we could not access until we discovered a system called “fracking.” This allowed us to access the oil reserves that were deep beneath the rock formations.
There is an endless source of God’s love that we have yet begun to know. The search for God’s love is one that can never be exhausted. To desire to know the height, width, length, and depth of God’s love is our greatest call. It is the only pathway that will lead us to the fulness of God and His nature. It is the only focus in life that will keep our hearts tender, our faith growing, and will propel us to fulfill the Great Commission!
- “May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”
We have been called to be made complete in Christ. We have been called to be witnesses for Christ. We have been called to love one another with the love of Jesus Christ. If we are to fulfill these calls – we need to go deeper. We need to grow daily in our experience of the love of Christ. We must never become dull or satisfied in our walk of faith. The riches of His love are there for us to discover and experience each day!
Lord, help my roots to grow strong in Your love. Create in me a clean heart and renew in my the joy of Your salvation! Let me go deeper in my understanding of the awesome power of Your unending and unfathomable love!
In Jesus Name!
