“that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Just as God is beyond all concept of measurement as He encompasses all in His omnipresence so is love. Love is divine, the eternal foundation of reality and Love encompasses, spreads, engulfs, embraces and overflows our cosmos.
“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.“
God has made us so that He can love us. That is the purpose of our life.
Even though we may feel unlovable, undeserving of love, numb of feeling the same, He loves us none the less.
His love is an endless ocean to be waded into until it engulfs us into itself. It is no longer us but His fullness that we become a part of, become one with.
Our spiritual growth and journey is a degree of how far we have enjoyed and permitted His embrace to surround us and pull us into His heart.
As Christ dwells within us we become rooted and grounded in. His love. We experience the unfathomable and are filled with the fullness of God.
“breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
It is a super natural power required to know how much Jesus loves us. That knowledge comes only rom the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.
When we ponder on our inner life we ponder on Jesus Christ. We do not have the capacity for this ‘knowing’ and understanding. It is not purely cognitive it is profound and requires relational, deep embracing.
The relationship we have with Christ is unchangeable. He remains gorged to bursting forth with love irrespective of whether we are sinners or sufferers. He remains as if magnetised to all the extremes.
Love is essential to who He is. God is love, Christ is God, therefore Christ is love and becomes known within us via the person of the HolySpirit.
We cannot comprehend the “breadth and length and height and depth, “ the expanse of His love is as boundless and limitless as God Himself and therefore we always underestimate it.
His love cannot be overstated. Our deepest experience of romantic love is but a faint whisper of His. The more we come to realise this reality the more it is to be filled with the fullness of God.
Love is at the centre, the core of God.
To know Christ infuses us with divine love, a joy received without doing anything to deserve it.
The settledness of this deep truth remains as a sediment easily stirred up into love within us.
We discover that at the point of our deepest hurt, shame or regret that is the point where Christ loves us most and comes closest.
Christ is love covered in flesh.
He has no caution He is unrestrained in His love and intimacy.
Our sins and sense of failure make us miserable but cause His love to surge more towards us.
He created us to love us.
Our delight in God goes as far as we taste His love.
To delight in honey we have to know more than it’s ingredients we have to taste it.
Knowing sustains us. His desire is always for more of us.
We must break His heart if we push Him away and hold Him at arms length as He desires to gather us closer and hold us tighter into Himself.
Salvation is always about what is central and in His heart. It is the responding throbbing we feel in our soul.
The Holy Spirit creates in us the experience of God’s love.
“he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour,”
We go deeper into communion with God and our eyes are opened to seeing the ugliness of sin and the beauty in righteousness because the Holy Spirit is a person and He is holy.
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
We look for Jesus because we can only love by knowing Him. We love others like we love Him, it overflows.
Open handedness; Christ gives and we receive, we give and others receive. How deep the love of God for us, how rich beyond all measure.
The illustration shows the hands opened to give and equally the hands open to receive. Light emanating to push back the darkness.
Four Scriptures that come to mind:
“that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:16-19 ESV
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:7-12 ESV
“he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,”. Titus 3:5-6 ESV
“and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”Romans 5:5-8 ESV
The song How Deep The Father’s Love. Austin Stone
Lessisgreater 