Jesus, I love you, and I desperately need you in my life today. My mind has been clouded with frustration at times, and fatigue at times, and craziness all the time as of late, and I long to simply be with you. Take me away in your presence that we may rest together, that I may take joy in my identity as your child. Envelop me in your embrace that I may regain my focus – as your beloved. Nothing compares to being found in you. Nothing compares to being lost in you. I want to be deeply lost in you that I may find myself and everything that I need. Walk with me today, I ask of you.
Ephesians 3:14-20
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power 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, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Paul, who took joy to be found worthy to suffer and be imprisoned for the sake of the Gentiles, including the church he is writing to here in Ephesus, spoke this prayer of hope over the young church. Paul had started the church some time before this and had left Timothy, who he had raised up, as pastor. Really, he prays two things. The first for them, even while they are, “are being rooted and grounded in love” (while they are learning how to live consistently in love toward one another and everyone) for them to be strengthened by the Holy Spirit and find Christ alive in them. This speaks of Paul’s desire for the followers of Jesus in Ephesus to have an identity that is of Christ – that in their inner being, at the core of who they are, that they may be strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, and not seek to find that strength and courage in something else – and as their identity revolves around Christ, they may find that his power, his nature, his love is alive in them, working through them. This was Paul’s first desire for the people of the church in Ephesus.
The second thing that Paul wanted for his people was that they may recognize the magnitude of the love of God (here he speaks of the dimensions: breadth (width), length, height, depth that when all included become overwhelming), and understand it in a way that is impossible to understand. This speaks to knowing it somewhere other than their brains. Paul was saying that the love of God must be known deep within one’s being – not just a knowledge of the love of God, but perhaps an experience, an encounter, something that leads the knowing the incredible love of God with the whole body – which is a far greater knowing than just informationally with the mind. And the whole point, to Paul, of their “knowing” this love? So they could be “filled with all the fullness of God.” Wow.
There is something about knowing the love of God that allows God’s presence, God’s Spirit to pervade us. There is something about coming into encounter with the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of God that allows us to be filled with a life that cannot be experienced anywhere else.
I feel that what Paul wants for his people is that they experience God. “Being strengthened,” having Christ “dwell” within us, “comprehending” that which “surpasses knowledge,” and being “filled with the fullness of God” all speak to me of some kind of encounter with God. The truth is that this is my desire for my people too. This is always my desire for myself as well, but absolutely for my people. I want my people – students and families – to encounter the love of God in its breadth, length, height, and depth that they may be strengthened by knowing it in a way that is beyond their mental capacity and experience the fullness of God because of it.
I know my God is capable, and will bring about these things. For that I continue to pray. Glory be to you, Oh, Lord, you who are able to do “abundantly far more than [I] can ask or imagine.” All glory, praise, and honor is yours. Amen.