Growth Weekly
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, having been rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
- Ephesians 3:16-18
Something I have been hearing around my house has been the announcement, "I can do it by myself!" My son Hudson is absolutely certain about his ability to do things by himself while I know full well that many of those things he cannot do alone. He would like to think he can; even more, he would love to try to do it all by himself. I wonder how many times our heavenly father looks at us the same way I look at Hudson? How many times do we look up and say, "I can do it all by myself!" Chances are, more than we would care to admit. The reality is, there are quite a few things in which we cannot do without the help of God and one of those is the ability to understand the measure of God's love. On our own, with our own understanding we are incapable of ever imagining or coming close to estimating just how much God loves us. However, with the help of the Holy Spirit we are given a power to do just this. Now this power is not a supernatural ability but just us, with the help of the Holy Spirit, becoming perfectly capable of something. In other words, we can come to comprehend God's love. What is key about this verse is what comes after this power - "to grasp." This grasping is another way to say that we can grow to know and understand, fully, the width, length, height, and depth of God. How do we accomplish this grasping? We realize God's love through the process of inquiry, or rather, the more we use it, experience it, read about it, pray about it, then the more and more we understand his love. There is a story of a man (Zech 2) who runs to Jerusalem with a measuring stick in order to measure how long and wide it will be. But a second messenger comes to tell him, "Don't you know that God cannot be measured!?" We may never know the full extent of God's love, but we can grow in our understanding of it if we live and rely on it every day.
When was the last time you prayed for the power of the Holy Spirit? Where do you need to experience the love of God most? How can he show you just how deep, wide, long, or high his love is for you?