This is a most revealing prayer not only about humanity in general, but about believers in Christ as well. “I pray that you, being 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 maybe be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
The Spirit prayed this prayer through Paul in Ephesians 3:17b-19. We have all the love we’ll ever need…right now living inside us (rooted and established in love). Yet, the Spirit is praying that we will know this love from personal experience. Wait a second; if we already have this love, why is He praying for us to experience it?
Jesus did the hard thing to give us this love through living a perfect life in order to die and rise again to give us life. The moment we put our faith in Him, God pours out His love into our hearts through the Spirit (Rom. 5:5). But we don’t always believe it and then act upon it.
Why is this true? Either we don’t have someone in our lives who loves us unconditionally; or if we do, we don’t believe we deserve it; thus we never choose to live in that love. As we have a difficult time believing we are loved or loveable, we transfer this doubt to our relationship with Jesus and keep Him at arms length. Yet, He is the only one who can meet our needs; and by not believing we are loved, we turn to our drugs of choice instead.
So, the Spirit is asking for us to experience the power of God to peel away the protective layers we’ve placed around our hearts and minds in order to know from experience the tremendous amount of love that God has already put into our hearts. Once this happens, we’ll be able trust this love; thus enabling us to draw closer to Jesus, which begins the process of becoming more like Him (fullness of God).
Want more of Jesus and less of your drug of choice? Be open to experiencing the love He’s already given you, which apparently is much harder said than done. Therefore, this is something we all can be praying for our BIG partners.
“S”et Free Nowww