"You Don’t Even Know!"
EPISODE 188
Understand God's Love
What gets in the way of us comprehending Christ’s love? Here in session 7 of Talking Through Ephesians, we discuss the difference between worth and worthiness and what marriage has taught us about God’s love. We reflect on Paul’s inspiring prayer for insight and power in Ephesians 3:14-21, but we also look to our other favorite passages and hymns about love, turning to some of Scripture’s greatest hits. We believe that meditating on Christ’s love for you is one of the most empowering practices a Christian can engage in, so we hope this episode propels you to contemplation and praise! Find the study guides and videos for this series at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Knowing Christ’s love renews and strengthens us.
This Week's Challenge: Give someone a note or card reminding them how much God loves them.
Episode Transcription
No, I know. It's big, right? It's a big deal. It's huge. I get it. I'm with you, man. And they're like, "Yeah, but I don't know if I'm getting it across." You don't even know, dude. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 188. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much, everyone, for tuning in. We're in session seven of our Talking Through Ephesians guided study out of six chapters, we're almost done with the first three. And this is where we start to transition to a little bit more practical stuff in the next episode. But here at the end of this chapter in chapter 3 verses 14 through 21 is this great prayer that Paul offers. It's all about love and I think this is a great way to sort of round out this first half of the book. Yeah it really pulls together a lot of the thoughts that he's had but it ends with this celebration and this desire for everyone that is in Christ to fully grasp how much Christ loves them and how much power is available within them and at work within them. And so the love and power become the theme here. And I think we'll definitely see that here in the conversation starter that we might as well just go ahead and play right now. And that one's called the power of love. This is Talking Through Ephesians, the Power of Love. How many songs do you have in your favorite playlist about the power of love? Crooners pour their hearts out trying to explain the size and scope of their devotion, but hymns have to go even further, trying to put God's vast love for us into words of praise and instruction. Hymn writer Frederick Lehman captures the challenge by imagining the sky as a parchment full of an ocean's worth of ink, expounding on divine love. It's so mind-blowing. Why do we even try to comprehend our Maker's love for us? - In Ephesians 3 verses 14 to 21, Paul bows before the Father again in prayer and praise, ending the letter's first half the way he started it. He prays 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. So here's the big idea, knowing Christ's love renews and strengthens us. Paul doesn't ask that we'd be smart enough to understand it. Instead, he prays we'd be strong enough to comprehend how much Christ loves us. As the spirit strengthens and Christ resides in us, we can perceive the immensity of our Lord's love for us. It's no softball, no light and easy truth. It's life-changing, but sometimes hard to receive. We must see ourselves in the light of the cross, both its shame and victory, our guilt and our worth in God's eyes. Because this kind of love must become the soil we sink our roots into and grow from. The ground of our being, the foundation we stand on is that we are deeply loved and live to reflect that love. So think about everything you could pray for or imagine and praise the one who can do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. Then give God glory, realizing that power is at work within us. - So here's the big question, are you grounded in love? So follow along with this guided study at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians, and may the Lord bless you and keep you. - Shalom. - So the big idea in that conversation starter was that knowing Christ's love renews and strengthens us. You know, we're talking about this great prayer here in this chapter in Ephesians three verses 14 to 21, but I'm thinking about hymns here in this conversation 'cause that conversation starter had a discussion about hymns. We're actually gonna do a little segment about hymns here later on, but going back to our episode with Michael, conversation about not my favorite hymns, that song, "Where Love is in the Home," and I know that's a really popular hymn and a lot of people love that hymn. I think for me, I don't really like it because of the melody and the tune is just very slow and lilting and, but I love the words. I love the words. And one of the verses, the second verse says, where love is in the home, there's harmony. Where love is in the home, there's bliss. If advanced in age you be, you may call to memory. Where love is in the home, there's bliss. And think about from my perspective, when I leave the home and I'm out in the world, out at my job, on travel or whatever, If things aren't right at home, if things in my family life aren't stable and loving, and if things are just turbulent and there's challenges going on at home, it just totally changes the game for all the way I operate outside of the home. Yeah, I can see you as more of a rousing, belted out, him guy, but that lilting melody definitely I think goes with this message you're talking about of there is something that creates harmony in the home, in friendships, in the church, in everywhere that Christ's love is brought into our lives. And it's like we are grounded in love, which is the big question, are you grounded in love? And when that becomes our roots, then the fruit of that love is the love that we share with others. And so we're growing from this soil of God's love and Christ's love that is so rich in nutrients, you know, that then we are producing love. We're just so filled up and producing a lot of love for others. He uses this phrase rooted and grounded in love in chapter three, verse 17, which uses that agricultural metaphor of roots, but also this architectural metaphor of grounding. - Like the foundation. the foundation, and as he loves to mix organic and building structures all the time as we talk about, thinking of this organic temple that's growing up in our lives and in the church. But the idea is that not only do we plant ourselves in Christ's love, but his love is the solid ground we build our lives on. It's the center, it's that which keeps us from tipping over. - Well, thinking about hymns and love songs, I mean, maybe that leads us to our icebreaker question. And what cheesy love song is a guilty pleasure you can't help but enjoy? That's our question for this week. And yeah, moving on to some things that aren't so important, what cheesy love song do you love? - Sometimes the cheesier, the more fun it is, especially as a dad, 'cause you get to embarrass your kids with them, you know. - It's the best, yes. - Whenever, yeah, there's some like falsetto going on that can really embarrass people, that's always fun. My wife and I were embarrassing our kids the other day with this duet of endless love, (laughing) classic. ♪ Ma ma ma ♪ That was fun. But yeah, there's a lot. What about you? What do you go to for your cheesy love song, Guilty Pleasure? - The very first one that I could think of was ♪ Only you ♪ by the Platters. - There you go, falsetto. - So good. But yeah, I think that we can weaponize these kinds of songs against our children in very positive ways. I love that's a possibility for us as parents that we get to have these cheesy moments with our spouse right in front of our kids and they just have to endure it. So let's move on to our first actually substantive segment here on the episode and that's finding Jesus. Again, we're in Ephesians 3 verses 14 to 21 here in this conversation. And so let's sum this thing up as we look for Jesus here. - Well, it's a prayer, as we said, where he bows his knees before the Father and he talks about all the families on the earth, everyone derives their name from God the Father. He's thinking again about all of the Gentiles and all of the nations and he's saying, this is something we have in common, everyone was created by this maker. And he bows before him praying that the riches of his glory would be granted to the readers to be strengthened with power through his spirit within us so that Christ can dwell in our hearts through faith. And then he talks about that rooting and grounding in love we talked about, and that we might have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what's the breadth and length, what's the immense bigness of God's love, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge and be filled with the fullness of God. And then he gives this beautiful, powerful praise statement, "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen. - Whoa, what a big glorious kind of praise statement. And with all of that, where do you find Jesus? - Well, where's Jesus? He's living in me. We see that very clearly here in this section. He is living in my heart. He is within me. And he is the power plant at work within my heart. I think that is so powerful for us to see that when I have faith and when my faith leads me to think about Jesus all the time and to have that intimacy with him that leads me to love him more and more, I come to understand him. Though as he talks about here in this section, I'll never fully understand him, which I think is appropriate. As long as we live, no matter what we do in our life, we're gonna try to understand Jesus and his love for us, but we'll never understand it. His immense bigness, as you like to say there a second ago. He's not some foreign invader into my body. There was a story here on the news not long ago where somebody had like a three inch parasitic worm growing in their brain. I just see this story. It was terrible, terrifying story, but he's not like one of these, you know, parasitic kind of invaders into your body. He becomes our own flesh as he's gonna go on here in Ephesians five to talk about. There's this language obviously of husbands and wives there where He is going to love us like Himself and we're gonna love Him like He is part of us. And there's this intimacy here that if we're gonna talk about love, we've gotta get ooey gooey and gushy about it because He's definitely within my heart and that's an important place to find Jesus, I think. And it can almost be so talked about, but not thought about. I feel like we hear that phrase, there's children's songs about it, we sing hymns. He asked me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart. And I feel like sometimes I haven't fully integrated into my worldview. Am I thinking this doctrine, what Paul is saying that Christ is through faith, taking residence in me and that that's, that's this powerful truth, but that is really, really life-changing to understand. Now the life that I live in the flesh, I live for Jesus and it's no longer I that but he that lives in me as Paul talks about in Galatians 2. And the way that Paul triangulates Christ and his love and his power with us at the center of it is the thing that I keep thinking about as I think about finding Jesus in this section. The idea that his power is in me, that he is in me, that his love is toward me, and I need to understand and hold on to that love, to know his love. because once we know that love that paradoxically surpasses knowledge, the unknowable love that I need to know, it's kind of like the piece that passes understanding. It seems unknowable, but we can experience it. We can receive it. We can know it. We can understand that when we look at the cross, he has chosen to love us, and he has decided that we are worth loving and loving in this just amazing way. And when we know it, then we're changed by it. That's why it needs to be our ground. It starts to, as 2 Corinthians 5 verses 14 and 15 says, it starts to control us. It becomes, again, not like the crazy parasitic worm in us, but it controls us. It's the unfortunate comparison. It's not, you know, we become robots or he's like controlling us in that way. Rather, His love becomes the most compelling force and motivation in our love. The fact that Jesus loves us like this starts to affect not only how I love other people, but all of my decisions, all of the way I look at things, what my goals are, what I want to do on a night off, how I work. Everything starts to become controlled by this one fact of Jesus' love for me and how much that changes how I see myself, how I see him, how I see everyone else. So in that passage I just referenced, 2 Corinthians 5, 14 to 15, he summarizes it, "For the love of Christ controls us because we've concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised." That kind of pulls together what you said and what I said into this truth that because he loves us and he died for us, therefore he is alive in us and he is directing us because we're not living for ourselves anymore, we're living for him. And it makes me think of that conversation that we had a few weeks ago from chapter two, right? The walking dead and how he brings us back to life and he did that for us because of his death. And so that changes everything about our new lives. So let's move on, I think, to our second segment. And that is Favorite Things. These are a few of my favorite things. We've got some hymns, we've got some passages about God's love, and we're going to go back and forth here as we talk about our favorite things. And let me kick that off with mine. And I'm going to go to Psalm 103, verses 11 to 13, thinking about God's amazing and incredible love for us. This Hebrew song was, "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him, as far as the east is from the west. So far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him." And I see here that God's loving forgiveness is extreme. It is big. You know, as far away from the East is from the West, that's how much God loves us and is willing to forgive us. And I think that's a challenging thing for me to remember from time to time, that God actually does forget about my sins in that way. And it's so easy to hold that guilt over my head and think that God is remembering all these terrible things that I've done. No, but God loves me. And I need to remember that as I remember how he forgives me with his steadfast love. A common word, by the way, throughout a lot of these hymns, I think. - That word, I think it's chesed, - Yep. - That love word of, it's like covenant love, it's steady love, it's love that isn't gonna go anywhere, absolutely is a powerful truth. The first one that I wanted to bring up is from a psalm also, it's my favorite psalm, and it's Psalm 63, and I'll maybe quote the hymn, 'cause we're talking about hymns, that is inspired by Psalm 63, which is basically just a paraphrasing of this Psalm. It says, "In a dry and weary land where is no water, my soul is thirsting for you. I've seen you in the sanctuary, beheld your power and glory, my lips will glorify you. I'll praise you as long as I live in your name, I'll lift up my hands. Your love is better than life." It's such a strange truth that we've talked about. What is life if there wasn't God's love to enhance and enrich it? It is the source of life, really, but your love is better than life itself. "Earnestly, I seek you. My soul is thirsting for you because your love is better than life." And I just find this Psalm and its hunger for God, its satisfaction in God, this idea that in Him, the psalmist says in Psalm 63, I am satisfied as with rich fat, you know. I am not hungry whenever I taste of your love and I praise you and I bless you. And in worship, I come like a person who's been sojourning a thousand miles across the desert and I find the oasis, I find the water that I've been longing for. And, you know, there's this longing that continues and the more you have it the more you want it and so we long to be fully in God's presence with no veil between us someday and to lose ourself as another hymn says in the ocean of His love but I deeply relate to this longing for Him and the satisfaction we find that only His love and knowing His love can give to us. there is this huge connection with just being fully supplied and being satisfied, connected with the love of God. And I think that actually leads to my second favorite thing. It's another verse from John chapter 15, where Jesus is obviously talking in that first section of the chapter about the vine and how he's the vine and we're the branches and we find our sustenance from him. We're connected to him. Our entire life resides as a result of our connection to him. And he says in verse nine, Christ is taking God's love and passing it along to us. And so then he says, abide in my love. Just stay here, stay connected to me. He says, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. And if anything tells us about what we're gonna do in Ephesians chapter four through six, it's going to be talking about doing the things that God wants us to do, taking action for the Lord. And that's exactly how Jesus phrased this too. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, he says that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. He is our model for God's love in our lives. He loved us and so we should love each other the way that he loved us, the way that God loved him. And I think for me sometimes I view love in this nebulous kind of way. It's just this warm fuzzy feeling, but everything I see from Jesus is action on my part. And it was sacrifice for me is just laying down everything he has in humility, in sincerity, and love giving his life for me. And because of that sacrifice, that changes how I treat other people. And so he goes on to say, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends. if you do what I command you. And maybe we don't think about love and obedience and connection to each other all the time, but Jesus wants us to see that if we want to have satisfaction, if we want to have life and connection to Him, if we want to stick to Him like glue, well, we've got to do what He says. And that shows how much we love Him when we follow what He says. It is really simple, but I think it's very challenging to put into practice for sure. - Well, because we're not just His friends. We are friends to Him, but we're also disciples, and we show devotion to Him by loving Him in hearing what He says and doing it. It's a part of this relationship. And I went to a similar kind of a passage where you've talked about this is how we know love. This is how we define love, is we start to understand love the more we look to the relationship of the Father and the Son to us. And the passage I went to, my next favorite thing, is 1 John chapter four. - Oh yeah. - Again, busting out the greatest hits here. And what he says there is that, this is how we know what love is. I often, you've probably heard me say this, I've thought about love this way, like it's hard to explain what some things are without experiencing it. And I've compared it to taste, like how do you explain what sweet is? - Yeah, oh yeah. If you don't have an example, it's really hard to explain it. But if you can say, well, honey, honey is sweet. Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, that's sweet, whatever. You point to something and you let them experience it, let them see it, let them know what it is, and then you say, this is sweet. And that's really how God defines love. He doesn't say love is, and then give a dictionary definition. He says, this is how you know 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. And this is love, not that we've loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Not that we loved him. Don't measure what love is by where we started in our love or by our own love for him. Measure love by what we see him doing for us, and then we respond in love to him. And of course, the most famous three words in this chapter are God is love. Which is just, you can take a ride on that one. You can spend an afternoon walking through the woods, just thinking about those three words and what that means. That not God is loving, not God has love, but that God is love. That it is essential, it is fundamental to who he is. everything else that God is exists within this truth that he is the great source, the great definition, the essence of love. And so if I understand that to know God is to know love and to see God is to recognize how much he loves and the way he loves, then I start to see the priority, the preeminence of love in my relationship with him. And then he says there is no fear in love because perfect love casts out fear. In verse 18, he says that fear has to do with punishment and we need to be perfected in love and when we do, then we won't have our relationship with God defined by fear. We're not talking of course about that reverence and awe and recognition of God's greatness and that God is our judge, but that we're not cringing in fear that He's going to judge us and punish us, that He's looking to condemn us. As I think so many people I've talked to through the years, their whole view of God is not God is love, but God is the wrathful Punisher that is coming. And that's not the place where we need to be relating to God from. And so I think this whole chapter helps me get on the right page about who God is and how I am supposed to engage with Him. The hymn that I want to sing is not, your wrath will lead to my punishment. The hymn that I want to sing is, you're great. And yes, you will stomp out evil and you will judge in the end, but that if I hold onto you and I love you and you love me, I can trust and have confidence in that love, be perfected, be completed in that love so that fear is not what defines this relationship. - That sounds like a terrible hymn, by the way. I'm not sure I would want to sing anything like that, but I bet there's one like that out there I'm sure there is no I think first John 4 really does connect very closely and nicely to John 15 and Especially how sort of the end of all these things the summary of this is that we turn around and show love to other people when God loves us and we love God and we love Christ for his sacrifice and Jesus loves us then we turn around and love other people the way that Christ loves other people and You know I was thinking here Maybe as my third favorite thing and in maybe more of a deep cut Of course, you can go to John John talks a lot about love just amazing You can go to the Psalms Psalms talk all about love. How about Deuteronomy 7? This is of course the chapter after the great Shema He shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength So the love that we have for God most definitely. But it's an interesting verse in the next chapter in Deuteronomy seven, beginning around verse six, where God's talking to the people, says for you are holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. And now you're starting to think, a Jewish mindset is thinking, well, we are special. We're chosen. We're so amazing and so wonderful that God has chosen us. And I love how God basically just blows that idea out of the water when he says, "It was not because you were more in number "than any other people that the Lord set his love on you "and chose you. "It wasn't because you were awesome "or that there was a lot of you "or that you were so worthy." He says, "For you were the fewest of all peoples, "but it is because the Lord loves you "and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers." God is keeping a promise and God loves you. Not because you're so amazing, not because you've got the most people or the strongest armies, know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and statutes and the rules that I command you today. tying all these things together in my mind, there is this mentality maybe that we get that we're so lovable and that we deserved the love or we're so awesome and we've got so much going for us that God couldn't help but loving us. No, in fact, we were dead as we were talking about in Ephesians two. In fact, we were enemies of God as we read all throughout Romans. There's just so much that would have kept God from loving us, but he keeps his promises and he extends his love to anyone who loves him and listens to him and follows him. And so if we commit ourselves to loving him and listening to him, well then he certainly will love us. And I think that goes again with 1 John 4, John chapter 15, and all these things really, it's a two-way relationship. God loves us, but it's up to us to demonstrate our love to God in doing what he says too, 'cause it's not about us, it's not how awesome we are. Really, it's all about God. I think that's a really important distinction. We might call it the distinction between worth and worthiness. Oh, sure. No, like this idea that we deserve it. Absolutely. We've done nothing to deserve it. It is God's greatness. It is his goodness. It is his love that defines this relationship. But then we can take that, like you said, to these two different extremes, we can think we're so great because God loves me and therefore, and then we lose our way and lose part of the message of the cross that we talked about in that conversation starter, that Jesus did this because of our guilt, the guilt of our sin, what we have done to oppose him, and that would bring a different kind of sentencing on us. And yet, he said we were worth it. He decided that we have that kind of value. Jesus talks about, "Do you not have more worth than one of these sparrows that God's looking out for. You are precious to God. And I think that change, a part of that change maybe is seen in the page turn from Romans seven to Romans eight. And that's my last favorite thing, my last favorite passage about love. And it's another one of those greatest hits. I'm not doing any deep cuts. I'm all about, let's not overlook the obvious here because they're just so good. And so at the end of chapter seven, of course, he's just, you know, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of death. And then he starts to turn the page in the next verse, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And chapter eight starts, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And he goes on to talk about the way that we love God, and then the way that God loves us. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. And then he starts to talk about, why do things work out like that for us? Because if God is for us, who can be against us? He gave his son for us when we were his enemy. How much more can we count on him to save his elect, those he has justified? How much more can we count on him to not let anything come between us and the love of Christ? shall tribulation or distress or persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, nothing will separate us from the love of Christ. We're more than conquerors through him who loved us. And none of these powers, none of the rulers, death, life, height, depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. There's nothing anywhere that can stop us like we sometimes seeing in another great hymn, No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from his hand. The Lord has made us his own and nothing is going to pull us away from him, except our own desire if we should choose to leave him and to separate ourselves from him. But there's no power that can do that. And so reassuring. - It is so reassuring. And I think that confidence that we have in all of these favorite things, these passages and hymns about God's love, I think what we really see as a common thread through all of this is just the confidence that we have. You know, if God loves us, and if he's given everything that he can to help us and to benefit us, how much stability and strength do we have in knowing that he's done that for us? And I think maybe that leads us into our reach out question this week. ♪ Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪ - Our reach out question this week comes from all of these passages about how much God loves us. And it's clear that all of these apostles and prophets want us to get how much God loves us. And the question is, what do you think gets in the way of people comprehending Christ's love? And have you ever felt it challenging to comprehend Christ's love? - Well, I think it makes sense, right? When you go back to Romans chapter eight, that is basically what Paul is trying to do here. He's trying to get people to see, look, you may not understand what's going on. You may not understand the depth of Christ's love. It is in fact unknowable, something that we are trying to know, but it is hard to really wrap your mind around, but nothing is gonna separate you from his love because he loves you so much that there's nothing that's gonna pluck you out of his hand. You know, there's nothing that's gonna take you away from that love, but it is, I think, just a really hard thing to wrap our minds around sometimes. And there are times where we read these passages like 1 John 4 and John 15 and all the Psalms and all the things we've been talking about, and it just doesn't land like it should. It just doesn't highlight to us what Christ has really done and what this relationship is really all about. And especially for me, if I could speak for myself, sometimes it doesn't land because all I can think about is how bad the mistakes I've made have been. Or how could God love someone like me? It is hard, I think, for me sometimes to let go of that guilt over my sins and realize that God still loves me, God is still willing to forgive me. And as I talked about there in Psalm 103, God is willing to forget all of the sins that I've committed and put them as far away from me as possible. Even in that though, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around how God can still love me, somebody who is a sinner, somebody who is just flawed and broken and who hasn't done things right. I know God doesn't expect me to be 100% worthy and sinless and perfect. Of course, that's contrary to the gospel of Jesus, right? that's what Jesus came to do, was to fix my brokenness. But it's still a hard thing for me to get past, is how unlovable I have been or could be. And I think maybe for me, it's one of the reasons why, when we get to Ephesians chapter five, when we get to that conversation that he has there about the love that a husband and wife have with each other and that oneness and that closeness and intimacy that they have, how he talks about it being just like the relationship of Christ in the church. And all I can think about is how amazing it is that my wife loves me as unconditionally as she does, how she is constantly willing to forgive me, is constantly willing to overlook my dumbness and how unworthy I am, right? Like there's so many reasons why in our relationship, I haven't always done what I should be doing and I haven't always been the kind of person that I should be, but she still loves me and she still extends that forgiveness to me. And I see that relationship that we have because we're one and she wouldn't treat me terribly because she knows that's basically like treating herself terribly because of that connection we have with each other. And the more I can see that in action in my own life, the more it helps me, I think, remember that Christ loves me that way. And he sees me as part of himself and I see him as living within me. And that intimacy that we have just makes it a lot easier to realize that he's willing to overlook so many things and he's willing to forgive so many things. - What makes that marriage comparison so good is that it's a different kind of love than the romantic love. - Oh yeah, 100%. - It's a part of that, but it really, what you're talking about really illustrates that steadfast love, that covenant steady love that holds onto us and doesn't go away when we're, like you said, your dumbness would get in the way of your relationship, but that steady love that Chesed keeps coming back and grabbing us and saying, "I'm here again. I'm sticking with you because we have this commitment, this shared commitment to each other, and God has a covenant love for his people, and it is a steady love." I think Adrian and I talk sometimes about how fun it is to talk to young Christians who are having these breakthrough realizations of those old truths that just you get it and when you get it just change. They're like, no, no, no, no, but you don't understand what I'm saying. God loves you so much. No, I know, I know, I know, he loves me, I know, but he loves you. Like, no, I know, I know, it's big, right? It's a big deal. It's huge, I get it, I'm with you, man. And they're like, yeah, but I don't know if I'm getting it across, you know. - You don't even know, dude. (both laughing) And it's just, it's so fun to see that change happening because it's like different parts of you are awakening within as God is showing, as the power of the gospel is like bringing life to dead parts of you. And these truths, they're so fundamental. We sing Jesus loves me when we're four years old and you know, you hear about it every single week and all the time and really is it, I get it, I get it. But the reason we keep coming back to it, the reason the Bible, that Paul and John and Peter and everybody keep coming back and saying, you guys have to get this and you have to hold on to it and you have to keep coming back to it is because it changes everything. And I think that, you know, that sort of regularity, that sort of, yes, I've heard it before can be one reason that we don't get it, that maybe I, at times early on, didn't fully get it. I think that sometimes we can even look at it like it's so basic and we can treat it almost like a feel good idea. Like it's one of those watered down doctrines that only peddlers of happy church stuff that doesn't give a full picture of the gospel would teach. And so you almost, I'm preaching, you know, real preachers only preach about hell or something like that when no, this is at the heart of the whole thing. This is the truth that people have to get and live from. And, you know, like I appreciate what you said, you know, how we can deep deflect it or depersonalize it by, yeah, but he loves everybody or. Yeah, but it's just an emotionless goodness. It's not what we might think of as love or deny it by secretly believing. He knows how much I am flawed and I've distanced myself from him too much to ever receive it really like other people would or something, you know, we think of our sin as so special to us and the guilt of it, the recognition of it is important, but it has to lead us to the cross where we see that is what it ultimately brought about. It brought about not a judgment on you, but a way for you to come to him. Now, if you don't come to him, then ultimately there will be that final decision and separation. But if we want him, he is here for us. And we have to just like, like you talked about earlier, love him enough to turn to him to submit and obey. As we were talking about this, I'm almost thinking of the worst game of hide and seek where you send all your friends off to go hide and they basically just stand in the corner completely unshrouded by anything and you go run out there and they are like, I found you. You're right there. You know, the love of God is not hidden. It's not off in some deep dark corner where like you go out and you look for it. And there it is. It's like standing right there, right in your face. And sometimes that seems like it's not a challenge or there's no depth to that. And I love what you said and helped us understand that, you know, there is just this right out there, you see it all the time, you talk about it all the time, kind of nature to God's love. It's just right there. It's not hidden. But then obviously I think what we're talking about in these sections and these discussions is like, yeah, but there's so much depth to it, right? It's not just a simple surface scratching topic. It's right there on full display. Anybody can access it, anybody can see it. But the more you just stew on it and the more you think about it, the more you really see how incredibly unknowable that super knowable love is. It's just, there's a lot to it. But-- - That's it. - But still just right there accessible for anyone. So I think this has been a good conversation about God's love and what Jesus has done for us and all these songs and things. And maybe that leads us to our challenge for this week. - I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. - I like this one. We're gonna get into something that's pretty easy for us to do. I think we've had some challenging challenges here in the last few episodes. This challenge this week is to give someone a note or a card reminding them how much God loves them. And in this challenge, you don't even have to talk. You just have to write something down and give something to somebody and let them read it on their own and just let them know how much God loves them and how much God appreciates them. And what a cool way to just pass along the kind of love that's so obviously on display to somebody in just such a simple way. And we've probably all received something like this that seems so simple, but then because it's personal, because of who it's coming from, it just makes the day a little bit easier. It makes the thing you're going through just that much less likely to overwhelm you. And I had a friend, this sister that I stayed with, whenever I was a teenager and I moved to Kentucky, she had this basket, huge basket, by her entryway and she called it her sunshine basket. And all it was was every single card anybody gave to her and it went in there and she would just, whenever she was down, she would move the sunshine basket to her couch and just start reading through the things that people had written to her. And it got her through so many things through the years. And you don't realize maybe how much impact you're making when you just give one of those little notes, but it makes a difference. - That's cool. I do appreciate that we've lightened it up ever so slightly here for this challenge. Take it on, do it. Get out there and write a note to somebody and just tell them how much God loves them. So let's move on, I think, to our closing prayer here in this conversation as we wrap these things up. And the suggested prayer in the study guide is Father, help us to know the unknowable love you have for us in Christ. And that's obviously from Ephesians 3 verses 18 to 19, this love that we can know, but we'll never know fully. And so let's close this conversation in prayer. Our holy God above, high and exalted is your name in all the earth. So easy to see how small we are and how weak we are, as the Psalmist said, like dust before your strength and your stability and power. Yet it's so amazing that you love us. You love us so much enough to do even more than what we'll ever know. You've sent your Son to the cross to suffer for our sins that we should have suffered for. You've graciously lavished upon us all the blessings of heaven. And your love for us, though written in our hearts, will never be fully understood. Help us to know the unknowable love that you have for us in Jesus. Help us to stand strong in the confidence that you're with us, that you watch over us. Help us to have no fear in the love that you have for us. When the storm rages around us, Father, we ask that you would increase our faith, that you're there to provide for us a way of escape through our trials and temptations. We honor your commitment to this relationship by committing our walk to your direction. Lead us and guide us in the ways that you'd have us to live. Purify us and make us holy and clean before you in the blood of Jesus. Lead us to love you more and more as you constantly outdo us in that love. Be with us in these studies and these conversations that we have and may all we do bring you the glory that you deserve. All these things we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, next week we'll get into something I think you've been looking forward to. I have been, can you tell? I think you love that second half. I am chomping at the bit. You are chomping at the bit to get to these application chapters, starting in chapter four. And we'll start that next week, our eighth guided study in the Talking Through Ephesians series. We just called it one, because we're gonna talk about being one. Lesson number eight is one. It's gonna be fun to start talking about how we unify in the spirit, in the body of Christ, building each other up. - Yeah, that's gonna be a big one. And I think obviously all of our conversations to this point in this Talking Through Ephesians series is going to give light and meaning to those kinds of practical things. It's not just a list of things to do. These are all the reasons why we're about to get super practical, is because God has done amazing things for us in His love. And hopefully these conversations have helped you this week. Thanks so much everyone for tuning into the Bible Geeks podcast. You can follow along on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice, or at biblegeeks.fm/188. You can also follow along with this talking through Ephesians series at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians. All the study guides, all the conversation starter videos, everything that you need to have these conversations on your own are right there available for you. Thanks again everyone for tuning in. Until next episode, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. [MUSIC PLAYING]