"The Power of Love"

Series: Talking Through Ephesians

Understand God's Love

Watch

Read

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 3:14-21, Paul bows before the Father again in prayer and praise, ending the letter's first half the way he started it (Eph. 1:3, 16). 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" (Eph. 3:17-19).

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 (Eph. 3:17).

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" (Eph. 3:20).

The Big Question

Are you grounded in love?