In Ephesians 3:18-19 Paul says, And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
He is praying that the church will know the unknowable love of God. This is the work of the Holy Spirit because we can't wrap our human brains around it. Sometimes we think that God loves people based on how 'good' they are. The truth is that God loves everyone, regardless of their gender, sexual identity, nationality, religion, or 'goodness.' He loves those in the churches, just like he loves those in the jails. Just because he loves us all, doesn't mean he loves all that we do. When we understand the love of God, we experience fulness of life. That sounds pretty good to me, what what does it mean? I think it means that God's love shines a whole new light on our anxiety, our fears, our sin, our troubles, our purpose, our hope, on everything. It's like turning on the light in a dark room, everything becomes clearer. The bad stuff doesn't go away, we just see it in a new way. Take a moment to reflect on God's love.
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In Ephesians 3:18 Paul prays, I pray that you and all God’s holy people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ’s love—how wide, how long, how high, and how deep that love is. It's impossible to wrap our human brains around the superhuman love of God. 1 John 4:8-10 says, But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, so it figures that he is love too. He loved us so much that he died on a cross for us. He did that, not because we deserved eternal life with him, but so that we could deserve eternal life with him. That's epic. In Ephesians 3:17 Paul says, I pray that your love will have deep roots. I pray that it will have a strong foundation. Deep roots and firm foundations provide stability in the storms of life. Does your love have deep roots? How do you think and act when life is hard? When people are rude or unkind? God's perfect love helps us to endure hardship; to be kind, even when others aren't; to have hope; and to have joy. It affects everything you think, do and say.
I've always had a weird fascination with the sky - with clouds, stars, the moon, sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, etc. Psalm 19:1 explains why - it's because they tell of God's glory. It's hard to imagine watching a beautiful sunset and not believing that God doesn't exist. Look up and see God's glory reflected in the sky.
I love Paul's prayers for the early church. In Ephesians 3:16 he says, I pray that he will use his glorious riches to make you strong. May his Holy Spirit give you his power deep down inside you. He was praying that they would have strength to continue in their faith in the face of great persecution; that they wouldn't be discouraged because he was currently in prison for his faith.
I think this prayer is relevant today too. We don't face imprisonment for our faith where I live, but you definitely face criticism, judgement, and persecution for following Jesus. My prayer for you is that the Holy Spirit would give you power to follow Jesus, even when you face persecution; that you would have strength to love others, even your enemies; that you would have strength to have faith in God when things are hard, that you would have strength to do the good things that God has planned for you; and that you would have strength to tell others the Good News about Jesus.
Ephesians 3:12 says, Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence. The Greek word for boldness in the original text means freedom of speech. Paul is saying that we can come to God in prayer, regardless of our ethnicity, our deeds, our gender, our 'worthiness' (or lack of it), because Jesus has made a way for us to approach God through his death and resurrection. It's like God was on one side of a chasm and we were on the other, with no way across. But Jesus bridges the gap. How awesome is it that we can approach God, the creator of the universe, boldly and confidently!
NOTE: The image below is a great way to explain to people what God has done for you. Download this free PDF below.
Ephesians 3:10-11 says, God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord. I must have read this passage hundreds of times without stopping to think about what it means. God has made his infinite wisdom known to people through his Word, the Bible. He used his people, the Church, to share this infinite wisdom with the angels. I had never stopped to think about how God shared his plans for the world with the angels. They witness the undeserved grace of God at work in our lives, and that is how they learned about God's secret plan. Interesting.
Ephesians 3:8 says, Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ. Paul was telling the reader that God gave him the privilege of telling people the Good News about Jesus, even though he didn't feel worthy. Before his conversion, Paul had been persecuting Christians and putting them in jail for their faith. It's interesting that he chose the word privilege. We often think of sharing our faith as an obligation rather than a privilege. But it really is a privilege to tell other people about what Jesus has done for us. Look for opportunities this week to tell someone about what Jesus did for you.
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