The season of life that I am currently in, involves a mole hill of laundry and a mountain of relaxed times that feel loving. No wait.. Ah! my brain.. The other way around! If I find a moment to tentatively sit down, the silent alarms are activated and within nanoseconds someone furry or otherwise is jumping on me or asking for their needs to be met.
As soon as my eyes open each day.. And often before, there are jobs pressing for my attention and people sweetly seeking my company. This seeking is often expressed by having my phone returned to me through a quick flight landing on my head. Ouch!
Each day can seem a battle between getting jobs done or investing time in my children. And even when both of those things are seemingly accomplished, at the end of the day it is easy to feel spent, wrung out and empty.
I’ve probably read the following verse before, but I’m not sure that I have paid much attention.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together will all the saints, 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 3:17-19
So many things to pull out from this, both about how to realise God’s great love for us and how to access it.
Firstly, If Paul can pray for this, so can we! Struggling to feel God’s big love for us, we can pray and ask Him to give us eyes to see all the ways we are already blessed and receiving His love.
Secondly, Paul is praying that there will be power to grasp, or hold onto a deep understanding of God’s love. Having heard that Jesus loves you may not necessarily mean that you feel it and this knowledge fuels your day. It takes power or energy to hold onto the active knowledge of His love. If someone told us years ago that they loved us, we would probably want to hear it again, even frequently in order to fully believe it everyday. Likewise, we do not need to be ashamed when we are loosening our grip on these truths, rather bathe daily in the Word and allow even a silent moment or two to allow the still small voice to reach its tendrils of love into our hearts.
Thirdly, God’s love is wide, long, high and deep! And this means wider than our middles… longer than our to-do lists, higher than any dreams or hopes and deeper than any of our sorrows. God’s love is sufficient for whatever the day brings if we invite Him into our hearts and our lives.
Finally, we are to know this love and be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. It is God’s desire to fill us up to overflowing with His love, with His Character, that we might be full and ready to share His love with those around us. Deuteronomy 6:5 reminds us that our energy and efforts should first be focused on God. Only after we have sought Him can we fulfil the second commandment to ‘love our neighbour as ourself’ (Mark 12:31). 1 Corinthians fleshes out this concept by describing many of the ways that we often try to help others or be ‘good’ only to end up achieving nothing of value when we haven’t first accessed God’s fullness of love.
‘Let all you do be done in love’ (1 Corinthians 16:14), can take on deeper meaning when read this way.
Let all you do, be done through your knowledge of the love that God has for you.
Let all you do, be done knowing deep down in your heart and soul that God has a wide, long, deep, high love for you.
God is ever waiting to fill each of us up with the deep knowing of His love for us. To take the grind out of yet another load of laundry or another assignment. God is ever willing to be our comfort and our cheerleader. God wants to spend time with us and allow His spirit to shape us into a finer form for His glory and our joy. He wants to fill the emptiness with the fullness of His Love.