To Encourage You

Ephesians 3:14-19 “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father . . . that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—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, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

The Bible makes known to us our many weaknesses, but that’s a good thing, although it may not look so good at first glance. For one thing, we are all, every single one of us, very weak in our ability to understand the love of Christ.   Christ’s love is a reality that is so vast that unless God grants us power to understand it, we would have no knowledge of it at all.  In our finite limitations, we have no ability to comprehend the infinite.  For example, have you ever thought about eternity, really thought about it?  Have you ever tried to think about something that exists, yet has no beginning and no ending?  From our very time-limited perspective, it is impossible to get a grasp on such a thing.  We don’t have the ability.  And so it is with the infinite love of Christ.  No matter how great we think it is, no matter how we’ve grown to understand it, it is infinitely more than we know right now.  Yet God wants us to understand it.  He wants us to be filled with it, and He wants us to demonstrate it in the ways we think, speak, and act. 

So, how can this ever be possible?  As Paul tells us in the verses above, it can only be possible if God makes it possible.  And the process of God making it possible involves God actually living in us by His Spirit so that He can infuse our hearts and minds with His own attributes.  It begins with being born of the Spirit (John 3). Then, like a little baby that must grow physically to become an adult, the believer must grow spiritually to become mature.  And just as we need to eat healthy food to grow strong physically, we need to “eat” healthy spiritual food to grow strong spiritually (1 Peter 2:2).  That food is the manna from heaven, the Scriptures.  We need to fill ourselves with it day after day, and pray for God to open our spiritual eyes to understand it as well as strength to practice it.

The Bible – it is infinite as a source of truth, infinite in its ability help us understand, and infinite in its ability to enable us to live in ways that bring glory to God.  It is God’s Word alone that infuses God’s infinite wisdom in our finite minds and infuses God’s infinite power to love in our weak hearts as His infinite Holy Spirit does His work in our lives.

May God help us to want this, to pray for it, and to realize it in our lives, for surely He wants this for us so much more than we can begin to comprehend with our weak and finite minds.