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Oct 10, 2022 07:00am

This Love, part 2…

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*Each Monday morning in October we’re sharing about God’s love in a five-part series called, This Love. Click here for part 1. Join us and share with your friends!

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, 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 3:17b-19

Loved by God. That phrase changes everything. It gives us our purpose, our joy, our status, our foundation, our hope, and our future.

The Scripture above tells us His love is wide, and long, and high, and deep. What does that mean except that His love is beyond our own love, beyond our thoughts, and even beyond our hopes. Our human language is a small and inadequate attempt at describing His love. His love is a love that goes beyond and is more than anything we can express or explain.

Paul even says he prays the Ephesians would have the power…to grasp this great love. His love is so big it takes power to comprehend it! The unfathomable riches to be mined within His love are astounding. Once we grasp the magnitude of His love, we are never the same…

Shame lifts.
Rebellion dissipates.
Insecurity dissolves.

God’s love is not a theory or idea or wish. His love is solid and true and real.

When we are in the depths of sorrow or despair, His love is our comfort.
When life has taken a turn we don’t understand, His love is our compass.
When others have deserted us or let us down, His love is our companion.

Being loved by God is our highest privilege and greatest treasure.

You and I have been made recipients of His love through the sacrifice of the Son. He didn’t look for someone who was worthy of His love – His love is based on His worthiness, not on ours.
Do we deserve His love?
Do we live up to His love?
Do we appropriately reciprocate His love?

We don’t.

But can we receive His love, respond to His love, live in His love, and share His love?

Absolutely. I can’t imagine spending our lives on anything less.

Many times we hear the command to love God without first hearing the truth of His love for us. This leads to frustration. We want to love Him, but we are doing so with the resources we try to regenerate and manage.

Oh friend, when we’ve grasped His love for us, when we’ve received His abundant love, He causes an overflow for which He is unmistakably the source. We are forever changed into people able to love Him and others with the brand of love He has first shown to us.

The call to love God is no longer a burdensome command, but a delightful privilege.

Of course we will love the One who loves us so dearly. Of course we will love others, not because they deserve it and not because we’ve matured in our ability to love, but because we now know how much we are loved.

Oh that we, too, would have power to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep the love of God displayed and secured in Christ is for each of us.

Next week, we’ll talk about what loving others, with His love, looks like.
See you then!